Is it Really Healthier to be Vegetarian?

One common reason for people to give up eating meat is that they think it will be healthier for them to be vegetarian.

 

The recent scare on red meat adds to this view – but whilst sensational headlines make news, you only get an angle on the story. Epidemiological studies like this can never claim cause and effect and there are many complex factors working together in producing the findings. For instance, vegetarians eat more vegetables. Actually everyone would benefit from eating some vegetables but many people eat hardly any at all.

 

So is it healthier? In terms of metabolic typing I would always say, “it depends”. I know a couple of vegetarians who are thriving on their diet. I know many others who have a whole host of health problems. If you are at the carbohydrate end of the spectrum, you could fare very well without meat. You’ll need a good variety of food types to make sure you get all the protein you need because vegetables don’t provide complete protein. If you are at the protein and fat end of the spectrum, going vegetarian could do you damage. When I ate very little meat or fat, I was overweight, tired all the time, moody and often ill.

Omega 3 is another factor; vegetable sources contain only the mother fat. Modern eating habits (particularly the excessive consumption of vegetable oil which is mostly omega 6) can compromise the ability of the body to make the family of omega 3 fats that you need for good health. Fish eaters benefit from the long-chain omega 3 fatty acids present in oily fish; vegetarians can be short of these essential fats.

 

 

Top tip – remember to consider your nutritional needs when deciding how to eat.

You can also read this and lots of other interesting articles in The Cockermouth Post (April issue) .

Super Size Me

My latest column in The Cockermouth Post (March issue) is out:

How much food or drink is enough? Do you decide or do sellers tell you? When I’m travelling a long way, I like to stop for a cappuccino (healthy? no; they’re a weakness of mine and I have the British motorway system mapped out for places that do good coffee). I always have a bag of nuts in my handbag but sometimes fancy a bit of cake too (not healthy either but cake and coffee once a month probably won’t do me too much harm).

Here’s the problem; have you seen the size of the muffins they sell? When I was a girl my mum baked buns. A bun is just the right size for a snack. The average motorway muffin is about 4 times the size. If I ate one, I’d weave my way down the road with sugar intoxication before getting a nasty headache (not to mention the weight I’d gain). The same is true of most slices of cake sold in tea rooms and cafes these days. If they sold small portions, I’d often buy one. Invariably, I just do without.

Along with the nutritional down side, when you buy ready meals or takeaways you let the manufacturer decide the portion size and the relative proportions of proteins, fats and carbs. The drinks can be even more over-blown than the food with coffee and cola often coming in buckets.

We get so used to seeing what’s on offer, we become conditioned to think that it’s ‘normal’ and forget that actually much of what’s on sale is super-size.

Top tip: Stay in control; choose your own portion size.

 

(I’m intending to bake buns this weekend – I’ll post a picture!)

Eat well and save money!

Channel 4′s Super scripmers recently featured a family who bought almost exclusively processed food.  In my book Survival Guide for the Skint, I talk about how you are really employing a personal chef when you buy ready prepared food.  If we’re honest, most of us are not rich enough to pay someone else to cook for us.

The family in question held a dinner party and prepared a three-course meal for 7 adults and 2 children for £15.  The same event would usually have cost the around £80.

The couple also discovered to their surprise that cooking is a lot easier than they expected.  How much money could you save by learning a few simple skills?

Even better news – everyone agreed that the meal tasted better than the ready made stuff!

I’m very keen to spread the word that eating real food is better for you than buying products.  If you’ve been put off by fears that fresh ingredients would cost too much, this will reassure you.

Buy natural foods, cook delicious food, save money and improve your health.  You win all round!

This is a joint Survival Guide for the Skint and Learn to Eat Well blog post.

Listen to Your Body – part 2 – Diets

My latest column in The Cockermouth Post (February issue) is now out:

Last month we looked at aliments, this month it’s diets. Today’s culture seems to be to ignore our bodies and to choose what we eat using our minds and thoughts. These are influenced by marketing. Food manufacturing companies are very good at seducing us and they spend a fortune carefully crafting their adverts. Whilst they don’t actually tell lies, their ability, for example to link a low nutrient, high sugar breakfast cereal to a slim, healthy body in a red dress, as if the one caused the other, is uncanny.

