Quote of The Month – Farming

smart

The Big Lie that raising livestock depletes the planet depends on you dismissing the natural laws of grassland ecology and focusing solely on industrial livestock practices.

Alan Lewis

Ditch Ultra-Processed Food

This month fake food is foremost in my mind. I’ve seen books and studies recently confirming the dangers of eating food-like products instead of food. We’re told many, many times every day to eat it, so I aim to do frequent reminders of how damaging it is.

In 1970s Britain, almost all food was real food and almost everyone was slim. In 1980 7% of adults were obese. Today, most of what is eaten is ultra-processed food (UPF). 60% on average. For 1 in 5 of us it’s 80% ultra-processed.

I find it shocking. But it’s been so normalised that most people don’t recognise they’re eating stuff every day that’s harming them. Even if they can see chicken nuggets as junk food, they don’t see that their muesli bar, bought sandwich and ready meal are also ultra-processed. The result is that in 2000 20% of adults were obese, in 2021 it was 26%. It’s still going up and it’s killing us.

What have I been reading? From America, I saw a piece in the Harvard Public Health newsletter. It said that industrial processed foods like ready meals and breakfast cereal are causing the chronic diseases killing 1600 Americans every day. The authors ask the government to mirror the success they’ve had protecting people from acute harm (eg food-poisoning) in tackling chronic harm from UPF products that people eat daily.

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Then a study conducted by the National Institutes of Health to find out whether the association between junk-food consumption and obesity increase is actually causal. ie. is it just coincidence they happened at the same time or is processed food a cause of obesity?

They included the definition of processed food as “formulations mostly of cheap industrial sources of dietary energy and nutrients plus additives, using a series of processes”

The volunteers ate either minimally processed foods (real food) or ultra-processed foods (fake/junk). Because the two diets were matched for things like carbohydrates, sodium, fat, and sugar, the investigators thought weight gain would be the same in both groups. They were wrong. Junk food is much worse, causing over-eating (extra 500kCal/d) and weight gain.

When the same people later ate the real food diet, they lost weight.

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Then there’s a feature series in The Daily Mail on Chris Tulleken’s new book Ultra-Processed People: Why Do We All Eat Stuff That Isn’t Food … and Why Can’t We Stop?

Chris ate junk for a month, on purpose, and suffered rapid weight gain, raging thirst, poor sleep, constipation and a shocking effect on his brain.

More on what Chris found in April’s Eat Well News.

Top tip – ditch the fake/junk/UPF for real food and learn to eat well.

Quote of the Month

Both animal-based diets and plant-based diets can lead to reversal of chronic disease that Western medicine calls untreatable and wants to treat with pharmaceuticals.” This may be because any diet that focuses on whole foods in lieu of the processed ones that make up a typical Western diet is a vast improvement.

Dr. Paul Saladino

Weight Loss Magic Jab?

People love an easy answer to their weight problems – a magic bullet – a quick fix – even though they almost always turn out not to solve anything other than in the short term. So there’s been a flurry of excitement about a new injection that’s popular with celebrities.

So what it is they’re offering?

Semaglutide is a drug you have to inject in your stomach every week. It was intended and has been used so far for Type 2 diabetes to control blood sugar. In America they approved its use for weight loss a couple of years ago. Its effectiveness was shown by a robust trial with impressive results. In particular, it reduces appetite.

What’s the catch?

As always with drugs, there’s a sting in the tail. Side effects were suffered by the majority of those who had it and might explain why people lost their appetite.

Of the people in the trial who got the drug rather than a placebo:

• nearly half (44%) reported nausea
• one in three (32%) suffered diarrhoea
• one in four (25%) reported vomiting
• three quarters (74%) reported gastrointestinal disorders.

Others suffered problems with their pancreas, eye damage (1 in 10!), plus a host of lesser things like bloating, pain, wind and weakness. More worryingly, in animal studies it caused thyroid cancer. It’s too early to tell whether that will happen to people.

The NHS will prescribe it for a maximum of 2 years. (BBC news.)   But note that you also have to do a calorie controlled diet at the same time plus an hour and a half of exercise a week. And you only get the benefits if you keep having it. When you stop, you’ll regain weight – just like dieting.

Weight or Health?

