What we eat

[Yenn]

This topic has appeared in other posts about differing things, so I thought I would start a dedicated place for it.

We are one of the most obese nations in the world and it seems that the reason could be our diet.

OME has said elsewhere that Maccas has been here for 50 years. I did once try a meal at Maccas, that was when I was with a group of young people who had spent two weeks in Morocco and were hanging out for a big mac when we got to Spain. That was my first and last.

Possibly I am not obese because I have to leave home and travel 50km round trip at least to get any fast food.

If I am away from home and need a meal I am lost in the suburban food malls. I don't find anything appealing, so the fall back is fish and chips, which seems to me to be the best of a bad lot.

Our food is mainly home grown, or organic.  I used to think that sheep meat, either lamb or old ewe would be free range, but I have seen sheep being fed grain in the paddocks to fatten them. Our locally grown beef is as near organic as can be even if not given the seal of approval. It is grown on dry paddocks with multiple acres to each beast, No chemicals except for whatever they use for buffalo fly and tick control and I know that is not good.

The one thing I never touch is soft drink, it just doesn't appeal to me and I drink rainwater, much against the advice of our local council who will not allow it into houses for drinking.

If obesity is a disease I wonder why the doctors never ask those not suffering from it, what they do differently. But then we can't expect the medical profession to worry about why something happens, when there is a pill to prescribe. Do those antibiotic pills do our gut any good, or could they be one of the causes of obesity?

 

[old man emu]

Yenn,

New houses in Sydney have to have a rainwater tank, but I think that is only as a non-drinking supply to be used for gardening and car washing. With the way that houses are packed into new developments, there's no tree for birds, so one is not likely to get a dead magpie in the tank, and frogs and snakes have moved on long ago.

 

Maccas has the market because it advertises so heavily. Hungry Jacks is, in my opinion, a better product, but suffers because it can't match Maccas' advertising bombardment. I've had a bus load of hungry kids make me drive past a HJ's simply to get to the next Maccas. The next problem is serving size from all fast food outlets. You'd think that a kebab or Subway would be a good dietary choice, but by the time you add this 'n' that you end up with enough to feed the Five Thousand. Ditto for pizza, shushi, and noodles. If you are going to buy a fish dinner, avoid the battered fish. One, because you never know how much fish is hidden beneath the batter, and two because the batter is a fat sponge. Better to have the fish "grilled" on a hot plate.

 

1 hour ago, Yenn said:

Do those antibiotic pills do our gut any good, or could they be one of the causes of obesity?

If you mean the antibiotics prescribed by a doctor in the course of treating an infection - YES. They will knock about your gut flora. But that is only for the duration of the treatment. If you want to bounce back, take probiotics. 

 

Probiotics are living microorganisms that, when ingested, provide a health benefit. Probiotics are usually bacteria, but certain types of yeasts can also function as probiotics. The most common probiotic bacteria are Lactobacillus and Bifidobacteria. Other common kinds are Saccharomyces, Streptococcus, Enterococcus, Escherichia, and Bacillus. Gut bacteria help us to digest plant material. Many of them produce the vitamins that we need, but don't have the physiology to make in our bodies. Of course there are some bad dudes, but a healthy gut flora keeps them in check. Your gut flora is highly sensitive to your diet, and studies show that an unbalanced gut flora is linked to numerous diseases. These diseases are thought to include obesity, type 2 diabetes, metabolic syndrome, heart disease, colorectal cancer, Alzheimer’s, and depression

Before pharmaceutical companies existed, we got our probiotics from the food we ate and drank. You can get probiotics from foods prepared by bacterial fermentation such as yoghurt, sauerkraut and bread. Before pasteurisation, beer was an important source of probiotics in those countries that made it.

 

 

[Dax]

1 hour ago, Yenn said:

This topic has appeared in other posts about differing things, so I thought I would start a dedicated place for it.

We are one of the most obese nations in the world and it seems that the reason could be our diet.

