Should have occurred to me sooner. I know a bit about food. I write about it. I have always paid attention to eating healthily. Weirdly I have not paid enough attention to gut health. We are what we eat. Digestion is what makes that happen.
Feature by Jean Hill
Life evolves: people evolve and adapt to different lifestyles. It did occur to me that there was a clear distinction made between chefs and busy home cooks in foodie programmes. There might be implications and consequences around those assumptions.
Allegedly busy men and women, those with careers other than being chefs, simply do not have the spare time to cook food from scratch. To his credit Jamie Oliver has challenged that in his dynamic style, to good effect.
What I love about Jamie Oliver is his celebration of good food, as an intrinsic part of living life to the max. ‘That’s what it’s all about’, he will utter (grinning ear to ear) moments before scoffing a beautiful home-made meal alongside his family and friends.
Nutrition and a healthy lifestyle should be simple: eat a diverse range of foods, relax, sleep, exercise some and job done. ‘How long is a piece of string’ comes to mind when analysing the process. First define food!
Even if you work from home, the work day can stretch into ‘urgent’ e-mails in the evening that seem to require a response, and are tough to ignore. If you have young children, they have many out of school activities and it feels so important to commit to their extra-curricular experiences.
Ready meals, fast food deliveries and ultra-processed food offer busy people a short-cut to getting tasty food without the hassle of preparing it all from scratch. Those industrious people who manufacture food on an industrial scale seem to have done the heavy lifting for you.
The Downside
Ultra processed food (by definition) contains a list of ingredients that you would not find in a domestic kitchen. Hidden in plain sight, amongst those ingredients, you will very likely find different definitions of sugar additives: ethyl malt, cane crystals, diastatic malt, and artificial sweeteners. Sugar would taste as sweet by any other name. You might notice hydrogenated oils (trans fats), added salt and emulsifiers. All the better to digest you might think.
The package of ingredients is dense in calories and light on nutrition. You can end up eating more (sub-consciously looking for more nutrition). Crisps and biscuits are a bit moreish. Unhelpfully more is less than the total nutrition you need with ultra processed food. This all adds up to risk of weight increase and very possibly less fibre, protein, minerals and vitamins than is ideal (less than what is needed for good health). Comprehensive research also seems to suggest that the chemical mix of additives and preservatives are not healthy for the gut.
Food delivered to your door might seem to offer the perfect solution, and on occasion it will be. It could be healthy options or it could be industrial fast food with lots of additives. The convenience is the thing: the possible added salt, sugar and preservatives are invisible and not on your radar. A frozen pizza is a quick meal to pop in the oven, that most children love. You probably should not eat pre-packaged pizza every day though. Check the labelling: you are what you eat.
Aspartame in diet drinks (counter-intuitively) may not help reduce weight. Maybe do not throw away all the snacks and treats in a sugar-haze induced panic. You cannot avoid all ultra-processed foods: they are part of modern life. Bread is partially processed unless you buy it from a bakery that prepares it all from scratch. White bread (that you and the local baker have not made), being bleached and more processed will be less healthy than wholegrain. ‘You pays your money and you takes your chance’.
The choice has to be yours. You might choose to swerve processed meats, that include sausage and bacon or simply make them an occasional treat. When we eat them, nitrates and nitrites can become N-nitroso chemicals that could damage the cells that line the bowel. As an occasional meal sausage and bacon are unlikely to do serious damage.
The whole ‘how long is a piece of string’ thinking is based on a holistic approach to food. That starts with soil and crops, including crops that feed animals. Pesticides in crops do not just disappear. Their impact makes its way to the table and does not necessarily wash away. Animals intensively reared in confined spaces at speeded up growth rates and injected with antibiotics to counter disease are not going to be as good for you as an animal reared outside, organically. Morally, too, it is questionable to cause undue stress and suffering to any animal including those reared for food.
I am on board with a more plant-based diet and no meat Mondays work for me. I bought two tubs of hummus (chick-peas) that looked delicious. I was idly checking through an article on nutrition and there it was…No, I thought, it cannot be. Glyphosate is one of the most commonly used pesticides in America. It is a herbicide known by the brand name Roundup, and is often used in the harvesting of beans and grains. Specifically in legumes, like chickpeas, it is used right before harvest to actually kill the plants so they dry quickly. Why wouldn’t you. Glyphosate can still be detected in some hummus that finds its way to the supermarket, which is not ideal.
It also turns out that new additives in foods are not always tested in America. Manufacturers can opt out of the testing process if they so choose. The UK was on the cusp of a trade deal with America…and may be again in the future. Ironically chick-peas are said to be generally pest free. Chick-peas are grown in Mediterranean countries, India, Canada and America. No easy way of knowing where the hummus you buy comes from. I think Marks & Spencer do due diligence and source their products as responsibly as is possible, but always some foods will be healthier than others. There is no perfect food system.
The positives are still there. Jamie Oliver demonstrates, with conviction, that meals can be cooked from scratch with wholesome ingredients (and delicious results) in thirty minutes. Organic foods are going to be better for you because of better soil quality and resulting crops will be healthier, more resilient and taste better. There will be no damaging pesticides lingering on either.
Animals reared under organic methods will live longer, happier, healthier lives before they are consigned to the stock pot. There is a cost to buying organic produce. Chicken, particularly, costs a good deal more. This is because if organically reared, a chicken lives considerably longer, is better fed and can roam, so more land is needed. There is accelerated (hormone induced), rapid growth within confined spaces, with antibiotics to minimise disease, involved in factory farming (so chickens are born and then processed within weeks). If we cannot avoid highly processed food altogether and that would be a real challenge, at least we can opt for a healthy balance. Relish the idea of cooking from scratch: it is both creative and relaxing, honestly it is.
Eat well, celebrate with family and friends, sharing good food. Try and eat as early in the evening as is practical to give you time to digest your food before bedtime. Make time to relax. Walk in nature, exercise and sleep well.
Check on your blood pressure and cholesterol, though cholesterol can be challenging since it plays good cop and bad cop and it is sometimes tricky to tell the difference. The risks with an ultra-processed diet (as a way of life) are: becoming overweight, possibly developing a heart condition or having a mini-stroke, or developing type two diabetes or gastrointestinal diseases and the likely consequences of a diet likely lacking in important nutrients. Eat fresh vegetables, fruit and oily fish. Lean meat, low fat dairy produce, fish, peanut butter, lentils and pasta all contain protein. Spinach, red meat, nuts and dried fruit are good for iron intake and leafy vegetables and nuts contain magnesium and calcium. Calcium is found in dairy produce. We do not always get enough vitamin D in colder climates. Potatoes are a great starchy food, as is wholewheat pasta (high in fibre and vitamins). Drink plenty of water. Cultivate your culinary skills. Everything you bring to the table that you have created is an awesome accomplishment. Bon appetit.
https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/eat-well/how-to-eat-a-balanced-diet/eating-a-balanced-diet
https://www.health.harvard.edu/topics/nutrition#nutrition1
https://www.healthline.com/health/gut-health
https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/wellness-and-prevention/food-and-nutrition