The balance of priorities between weight and health seems to be ever skewed towards losing the pounds at any cost. It’s been like that for decades and I’m sure things like Instagram and TikTok have only made it worse with image comparisons. For me, health comes first. I lost my health for years due to eating wrong and I wouldn’t wish that misery on anyone.

If you’re tempted by this jab, it’s probably because your past habits have not given you the body you want. What you really need is better habits which lead automatically to your body returning to an appropriate weight as everything comes back into balance. Artificial ways that force your body to lose weight eg pills, injections, meal replacement shakes, bars and diets, don’t help you learn how you eat well.

Or both?

To be slim and healthy, there is no quick fix. You’ll have to invest a bit of time and effort although perhaps not as much as you feared or the ads for convenience food-like products have brain-washed you into believing. You can make easy changes eg eat a bit of salad with your lunch instead of bread or crisps, reduce how often you indulge in sugary things (biscuits, chocolate, snack bars), cut out vegetable oil and go back to butter, drink some water.

You shouldn’t expect a new body next week but you can enjoy a more vibrantly healthy life year after year with real food. I love it when I see or hear from past clients who find that as time goes by, their body shape improves and their health and energy levels too. So I don’t promise a quick fix. Healthy eating isn’t a magic bullet, it’s a better lifestyle.

Top tip – for a more vibrantly healthy life, say no to any quick fix and learn to eat well.

I got the numbers from Zoe Harcombe’s piece ‘A story about weight loss.’

 

Quote of the Month – Invest in Yourself

How is your year going so far?

Could you look after yourself even better?

Muscle, Exercise and Protein

Muscle

One of the things I love over Christmas and New Year is watching The World’s Strongest Man contest. It’s brilliant to see these guys carrying cars and tossing kegs.

Dr Gabrielle Lyon did a podcast with Dr Rangan Chatterjee and said that if we gain more muscle, we can protect our skeleton, improve mobility and balance, burn more fat, lower our risk of disease, increase our energy levels and live longer, better lives.

The WHO definition of healthy ageing is “to retain functional independence”.  So it’s the strength rather than the size of muscles  that matters and the new drugs that only increase muscle mass do not bring benefits.

Ageing

Our muscle mass reaches its peak in our mid-30s and then goes down by about 1% per year. For over 60s, it’s been found (WHO) that the death rate is halved in the strongest 1/3 of the population. If you didn’t get an exercise habit when you were young, it becomes more and more important as you get older.

Muscles store energy as glycogen, a type of sugar. With less muscle, there’s less storage space for sugar and this can change your metabolism making insulin resistance and diabetes worse. Muscles also burn energy all the time even when you’re resting, so increasing your muscle is great for weight loss.

Hospitalization presents another danger. 10 days of bed rest causes a muscle loss of 2% in a young person but 10% in an elderly person. That’s 10 years of muscle loss in just over a week – and very hard to get back. Accelerated muscle loss in the elderly is called sarcopenia and is a cause of frailty, falls and death.

Exercise

Even though muscle is important in so many ways, weight training remains much less popular than aerobic exercise. Gyms can put people off – the costs, the equipment, the other people that go there…(!)… Luckily, it’s easy enough to do resistance training at home, either with some simple hand weights (eg dumbbells, tins or bottles) or your body weight (eg press-ups, lunges and squats).

Large weights put people off and can cause injury. Fortunately you can get a similar benefit by using small weights and doing the exercises very slowly. Women worry about getting big muscles but it’s very unlikely. I’ve been weight training for 40 years and my upper arms still measure only 10″ (25cm) like they always have.

Best of all is to do a mix of exercise types. Gabrielle recommends resistance training at least four days a week plus high-intensity interval training (HIIT). Dan John suggests everyone >50 should check that they’re able to stand on one foot for 10 seconds, so a 30-sec deep squat, hang from a bar for 30s, get off the ground without using their hands and do a 5 foot standing long jump. Brendan Egan recommends 2 sessions of strength work and 3 sessions of aerobic a week plus stretching/flexibility – I once heard Donny Osmond say, “as you get older it’s important to stay limber.”

Another big hazard is sitting for long periods. Just stand up every 20-30 minutes to engage with gravity – it’s called non-exercise movement (see Joan Vernikos, Sitting Kills) and brings big benefits for something so simple.