Sadly threads like this are largely ignored, people really don't want to know how to fix their health, they want someone to do it for them, so they can continue with the same lifestyle that's killing them. I've watched people close to me die because they are in deep denial of the causes of their health problems. I just don't understand their logic, it seems non existent and they get really pissed off if anyone suggests they change their approach to life. Watching someone dying when you know they could be helped, but they refuse and it's not a good thing to be part of.

 

The best antibiotics are found in nature, chemical antibiotics destroy not only your gut bugs, but your immune system as well. Humans are only diseased because of their disgusting denatured diets, the worst offender is diary products, they are the cause of close to 100% of disease and health problems and the medical facts support that reality. I had 3 operations on me left hand a couple of years ago and left it for 2 days to get it seen to, didn't think it was broken just a bloody mess. After 2 days of trying to cope with it and play guitar, went to a quack and discovered my little finger was crushed and almost off and one other finger had 2 breaks. Because I left it so long they were very worried about infection setting in and against my wishes pumped me full of antibiotics, which made me feel really crook. They were amazed I had very little swelling and no infection, but it took me months to get back to feeling well and my system working properly again.

 

 

[old man emu]

2 hours ago, Dax said:

 chemical antibiotics destroy not only your gut bugs, but your immune system as well

There's a great deal of truth in that statement. Most of our gut micro-population lives in our large intestine where the various types of bugs do all sort of amazing things for us. Your gut flora performs many important health functions. It manufactures vitamins, including vitamin K and some of the B vitamins. It also turns fibres into short-chain fats like butyrate, propionate, and acetate, which feed your gut wall and perform many metabolic functions. These fats also stimulate your immune system and strengthen your gut wall. This can help prevent unwanted substances from entering your body and provoking an immune response. Even that well-known traveller in faecal matter, E. coli is mostly good for us. It's just that there are a few black sheep in the family which give us the shlts.

 

Your gut flora is highly sensitive to your diet, and studies show that an unbalanced gut flora is linked to numerous diseases. Good quality, fresh food eaten in moderation will keep the gut flora happy. Like anything else, too much of a good thing is bad for the gut bugs. So, big doses of antibiotics will cause much collateral damage to the good guys. After a bout of exploding gut, you are not likely to be wanting to eat a great deal, and will have a fear of the foods that you think caused it. Add to this the annihilation of the good guys and you can see why it would take quite a while to get things back to normal. 

[willedoo]

I've been eating fairly healthy for nearly three years now and am a firm believer in the saying you are what you eat. I ate reasonably healthy before, but health issues led to a permanent change of diet. The only animal protein I eat is seafood; no cows, pigs, sheep or birds. Added to that, organic fruit and vegetables where I can with some home grown. Also cutting processed factory food to a bare minimum. And it goes without saying, minimum sugar. It sounds like a monk's existence to those that like their chemical and junk food, but is not as bad as it sounds once you take the plunge.

 

The thing is that those changes in diet change how you handle the food types that you've cut out. The gut enzymes change and before long those things that were bad for you lose their appeal. As an example, the memory of it lasts longer than the reality. If I walk past a BBQ where steaks are sizzling away, the memory of how nice a good steak tastes is still there. But if I ate red meat now, I would feel a bit crook. I proved that early in the piece when I hadn't long stopped red meat, and that's the change in gut enzymes that a meat free diet brings about. The end result is that I feel so much better that there's no desire to go back the other way. Another factor is that the better diet has caused weight loss to a good weight. That in turn reduced the blood pressure so now it's in the perfect range. And that drop in blood pressure has given things like anxiety the flick. It's all interconnected, maybe holistic is a word involved there somewhere.

 

I'm with Dax; the chemicals in food nowdays is BS. If you want to improve your health, don't eat what the corporations are trying to sell you.

[spacesailor]

I,ve been eating rubbish all my life! .

Every so often,  those higher minded people tell me that my food is GOOD !.

Potato,   bread, was bad now better. 

Eat chemicals for your health. As Natura plant foods are fattening ?.