We need certain nutrients and won’t function properly without them. When you feel hungry, ask yourself what your body needs. Perhaps you haven’t eaten for a while or perhaps you have eaten, even overeaten, but the wrong things. Hunger isn’t always a request for more; it might be a plea for something different. Eating more of the same won’t meet the need and could put weight on you. It’s possible to be malnourished and obese at the same time.

Diets are all about deprivation. We’re so hard on ourselves. It isn’t our body’s fault if we’re overweight. We’ve all been misled about food and eaten what does us harm. We punish ourselves using willpower to resist the message of hunger but mind over matter does nothing to change our actual biology or the chemical reactions that are the reality our physical lives. If your body needs something, feed it; not with sweet artificial snacks – what about real food? It’s time for some self care. This year you could decide to nurture yourself by eating good foods to meet your needs.

Top tip: Pause and consider, “What does my body really need?”

Listen To Your Body – part 1 – Ailments

Here’s my January column from The Cockermouth Post:

Lots of people are suffering from coughs and colds just now. If you haven’t come down with anything yet, you can protect yourself by avoiding sugar (which depresses the immune system) and by eating foods rich in vitamins and enzymes.

 

So if you get ill what will you do? Look after yourself, rest in a warm bed with lots of hot drinks? Or will you tough it out, take some over-the-counter remedy and carry on regardless?

 

Your body has amazing powers to heal itself if you give it a chance. Using all your energy rushing about with your normal life, won’t leave enough reserves to fight illness. You can scrape the bottom of an empty barrel for so long but taken to extremes it can lead to problems like chronic fatigue. Your GP can tell you if you need medication (eg for a chest infection). Otherwise you’ll just want enough relief to allow you to sleep. Try hot honey and lemon.

It’s good to tune into your body and respond to its needs. Instead we’re encouraged to ignore or silence the annoying messages with drugs.

Some foods don’t suit particular individuals and will always cause indigestion. We could accept this and simply abstain. The adverts tell us to eat unsuitable food anyway and then swig some gloop. True it will end the discomfort but it also interferes with our digestive process.

A headache might mean we need a glass of water, time away from the computer screen or a few minutes resting our eyes. The drug companies tell us not to be so soft. Ignore your pain, take our pill and keep working! Muscle aches? Rub on some gel, then go and exercise! Is all of this sensible?

Top tip: Listen to what your body is trying to tell you.

 

Stable Weight

I made my doctor very happy this morning when he gave me some routine checks (he doesn’t see me very often).  He hadn’t weighed me for 7 years and when I got on the scales the reading was exactly the same as before!  He said it was the first time he’d ever seen this and I must be doing something right.  Well, as it’s almost 8 years since I started to eat right for my metabolic type, I’ve a hunch that might be why I enjoy such stable weight.  If you want to find out how to eat right for your type, drop me an email jackie@learntoeatwell.co.uk.

No Quick Fix

In the December issue of The Cockermouth Post, you can read my piece (on page 24) about lasting results through building better habits.  Here it is:

Aristotle said, “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then is a habit.”

 

In this day and age we’re used to things happening fast. We can access information instantly on our ‘phones. We can buy things at the click of a button. We’re no longer used to having to invest time; when we want something, we want it yesterday.

 

Diets offer quick change but in the majority of cases the change is quickly reversed. People can spend years on the treadmill of yo-yo dieting, losing and regaining weight in a miserable cycle of feast and famine that damages their metabolism.

 

The way to lasting results is to build better habits. Eat a bit of salad with your lunch, reduce how often you indulge in sugary things (biscuits, chocolate, chewy bars), cut out vegetable oil, drink some water.

 

I recently had the pleasure of speaking to some regular Cockermouth Post readers of who had altered their eating habits as a result of my column. At first they didn’t notice much but as time went on, Helen realised that her body shape had improved. Mike, an asthma sufferer, found that he needed his inhaler less frequently and now, instead of several times a day, he uses it only rarely.

 

Proving me wrong, Karen who is on the current group course, made one simple change and literally overnight felt better than she had for 30 years! That’s how powerful the effects can be from the things you eat and drink.

 

So I don’t promise a quick fix. Healthy eating isn’t a magic bullet, it’s a better lifestyle.

 

Top tip – good eating habits are for life, not just for Christmas!

Love leftovers

Here’s a joint Learn to Eat Well and Survival Guide for the Skint blog post for Christmas.

We throw away a staggering 8.3million tonnes of food every year in this country. That’s a shocking figure and something a skint person can’t afford to contribute to.