Brendan concluded from his studies that it’s never too late to start exercising and everyone can gain strength. Find a gym or personal trainer to advise you if you’ve never done it before or look at YouTube and people like Joe Wicks. Anything you do is good and if you start doing more than you’ve been doing before, that’s great so have a go and feel good about getting moving.

Protein

We all need protein, and not just for building muscles. Protein is made of amino acids and these building blocks are also essential for making your bones, enzymes and hormones. There are ways of calculating how much you need if you’re willing to go to the trouble. Dr Stuart Phillips believes the sweet spot is ~1.2g of protein per kg of body weight. The modern carb-heavy diet mean we get little protein except in the evening meal.

I encourage people to include three things in every meal: plants, proteins and fats. Most breakfasts are not much more than sugar and really class as deserts so it’s the meal with most scope for improvement eg by adding some egg, ham or fish. In Norway they serve herrings done 3 ways. This morning I had mackerel (protein) with half a pear (plant), some seeds (fat) and half a slice of buttered (fat) toast.

If you don’t want protein in your breakfast, you could add more to your lunch, like this salad. There’s a threshold of about 20g to trigger muscle building (3 eggs or a couple of ounces of meat). In studies of older adults, protein and exercise, Brendan Egan found the key amino acid is leucine (whey is a good source) and that omega 3 fats increase the effect suggesting that animal proteins are better. On the other hand I just saw a pubmed abstract of a 10-week study showing similar results from exercise with plant only or mixed omnivorous protein.

There’s no need to go mad though. If you eat more protein than you need, or you eat it without exercising, your body will turn it into carbohydrate and burn it or turn it into fat, which is a waste of such a high quality food when we all get more than enough carbohydrate already.

Older people will need more protein in each meal just to meet their basic needs. Appetite decreases with age often leaving people getting too little. At the same time, absorption decreases so it’s a double whammy.

When trying to build or retain muscle, timing matters too. Brendan’s trials found that eating a high-protein snack 20 minutes after exercising is best. After 2h the muscle-building effect is lost.

Bonus Nutrients

Protein source foods bring other valuable nutrients with them and the type matters as well as the amount. Animals fed on grass produce superior fatty acid profiles to animals kept indoors and fed on grains and soya. If you don’t eat animal foods you are probably deficient in vitamin B12, iron, sulphur, creatine, carnosine, taurine, long chain omega 3 fats (EPA and DHA), collagen and conjugated linoleic acid. There are supplements available. Fake meats should be avoided by everyone. They usually contain high levels of harmful omega 6 fats as well as chemicals (not necessarily listed on the label) to make them look and taste fit to eat.  As always, eat real food.

Top tip – Do resistance exercise and include protein in your meals.

Quote of the Month – Type 2 Diabetes

Obesity is NOT part of ageing.

Diabetes is NOT part of ageing.

They are causing untold damage to people & health services worldwide.  The pandemic we should all be worried about is the ‘Alarming’ rise in type 2 diabetes among UK under-40s.

The good thing – IT IS REVERSIBLE.

Dr Karen Malone

Here are some extracts from an article in the Guardian (Andrew Gregory).

– – – – – – – – – – – – –

The growing numbers of overweight and obese children and young adults across the UK is now translating into an “alarming acceleration” in type 2 diabetes cases among those aged 18 to 39.

The number of people under 40 in the UK diagnosed with type 2 diabetes has jumped 23% from about 120,000 in 2016-17 to 148,000 in 2020-21.

“This analysis confirms an incredibly troubling growing trend, underlining how serious health conditions related to obesity are becoming more and more prevalent in a younger demographic,” Chris Askew, the chief executive of Diabetes UK, said.

Until recently, type 2 diabetes has been quite rare in people aged under 40.

The condition can have a devastating impact on people and their families – it is a leading cause of preventable sight loss and lower limb amputation, and increases the risk of kidney failure, heart attacks and strokes.

– – – – –

A 23% increase in 4 years is unbelievably huge!!! Diabetes is a killer and needs to be taken seriously. And obesity certainly took a huge step up in just 2 years due to lockdown.

The best news –

lots of GP surgeries will now help you manage your diabetes or put it into drug-free remission with diet and lifestyle.

 

Your Best You Helps the NHS

It’s clear that the NHS is in dire straights and we hope it’s not broken beyond repair. It’s understaffed and over-burdened and people are suffering and dying from not being able to get help they need, when they need it.