I,m Fat !, so are most people locked away from their freedom. 

So do l keep sucking on Saccerine, or go back to Sugar. 

spacesailor

[onetrack]

The hidden additives in processed food are the biggest worry. I study every label on anything I buy today, looking for "nasties", but they still get through. "Antioxidants" are a classic. Propylene glycol is used as an "antioxidant" in many foods (particularly cooking oils) to prevent them from going rancid quickly.

We are led to believe that "antioxidants" are fabulous for us - but PG added to food, is a synthetic product obtained from the hydration of propylene oxide, which is derived from petroleum products.

Why would you add petroleum products to your food? There are many food additives that are simply manufactured chemicals, not found naturally.

 

Titanium dioxide is another classic. TD is the white powder used to give the brilliant colour to white paint. But TD is added to many commercial mayonnaise products, simply to give a whiter (and a supposedly, more attractive) colour to mayonnaise.

The manufacturers and the health experts all agree that TD is not a food, and it reportedly simply passes through your alimentary canal with no effect. But does it? As a nano-particle, TD is quite likely to be carcinogenic - but no-one has done any long term testing on whether TD in processed foods is carcinogenic.

 

I got caught with American cranberries - twice - recently. I bought some dried cranberries, then found there was only 65% cranberry content in them. The rest was added sugar! The sugar content of the cranberries was 72%!! (yep, 72 g in every 100 gms).

So then, I decided to go with a different brand of American cranberries - the ones advertising "50% less sugar!". I got home, and then found the contents in the hidden fine print - Cranberries (63%!), "Sweetener" (Saccharin, of course!), Soluble Corn fibre, Sugar, and Humectant (Glycerin). I detest Saccharin, it's toxic and carcinogenic - and I note that its name is constantly changed to avoid mentioning "Saccharin". It's called "sweetener" or "sucralose" to hide its true name.

 

Then we have the processed products such as bottled orange juice. This stuff is made from concentrate - imported mostly from Brazil. There's no mention of the amount or type of toxic preservatives added by the Brazilians to the concentrate - because the local labelling laws only cover what is added to the food processed in Australia! So the manufacturers of orange juice proudly claim "no additives or preservatives!" - but that only applies to their manufacturing process in Australia!

 

I can taste the toxic petroleum-based preservatives in bottled orange juice made from concentrate, and I refuse to drink it now. If I want some orange juice, I buy local oranges, and juice them in my slow juicer.

 

Edited October 26, 2021 by onetrack

[willedoo]

20 minutes ago, onetrack said:

Why would you add petroleum products to your food?

I traced one of the food additive emulsifiers back to a petroleum by-product. In all those years of working in the oil and gas industry, I didn't know I was eating the stuff.

[old man emu]

1 hour ago, onetrack said:

Then we have the processed products such as bottled orange juice.

I have some Berri Orange juice in the fridge. Australian content - zero. How's this for corporate BS http://www.berriaustraliangrown.com.au/our-story/

[Dax]

One problem is there's no laws covering truth in advertising, no any investigation or proper trialling of food additives and no idea of the effects of chemical additives. But it's diaries which are the elephant in the room, they are the worst thing you can put into your body, other than chemicals.

 

Cows milk is designed to promote the fast growth of a calf, not the slow growth of humans. Humans are the only animal on earth that takes lactates after weaning and humans are also the sickest animal on the planet. There are diary products in just about all processed foods, the propaganda tells you they are great and will protect you from lots of diseases, like osteoporosis, heart and circulatory disease. They also claim without diaries our diet is deficient and lacks certain vitamins, yet humans have lived without diaries for hundreds of thousands of years and it was only in the middle of the last century, that diaries were introduced to the majority of countries. Before that they had little disease except those that were brought in by invading christians along with their denatured foods. The countries with the biggest consumption of diaries are the countries that have the sickest people, get rid of diaries and your chances of getting cancer, or any other disease drop to almost zero and you live so much longer and healthier.

