In the Spaghetti Westerns of the 1970’s, it was easy to tell the good guys from the baddies by the colour of their hats. Nowadays, despite the wealth of information on diet available to us in the media, it’s getting harder to separate the myths from the food facts, and decide what to eat to stay happy and healthy.
Clearly moderation in all things is the key to healthy eating, and many other old wives tales do appear to ring true. Below are a few pointers on what not to eat, and how not to eat it.
SALT :
Eating too much salt can raise blood pressure, increasing your risk of heart disease and stroke. Shaking salt on food without even tasting first, or adding a pinch to cooking, is only the salt you add yourself. But you also need to be careful about the salt you can’t see. So,if you’re one of the 26 million Britons the Food Standards Agency has calculated who eat too much salt, you need to take a look at what you’re buying, and turn detective to work out how much salt you really eat in your daily diet.
A heaped teaspoon of salt will contain around 5-6 grams of salt, which is the total amount recommended per day.
About three-quarters (75%) of the salt we eat is already in the food we buy, especially processed foods such as ready meals, sauces, baked beans and pizza. Even people who make all their own meals from scratch will usually buy foods such as bread and cheese, which contain added salt.
The recommended daily dose for an adult is 6 grams, the amount contained in an average packaged sandwich, so policing your salt intake can be tricky. A recent article in the Daily Mail. highlighted research suggesting that salt may act as a “natural antidepressant”. While not getting enough salt could trigger ‘psychological depressions’”, research found that rats deprived of salt “began to behave erratically and shun foods and activities they normally enjoyed”.
FAT :
Fat contains a lot of calories and most of us in the UK eat too much of it in our daily lives. It can make us put on weight and clog up our arteries.
But fat also helps the body absorb certain nutrients and is a good source of energy, so some of them we actually need for our bodies to function properly. However, the truth is never simple, and knowledge is key to sorting the good fats from the bad ones.
‘Bad’ or saturated fat is found in processed meat products such as sausages, bacon, pies, butter, lard, biscuits, cakes and pastries. Too much saturated fat can raise our cholesterol, and so raise the risk of heart disease and stroke. It also is implicated in the development of cancers, high blood pressure and diabetes.
‘Good’ or unsaturated fat is found in avocados, nuts and seeds, oily fish such as salmon, fresh tuna and mackerel, and sunflower and olive oils. These fats can reduce cholesterol levels, and include Omega 3 (fatty acids).
Omega 3 is often referred to as the ‘healthy heart’ fat, and is primarily found in oily fish such as salmon, fresh tuna, mackerel, herring, sardines and pilchards. The recommended intake is two portions of fish a week, one of them oily, and it may lower the risk of kidney disease in people with diabetes too, according to a study published by the National Kidney Federation.
In a recent 26-week study, 302 healthy individuals aged 65 or older (mean age, 70; 55% male) received random high and low-dose supplements of Omega 3. All groups showed improvements on several neuropsychological tests and significantly improved attention, compared with placebo recipients.
Adding fish to the dinner menu twice a week may lower the risk of kidney disease in people with diabetes, according to a study published in the November issue of American Journal of Kidney Diseases, the official journal of the American Kidney Association.
It’s clear that most of us would benefit from replacing some of the saturated fat we eat with these good ones, and the NHS issues guidelines for recommended fat levels in our diet.
Total fat
High: more than 20g of fat per 100g. Low: less than 3g of fat per 100g.
Saturated fat
High: more than 5g saturates per 100g. Low: less than 1.5g saturates per 100g.
Fat intake and weight gain can be a tricky subject to understand. Many people think that fat intake of any sort is bad and so heavily restrict the fat in their food. However, as alluded to above, some fat is essential, not least because it allows for absorption and storage of certain minerals and vitamins and partly because the components of the fat are essential to bodily functions.
Cholesterol is often confused with fat. People may think that a high blood cholesterol test result will be caused by eating cholesterol rich foods. In fact, the amount of cholesterol in individual items is largely irrelevant. For example, eggs and avocado’s are very nutritious foods which are stuffed with cholesterol. They are good to eat. The foods that lead to high cholesterol are generally high in fat and usually saturated or “bad ” fat.