• It’s not just that it’s underfunded.
• It’s not just that it’s hampered by bloated, unsuitable systems with lots of wasted resources.
• It’s not just that it’s understaffed (exacerbated by staff losses due to a badly executed Brexit and Matt Hancock’s mandates).
• It’s not just the bed-blocking (again exacerbated by mandates that cost the already struggling care sector 40,000 workers, laid off for refusing to be bullied into giving up their right to informed consent).

By all means lobby your MP to sort out the big top-level problems.

And also think about how you can help more personally.

The main thing the NHS struggles with is

• ever increasing demand.

And not just from the ageing population – who could and should be healthy enough to mostly take care of themselves, but also from younger and younger people. The percentage of the population succumbing to lifestyle-related diseases (T2 Diabetes, Heart Disease, Obesity, Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, Cancer, Alzheimer’s) continues to go up and up and up.

Obesity and related diseases took a massive, sudden step up because of lockdown. Some people did use the time as an opportunity to get fitter but most didn’t and I bet you know people who are still heavier now than in 2019.

One of the best things you can do to help the NHS is to be your best you. To use them as little as possible – for the things they can fix that you can’t.

To quote Dr Phil

Health care begins with self-care.

So take self-care to the next level.  Do all you can to avoid such chronic diseases as can be avoided by prioritising movement, fresh air, sunshine, rest, stress reduction, relationships, sleep and real food. However young or old you are, whatever maladies afflict you, it’s always worth looking after yourself as well as you possibly can.

In recent conversations, people have asked, “What do you do?” And then when I said, “Nutrition Coaching”, exclaimed (while patting their tummies) “Ooooh I could do with some of that!!!” It wasn’t one person, or two, but several. People know what they need, they know what they’re unhappy with and they know what they want.

Translating desire into action is a different thing. Yes, their enthusiasm could carry them through to action, but what action?  You need to know the right things to do.

I can give you understanding of why many real foods you’ve been avoiding are actually your friends and help you learn to eat well.

So far, so good – enthusiasm and understanding are hugely important; so is commitment.

1.Commitment to change

“If you always do what you always did, you’ll always get what you always got.” (I’ve seen this attributed to many people from Albert Einstein or Henry Ford to Forest Gump).

If you’re not slim and healthy the way you’re eating now, you won’t become slim and healthy eating the way you’re eating now.  You need to reach the point where you’re ready for change.

2.Commitment to effort

You’ll have good reasons why you do what you currently do. Haven’t got time? Ready meals so much easier than cooking? There are always better solutions. OK, it might take a little while to get used to new habits but the extra energy you’ll have will compensate for the time taken to prepare your own food.

3.Commitment to yourself

Need to do this for this person? Or something else for someone else? Or your job? Or your family? Great. Except your own good intentions can easily get squeezed out. By moving yourself higher up your priorities you can start to enjoy better health. With extra energy you’ll be able to look after everyone else better too.

That’s why I’ll be asking for your commitment as a client if you want to work with me. We’re all wasting our time if all you gain is understanding of how your current diet is harming you while you carry on eating the same. If you’re determined to subsist on breakfast cereal, low-cal ready meals, take-aways and fizzy pop, then no-one can help you much.

If you’re serious about making your health important in your life then I can help you to enjoy a more vibrantly healthy life, – and you’ll help the NHS.

Top tip – Be your best you to help the NHS

Quote of the Month – don’t ignore your body

“If you are overweight, your body is trying to tell you it doesn’t like being ignored”

Paul McKenna

Deprivation, calorie counting, strange foods, non-foods.

There are lots of ways to ignore your body

– it’s called going on a diet.

Short-term weight loss draws people to diets but deprivation slows your metabolism forcing 98 out of every 100 people to put the weight back on later.

You can enjoy diet clubs for group support and recipe ideas but tweak to avoid low-fat food products and seed oils.

This year, I encourage you do your body a favour

don’t diet…. Learn to Eat Well

Saucy!

There are Christmas recipes everywhere you look – have you been watching Jamie’s Easy Christmas? I made his Christmas pasta for lunch today! Great inspiration for us for home-made main meals and other dishes.