 

Sugar and sweeteners, are also health destroying, Haven't had any sweet stuff for many decades and get my sweet kicks directly from fruit. I freeze my extra fruit, then put different frozen fruits into a blender and that's an excellent delicacy, frozen banana blended with other fruits is an amazing taste, especially in the middle of summer on a hot day. 

 

When you really look at it, we are fed the most obnoxious health destroying chemical junk you can imagine and are told how good it is for us, the propaganda and lies against all the medical evidence is astounding. We are being conned by these deranged ideologues into killing ourselves and yet other majority do nothing.

 

Many years ago, had the opportunity to talk with a representative of a food additives corporation and after a few beers the truth came out. He called it the profit growth merry go round. The same companies that supply food additives, also supply pharmaceuticals. In his own words, they make these chemicals additives, test them on animals and then make more chemicals to cover the symptoms of the damage the additives cause. That way they create health problems and then supply the drugs to cover the symptoms until they are beyond repair and then the medical profession comes in and uses more powerful symptom covering drugs and surgical intervention, requiring more destructive drugs. So these companies can't lose under the present system of no form of trialling or proving these drugs and additives are safe, yet if you look them all up, they all come with lots of side effects and the ability to damage organs. There is no oversight of these processes or chemicals, it's the companies that provide the regulators with the evidence they are safe and there is no other investigation until something really bad goes wrong and gets into the media.

[Yenn]

Dax I am with you there and you missed the fact that eating diaries means you make spelling mistakes. Sorry. I couldn't resist that!

OME has mentioned what we should all know. All things in moderation. I eat red meat, dairy, sweet things, but in moderation, especially sugar, which has low appeal. I much prefer honey.

Bread seems to me to be one of the poor quality foods nowadays. Last time I saw packaged bread and read the contents I was not surprised that health experts are saying bread can cause obesity. It seems to have dozens of un necessary things in it, when it should really only have at most 4 ingredients and the stuff I make has only 3.

There is an industry growing about health foods and all the latest wonder foods that will cause you to lose weight, prevent any disease and promote absolutely wonderful health, without you having to do anything except eat and believe.

I am looking forward to a nice steak, maybe Roo steak potatoes, greens from the vegie patch and to follow mulberries and yoghurt. Some mey not think that healthy, but it works for me and I wouldn't have it every day, but what I really wouldn't have is a hamburger.

[old man emu]

18 minutes ago, Yenn said:

what I really wouldn't have is a hamburger.

What's wrong with the hamburger you make yourself from red meat you mince yourself, eggs from your free-range chooks, onions from your garden patch and bread crumbs from a loaf you made yourself?

 

It's possible when you have the space to grow vegies and keep chooks, and can go see the butcher cut the meat from a carcase, but for the majority of use, that's impossible.

[Dax]

39 minutes ago, Yenn said:

Dax I am with you there and you missed the fact that eating diaries means you make spelling mistakes. Sorry. I couldn't resist that!

But I don't eat dairy products, my mistakes are lack of education and slack editing and haven't eaten dairies for over 50 years. In my opinion, if you take any form of medication or have any illness, then your diet is wrong and according to all the real medical evidence, dairies are the problem and you find them in just about all processed foods and recipes today.

 

44 minutes ago, Yenn said:

There is an industry growing about health foods and all the latest wonder foods that will cause you to lose weight, prevent any disease and promote absolutely wonderful health, without you having to do anything except eat and believe.

No different to any other industry, it's all about profit growth and nothing else. In my opinion, the supposed natural health industry is just as bad as the standard health and food industries, all con jobs and worthless

[facthunter]

Nearly everyone has some degree of Lactose intolerance often worse as you age..  .  Grow your own veggies and you'll  be better off. Tomatoes are so good you just eat them as you pick them. Sea food is nearly OFF by the time you get it. Avoid all processed "Stuff" I won't call it food. Fizzy drinks are just sugar. Artificial sweeteners are even worse for you. TRY clean water,  Breathe properly also.   Nev 

[Marty_d]

Hmmm - I think it's a big call saying that dairy is the cause of many ills.

