At His & Hers we love to do restaurant reviews. The high standard of diverse cuisines is so impressive because it is challenging to excel in this industry. Every restaurant we visited last year more than succeeded and that idea of banishing the January blues with good food and great company is compelling.
Feature by Jean Hill
I began to delve into nutrition to have a better understanding of complex and intricate practices used in the preparation of food whilst balancing and hopefully maintaining nutritional benefit. Also because I caught sight of a commercial with a guy’s voice-over explaining that what a chef could accomplish was not possible, for the busy housewife or ordinary guy! The rest of us could fall back on convenience foods, fast foods and pre-packaged food delivered to the door. Just devour.
It struck me as a bit of a patronising attitude and artificial distinction, between the professional and the home cook. An ‘amateur’ cook at home can deliver on wholesome, delicious and nutritious food. And further down the production line, it led me to question the attributes of the ultra-processed industrial food industry.
Language is crucial to understanding. Convenience suggests that it is an easy alternative and all about saving time, with no down-side. The food is hygienically packaged and there are food safety standards. What could possibly go wrong. The inference is that it is all for the consumer’s benefit. It is a win, win: a whole food industry has strived to give busy people what they needed and surely wanted, to improve the quality of their lives. And to be fair to the food industry that was part of the motivation.
Then universities like Harvard and others started doing large scale research, over years, to evaluate people’s health, very much concerned with their eating habits and lifestyle. Suddenly research began to emerge about the importance of the health of the human gut. And that changed everything.
It was a perfect storm. Push comes to shove, back on the production line, and convenience food turned out to have possible negative impacts that were not fully declared on the packaging labelling.
To be fair, it is highly unlikely that the industrial food industry fully appreciated the impact of their additives, stabilisers, flavour enhancers, pesticides and added sugar and salt. Ultra-processed food needed to come out the other end looking like whole food, whatever the journey. It needed a boost of flavour to compensate for what had been lost in the chemical mixology. It needed to be stabalised: it needed to be profitable and it needed a long shelf life. It needed to employ the intensive farming industry to maximise profit. A great deal of research and tinkering were employed. It is a finely tuned balancing act. Crucially nutritious value can be lost in the final product. Turned out ultra-processed food was ‘cheaper’ for consumers and pleasantly profitable for the industry.
I followed a twisting trail to discover what is actually going on with our food. Back to basics. The industrial food industry needed the intensive farming industry to maximise profit. Factory farming can and does involve caged birds, pigs constrained in ridiculously small spaces. Animals and fowl raised in such conditions often need antibiotics to prevent disease. Fields of crops were sprayed with pesticides (that stubbornly do not fade away). The soil gets degraded and then chemical feeds are added to compensate. The crop can be degraded by the conditions. The Soil Association has done research that indicates that organically grown crops that need to naturally repel pests, grow stronger with better flavour because the soil is richer. I read that some crops, in USA, such as chick-peas are sprayed with Roundup just prior to harvesting, to kill off the plant that makes it easier to harvest the crop (traces of Roundup can remain on the crop). A free-range organically reared chick can live at least three times longer and grow naturally before entering the food chain, than one that is reared in a cage (where bones can be damaged due to movement constraints).
The gut biome has some difficulty absorbing enough nutrients from ultra-processed foods. People tend to eat more because they are not getting all the nutrition they need (and there is an argument that this can become addictive). The chemical mix of additives, stabilisers and pesticide residue cause the gut some difficulty too. Research indicates that these issues, over time, can cause obesity, heart, kidney and liver disease and depression. Adverse outcomes would tend to happen when people choose to eat ultra-processed food regularly and often whilst tending to limit fresh vegetables, fruit and free range/and or organic produce in their diet.
We cannot avoid processed foods: bread and cheese are processed and not normally damaging (diabetics may avoid some cheeses). There is a distinction between processed (fermenting is a process) and not harmful and ultra-processed food, with additives you would not find in your home kitchen. The art would be to choose whole foods and natural ingredients whenever you can. It is estimated that children in the UK have a diet that clocks up 63% ultra-processed food. That changes everything. Children are the future and their health could be at risk. Industrial processes change the nature of food.
Cooking is creative. It connects with nature. Celebrity chefs and professional cooks are whipping up nutritional meals within 20 or 30 minutes. It helps if you can grow, say herbs, but they can be cultivated on windowsills. Nigel Slater is collaborating with a farmer colleague and is producing natural, nutritional meals that are not necessarily more expensive, or not much more expensive than ultra-processed food, when cooked in batches. Organic is definitely the preferred choice but can be expensive. Sometimes not so much. Do what you can. Organic bananas are not madly expensive and are a great snack for children.
The Soil Association has stated that the damage caused by intensive monocropping (industrial scale) farming is well-documented. Wild habitats are destroyed, forests are felled, and animal species are put at risk. Forest clearing often uses the ‘slash and burn’ method to quickly clear areas for intensive agriculture, leading to massive releases of carbon into the atmosphere. In the UK, intensive agriculture for commodity crops has…degraded soil and displaced more diverse methods of farming.
The prevalence of ultra-processed foods in diets has also contributed to a loss of food diversity. 12 plants and 5 animals now constitute 75% of our diet globally. This has huge ramifications for food system resilience. Far from the ‘choice’ consumers believe they are offered from a vast selection of UPFs on the supermarket shelves…These foods represent the same (alleged) nutritionally bereft ingredients in different packaging.
At the product level, manufacturing ingredients for UPFs requires higher energy inputs and the use of petrochemicals, such as hexane. In addition to this, food manufacturing, packaging and production at farm level are responsible for 19 per cent of food chain greenhouse gas emissions in the UK.
Our food system needs reorientating, moving away from industrial commodity crops and fossil fuel inputs, and towards…organic, and a more diverse range of fresh and minimally processed foods.’
https://www.soilassociation.org/causes-campaigchns/ultra-processed-food
Conclusion: a walk in the woods has natural benefits. Trees can help reduce blood pressure and being in that environment can help with depression. And it can make you feel good to be alive. Healthy diet and walks in nature are the way forward!
Cooking with fresh ingredients and being creative with food are good for the soul. Children who help prepare food are likely to be more willing to try new foods they have helped to bring to the table.
Research also suggests that for the sake of the planet and for our own well-being it would be beneficial to eat less meat and more plant based foods. Meat still provides crucial protein really effectively, so this is a balancing act: plants also provide essential nutrients.
In the next His & Hers nutrition article, we will explore food groups, essential nutrients, vitamins and minerals and supplements that promote a healthy lifestyle. Spain is believed to be the healthiest nation in 2024. This is due, it is claimed, to a great healthcare system, great preventative medicine and the famous Mediterranean diet. Worth taking a look at that beneficial lifestyle
Bon appétit.
https://www.nhsinform.scot/healthy-living/food-and-nutrition/eating-well/eatwell-guide-how-to-eat-a-healthy-balanced-diet/https://gutsweb.org/about-guts/
From the archives: A few fascinating facts to digest about nutrition and the food industry.