It’s easy to grab a jar of something factory-made to dollop on the side – sauces, dressings and gravy. Trouble is, these are often stuffed with unhealthy ingredients like vegetable oil, artificial flavourings and flavour enhancers, thickeners, preservatives etc so here are a few you could make over the next few days.

Apple Sauce

Peel, core and chop a cooking apple. Heat gently in a pan with a little water and a teaspoon (5ml) of brown sugar, maple syrup or xylitol. You can add more water if it becomes too dry. You can make it plain or spice it up with half a teaspoon of ground nutmeg, or all-spice. When the apple is soft you can beat in a teaspoon of butter with a wooden spoon.

While still hot, put in a sterilised jar and it will keep for ages unopened, and in the fridge once opened for 4 or 5 days. It freezes well too (in a plastic container, not glass).

Cranberry Sauce

You can make it the old-fashioned way just by heating cranberries in a solution of water and sugar until the berries have burst and softened.

Or you can fancy the recipe up a bit with some orange juice and zest, some cinnamon, ginger (which I love) and cloves (take these out before you put it in jars!). You could even add a slug of ruby port after it’s cooked. All delicious options – hot or cold.

If you want a clear jelly, cook the berries without sugar, squash with a potato masher, put them through a suspended jelly bag overnight, then heat with sugar at about 45g per 100ml of liquid.

Christmas Chutney

Cranberries come in bag or boxes, not loose, so you might have some left once you’ve made some sauce. You can use the rest in s festive chutney.

Put about 800g dried fruit in a bowl (chopped apricots, dates and raisins) and cover with boiling water. Leave to soak.

Meanwhile peel, core and chop a cooking apple, zest an orange, grate a bit of ginger root (~1”) and chop one large or a couple of small onions. Put these in a pan with ~300ml vinegar and cook gently with a lid on until the onion is transparent. Add the soaked fruit and a tablespoon of sugar, xylitol or maple syrup. When the mixture starts to thicken, it’s ready to jar.

Bread Sauce

This won’t appear on our table but I know people who love it most of all at Christmas.

Peel an onion and stick half a dozen cloves in it. Put it in a pan with ½ pint of milk (~300ml or a mug full), a bay leaf, salt, pepper and some whole peppercorns. Bring the milk to the boil slowly, then remove from the heat and let stand for at least an hour. Strain or remove the onion and other solid bits, then add ~100g of fresh breadcrumbs and a knob of butter. Bring back to the boil and simmer for a few minutes. If you make this the day before, leave it a bit less firm as it will thicken more when you re-heat it.

Gravy

As your turkey/joint cooks, skim off the juices and collect in a pan.

If you stuff your bird with roughly chopped onions, carrots and apples and cover it with streaky bacon, that adds wonderfully to the flavour.

Then add some gravy browning or cornflour (both of these need to be mixed with cold water before adding to hot liquid), bring to the boil and simmer to thicken.

Salad dressings

Given the current cold-snap (our central heating has gone wrong – Brrrr!) I doubt many of you will have salad as a main course, but you might do a starter with a salad garnish.

You can’t go wrong with plain extra virgin olive oil and vinegar – balsamic if you want some sweetness, eg for on tomatoes and onions, or white wine vinegar for a light touch.

Here’s a mix we use a lot:

Into a glass screw-top jar or dressing bottle place:

– 6 tablespoons olive oil

– 2 tablespoons avocado oil

– 1 tablespoons apple cider vinegar

– squeeze of lemon juice to taste

– 1 teaspoon wholegrain mustard

Shake well. It will keep fine for a week.

This dressing contains omega 3 and 9 fats with only a little omega 6.

Mayonnaise

Paul’s Rapeseed Oil Mayonnaise

In a blender, blitz an egg, ½ tsp salt, ½ tsp Dijon mustard, a tiny clove garlic (optional), a splash of cider vinegar (~ 1 dsp).

Drizzle in ~ 400ml rapeseed oil while blending

This one is higher in omega 6. You can use olive oil instead; it has a stronger flavour. It will still be better than shop-bought which is made mostly from sunflower oil.

Ditch the Carbs Easy Mayo

Try this one from Libby at Ditch the Carbs.

Tips to get easy mayonnaise recipe to work every time are:

• use mild flavour olive oil

• ingredients don’t have to be at room temperature

• keep the blade attachment at the bottom of the jar until it thickens

Top tip: Get saucy in the kitchen this Christmas.