 

In a balanced diet there's nothing wrong with some dairy, in fact it assists with calcium needed for bone strength.  Something I'm concerned about as my mother has real problems with her bones being fragile, can no longer walk because her thigh bone in one leg has shifted away from the artificial hip and is almost non existent.

 

Even very healthy Mediterranean diets contain cheese, and there's some studies that have found that one serve of red wine a day won't hurt you at all.

 

There are many factors that impact health, including genetic predisposition to some illnesses, and what we eat is just one of them.  Sometimes it's just luck of the draw - a work mate's father died at 95, still healthy despite a very poor diet, smoking and excess drinking.  In other cases fit and healthy athletes who watch what they eat drop dead at 40.

 

As long as you get a good variety of veg, some protein, cereals, dairy and plenty of water, you generally won't go wrong (unless you have allergies to any of that) - even Macca's won't kill you if you have it once a year, but I don't know why you would, unless you're trying to get over a hangover.

[Dax]

8 minutes ago, Marty_d said:

In a balanced diet there's nothing wrong with some dairy, in fact it assists with calcium needed for bone strength.

That's an industry fallacy, the highest rates of osteoporosis are in countries that consume lots of dairy products. As is cancer, bad mental health, heart and coronary disease, obesity and the list is never ending

 

https://www.insidermonkey.com/blog/11-countries-with-the-highest-rates-of-osteoporosis-in-the-world-359037/?singlepage=1

 

https://themouthful.org/blog-healthy-bones-without-dairy-products

 

 

 

[spacesailor]

Reticulated water contains two very deadly poisons! .

Milk contains emulsifiers to keep the fatty cream in suspension 

And

Were do l get bio diesel from. ( Servo,s in Sydney would help ) .

spacesailor

[facthunter]

The calcium in milk is not always available.  I love cheese but it's not recommended for a few gall bladder conditions. Too much fat. (In the cheese). Nev

[willedoo]

Thread drift alert. At least it's about what the aboriginals eat. I remember a while back someone had a theory about the Burke and Wills thing. He said the aboriginals were giving them raw nardoo flour and he theorized that they ate it raw instead of cooking it. He said when raw it depletes vitamins in the body but not when cooked. And that's why they died, according to him. I don't know how the theory would stack up to scrutiny.

 

I don't think the aboriginals used it to make big loaves of bread, more like small johnny cakes cooked on the coals and hot ash. When we used to do our annual cultural heritage refresher induction, the anthropologist or archaeologist would often mention nardoo in relation to skeleton identification. The flour was full of grit from the grindstones and one way to tell aboriginal teeth from european teeth was the amount of wear.

 

I miss real bread. Gluten gives me bad sinus problems so I rarely eat it. Most gluten free bread is shite. Some brands are edible if you toast it but others you wouldn't feed to a dog.

[spacesailor]

YEN can we please get your recipe & cooking time, for us poor sods that can,t bake bread.

I tried three different bread makers !! YOU!D THINK L WOULD HAVE MADE ONE GOOd LOAF?  ( cap lock stuck ).

( just came back to normal ( cap lock not me )).

spacesailor

 

[old man emu]

Bread is a very simple product to make.

Plain flour - 2 cups

Warm water - 375 mls

1 x tea spoon sugar (in the water)

Yeast - 1 x 7gm sachet of dried yeast added to sugared water and allowed to activate.

 

The trick with making bread is to knead the dough vigorously for ten minutes before setting it aside to rise.

After it has risen, punch it down and give it a minute's kneading before putting into a tin (or not if you like peasant bread) and letting it rise again.

Then cook it at 260C for 15 minutes, then drop the temperature to 230 for another 15 minutes.