Reasons why you might end up wasting food this Christmas

• Shops are desperate to sell you more than you need. Beware the eye-catching special offers that encourage you to get larger quantities. They can be very good value if you actually use the food. If you end up throwing it away, they’re very bad value.
• Cooking for a different number of people to usual can make it tricky to gauge exactly how much you need.
• You keep extra food in the house in case of unexpected guests and visitors.

Reduce the amount of waste that you create

• Plan meals ahead and use a list when you shop.
• Look at sell-by dates on any multiple offers. Buy only things that will last long enough for you to be sure that you can use them.
• Buy food that freezes well and can be used later when you need it. I made my mince pies a couple of weeks ago and froze them. They’re lovely warmed up.
• Use serving dishes when people come to dinner. You might overestimate their appetite or want to appear generous and overload their plate. Over-facing people means they are embarrassed and they’ll make themselves suffer by forcing down more than they need. Let them serve themselves so they can take exactly what they want and eat all of it.

Make best use of what’s left

Buying or preparing too much food needn’t mean that any is wasted.

• Invest in a range of clip-top boxes. I often buy cream cheese and keep the containers which are a handy size for storing food for lunches.
• Keep leftovers in the fridge for one or two days if you can think of exactly when you’ll eat them. ‘Just in case’ usually means ‘not at all’ then when you later find them covered in mould they have to go in the bin). So if you can’t identify just when you’ll eat your leftovers, put them in the freezer, in useful portions.

How to use leftovers

• My lunch very often happens like this:

I put a good knob of butter in a small pan, add half a stick of celery cut into little pieces, pop in my leftovers (might be some mince, chicken, fish, veg etc), perhaps throw in a handful of spinach leaves or a bit of carrot (leftovers again). When it has warmed through I might put some cream cheese in and stir it round to make a sort of sauce. I usually serve it with a buttered rice cake. Delicious.

If I’m working away from home, I can take a container of salad with leftover meat or fish.

• Make soup. For Christmas, I’ll strip the carcass after the meal and boil up the bones to make stock. The remaining meat can be fried with leftover potatoes and veg plus mushrooms to make a delicious Boxing Day tea. Then I’ll make chicken soup with the stock and throw in anything else that’s leftover.

• www.lovefoodhatewaste.com is a site full of ideas on what to do with your leftovers. (Great recipes although personally I never cook with vegetable oil as it is unsaturated fat and therefore becomes damaged when heated.)

I wish all my readers a very Merry Christmas and a happy, healthy and prosperous 2012.

Jackie

Party Time!

It’s advent now and we’re in the run up to the party season.  Christmas and New Year can mean meals out, buffet lunches and more alcohol than usual.

The November issue of The Cockermouth Post is available at www.thecockermouthpost.co.uk.

Here’s my piece on protecting your waistline during the madness (or see TCP page 14).

Have a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year – but don’t lose your waist!

We may hate the darker evenings and cold, wet autumn weather but looking on the bright side, we’re in the run up to Christmas and New Year and that means parties!

It’s easy to get so carried away enjoying ourselves that we lose some of our better judgement about food. It’s tempting to eat far more than usual, drink more, buy more sweets, biscuits, chocolate, cakes, mince pies and on and on. And when you lose your head, you can also lose your waist. In a way, the whole season should carry a big yellow health hazard warning triangle.

The biggest danger as always is sugar. Having a good breakfast which includes proteins, carbohydrates and fats will set a good pattern for the day and protect you from random cravings. Packet cereal, toast and jam contain little goodness and only last a few hours leaving you wanting yet more sugar.

Food manufacturers and retailers are in a frenzy of advertising. Perhaps they even helped to create the culture of excess. Messages of goodwill and generosity mean they’ll rake in large amounts of our money in exchange for making us fat and ill. Bought seasonal treats are usually full of sugar and made with vegetable oil, both of which you’d do well to avoid. Consider spending your money on good ingredients and taking a little time in the kitchen. There’s nothing to compare to home made mince pies and your grandmother’s recipe Christmas cake.

Top tip: Enjoy the festivities and don’t lose your waist!

The Real Deal …

I’ve just read a great post from Nick Ortner at The Tapping Solution which I wanted to share with you.  It’s  called the Real Deal About Food, Stress, Tapping and More.

Nick talks about how our relationship with food has changed from an old friend, provider, sustainer, base of life…

to STRESS. FEAR. ANGER. GUILT.

You can read the whole post here