Our bodies will manufacture cholesterol from the raw materials we provide it with. So the more raw saturated fat we eat, the more cholesterol we’ll produce. Now, different people will vary and some have a genetic pre-disposition to produce high cholesterol levels with minimal amounts of fat. These people are unusual, so here we are talking about the average person.
One further thing that will dramatically alter the amount of cholesterol in our blood is the amount of alcohol we drink. Daily consumption of even modest amounts of alcohol will alter the way our liver’s handle the fat we eat and increase our measured cholesterol level. Stopping or severely curtailing our alcohol intake will slash our cholesterol and also our total weight. Alcohol can be absolutely delicious and a nice treat. But, the nuts and bolts are rather less elegant and in fact most alcohol is simply liver blocking, idle and generally useless calories.
CHOCOLATE :
Despite its’ bad press and mildly addictive properties, small amounts of chocolate have been shown to be beneficial. Packed with polyphenols which lower blood pressure and increase endothelial nitric oxide, a recent trial of German dark chocolate demonstrated.
What’s bad for you is the highly-processed way in which the majority of chocolate is manufactured, mixed with sugar and milk fats. Sticking to small amounts of high cocoa content chocolate was credited in a small study of elderly Dutchmen with making them live longer.
COFFEE :
Coffee drinking has been linked to positive as well as negative health effects, but finally there’s good news for those of us addicted to our daily fix of caffeine. In a long-term study, coffee drinkers had lower mortality rates than did non-drinkers; though this difference was significant among women but not among men.
Investigators analyzed data from the Health Professionals Follow-up Study (men; 18 years of follow-up) and the Nurses’ Health Study (women; 24 years of follow-up) to determine whether coffee intake was associated with rates of death from cardiovascular disease (CVD), cancer, and all causes.
Coffee consumption was assessed in 86,000 women and 42,000 men without histories of CVD or cancer. After adjustment for risk factors, relative risk of death was 7% lower in women who consumed 5-7 cups of coffee weekly, 18% lower in those who drank 2-3 cups daily, 26% lower in those who drank 4 to 5 cups daily, and 17% lower in those who drank 6 cups or more daily compared with risk in non–coffee drinkers.
So enjoy your daily latte, and don’t feel guilty – it may actually be doing you good, but make sure its a skinny with no cream!
FRUIT FACTS :
It seems that our Mothers were right all along, and fruit is good for us, but new research suggests that it may be even better for us than even our mums realised.
A Spanish scientist working at the Institute of Food Research in Norwich has found that the ‘good’ polyphenol content of fruits has been underestimated up to now. Polyphenols are major constituents of the human diet with important health properties.
New techniques treating polyphenols with acid lead to levels up to five times higher than previously thought, and created metabolites that may be associated with antioxidant activity. It means that those smug sayings about an apple day keeping the doctor away, are more accurate than anyone thought, and the five-a-day mantra is one we should all stick to.
SPEED EATING :
Forget parental advice to eat quickly while food is hot – it’s emerging that eating too quickly is bad for your weight. New research undertaken at Osaka University in Japan suggests that gobbling down food may play a key role in helping to pile on the pounds for overweight people. Eating quickly has previously been linked to a higher body mass index, as reported on the website of the British Medical Journal. Also, there is some evidence that eating food which is too hot and drinking very hot drinks quickly may be contributing to the spike in diagnoses of oesophogeal cancers.
Over 3,000 Japanese men and women aged 30 to 69 years recorded their body mass index, their speed of eating, and whether they eat until full. Just under half of men and just over a third of women reported eating quickly. Around half said that they ate until full. For both sexes, eating until full and eating quickly were positively associated with weight, body mass index and total energy intake.
Eating slowly gives your body the chance to register that the stomach is full, and is widely promoted as an aid to dieting and weight-loss. So relax and savour every mouthful if you don’t want to overeat and gain weight.
It seems that many old adages do contain some dietary truths – small amounts of what you fancy can be good for you, and not everything that gets a bad press deserves it. But whilst new research is always emerging to show us the way to eat healthily and prolong our lives, there’s no escaping the unpalatable fact, that our parents were probably right all along.
Dr Sean Cummings is a doctor with a special interest in HIV and STD testing, treatment and prevention. He owns and runs a large, busy private Clinic, Freedomhealth, in Central London. Freedomhealth is based at 60 Harley Street London W1G 7HA and is open Mon to Sat. Tel 02076371600 or visit www.freedomhealth.co.uk