[Marty_d]

8 hours ago, Dax said:

That's an industry fallacy, the highest rates of osteoporosis are in countries that consume lots of dairy products. As is cancer, bad mental health, heart and coronary disease, obesity and the list is never ending

 

https://www.insidermonkey.com/blog/11-countries-with-the-highest-rates-of-osteoporosis-in-the-world-359037/?singlepage=1

 

https://themouthful.org/blog-healthy-bones-without-dairy-products

 

 

 

 

I'm not a nutritionist so I can't argue the point either way - but on a quick scan there seem to be many academic articles arguing various viewpoints, so I'd say the matter is not fully settled.

In any case I'm not giving up milk, yoghurt and cheese any time soon!

[old man emu]

The most refreshing drink on a hot day is a glass of icy cold water with about 13% mix of simple fats, protein and sugars. That's a drink to really moove you.

[onetrack]

I'm a red meat lover, have been for over 70 years, and I consider myself reasonably fit and I'm not overweight. I can still look straight down and see my "ol' fella" when I strip off. Not too many blokes over 50 today can do that.

I don't eat a lot of dairy products, I was allergic to cows milk as a child, so I got fed orange juice instead. I still love orange juice.

I take a little milk in my tea, I rarely drink coffee, I find the chemicals in coffee send me "ratty". I get agitated and my heartbeat increases with more than one cup of coffee, so I generally stick to tea.

 

I hardly eat any sweets or chocolate or cakes, but I like 2 white sugars in my tea. So I reckon my sugar intake is not excessive. The buns you get in fast food places are full of sugar, as are a lot of the foods they sell.

I only have a cup of tea for breakfast with a slice of sourdough toast, buttered with real butter. I steer well clear of margarine, the stuff is just toxic chemicals.

I haven't eaten breakfast cereal for donkeys years, it's all highly processed, and most of them contain about 30%-40% sugar. My parents used to dish up porridge when I was a child, but I stopped eating porridge in my teens.

 

But the worst item is heavy animal fats. I eat very little animal fat, I trim the fat off any meat I eat. However, the processed food manufacturers, and the Americans in particular, specialise in producing "ground meat" (hamburger mince) that contains a huge percentage of heavy, tallow-type fats. They have to fine grind this meat, to hide the fat content. These fats are difficult to process by the human body, so they end up simply as lumps of fat on the body.

I firmly believe that if a fat doesn't liquefy in water that is around 40°C (near body temperature), then the body is going to have a hard time processing that heavy fat.

 

There's a product called "lean trimmings" in the American meat supply industry. These are simply the globs of fat trimmed off prime beef cuts, with a little meat attached. The fat is sweet, and the product is ground into hamburger mince, so that means the hamburger mince is at least about 30% fat. The official fat limit in American hamburger mince is supposed to be 30%, but I'll wager the manufacturers have found a way to describe fat as meat. 

The market for "lean trimmings" is huge, and there's even a "lean trimmings" futures market.

Sausages are another dreadful product that contains over 30% heavy fats - as well as a pile of chemical additives. I steer well clear of sausages, they're another toxic highly processed product with dubious content.

 

The Americans love pork, to the extent that pork makes up the majority of their meat consumption. But pork is exceptionally fatty, and pork fat is difficult to digest.

That's why you see a lot of young Americans in good shape and mostly slim - but by the time they hit 50, they are grossly obese. It's their huge fatty pork diet, doing that for them.

 

Then there's that wonderful "food" called "hydrogenated fats". This is based on cheap and nasty seed oils that can't be used in a lot of food products. So to make these cheap and nasty oils useable, they heat it and bubble hydrogen gas through it!

This hardens the oils into something resembling beef fats, so it can be used in a wide range of foods, and even cosmetic products. This stuff is carcinogenic, and is actually banned in a number of countries today.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fat_hydrogenation

 

 

Edited October 27, 2021 by onetrack

[Dax]

13 hours ago, spacesailor said:

Were do l get bio diesel from. ( Servo,s in Sydney would help ) .

You make it yourself, not hard but straight veggie oil is best,cheapest and costs me just over 35clt to make BD.