What is actually wrong with the British Diet - Ultra Processed Foods

 

I have been suffering with diverticulitis, which means; when you need to go, I need to GO. A MC Donald's breakfast sausage and egg bun, whilst lovely is for me like juggling a hand grenade, when it goes off and it will. Well, give it five minutes before going in there.

But have I got diverticulitis? If I avoid bread (mostly) I'm better. Does that mean I am becoming gluten intolerant... I'm unsure, pasta is fine, pasty is fine, beer is fine. Good bread eaten in small quantities is also fine. Or am I suffering from something else? Are my guts a result of donkeys years of eating food laced with food that isn't food?

So over the last year or so I have read many books on diet, I/we eat a Mediterranean diet mostly, our nutrition is good - but not so if it goes right through. Thought about Keto but those that do Keto can't keep it up or look like sticks. Our food is always cooked from fresh, err well mostly.

So I gave up (mostly) bread and have lost quite a bit of weight, do I feel better? Mostly no. I'm 80 Kilo's, male aged 61 and nearly six foot, I'm only a kilo from my perfect body mass index. I'm thinner than I have been in years.

'Carbs ' they have you is an acronym of - 'Carbohydrates Are Really Bad Sugars'.  And I've reduced them, but they aren't bad for you I think if cooked from scratch. It's when someone else has made them into a meal that the problem occurs.

So if I feel this shit, and I'm cooking and eating really well, makes me think - what the actual Fuck is the rest of the population feeling. Everyone, okay not everyone, but mostly everyone walking down the shopping isles at Morribobs looks fat and pasty, call it what you want: obese, overweight. Nup, Fat.

So why is everyone fat?

Okay I lie in front of the Doctor asking about how much I drink.

If you were asked how many calories you have had today, you really wouldn't know, if you gave a list of what you ate but you'd probably forget the beers, the crisps and chocolate bar, or even the three biscuits at eleven. it's the same as your alcohol units. Women must lie like cheap watches at fat club.

A person mowing lawns all day doesn't need that much more calories than a person sat at a desk. What they need is more recovery time.

Eat a choc bar that may have two hundred calories and you'd need to walk miles to loose that. Exercise won't make you thin but it will help. 'Cos you're already on it, be fit, eat well, look after yourself, know where you wanna be.

Okay so I ask you a takeaway pizza at £10 or a pizza for £2 from Spar, which one is healthier?

Takeaway? 
Shop bought?

Takeaway. It's not processed. They probably made the dough and used fresh everything else.

The problem with takeaways is that they dominate convenience food. They are a food swamp, everywhere on every town's streets since the internet changed our high streets are fast food shops, nail bars, bookies and charity shops. It's just easier to open an app and order much more food than you actually need. 

And

Most ready meals are highly sweetened and salted so you eat much more than you need.

We also have food deserts, you have to go further, especially in deprived areas to buy fresh ingredients. Restricting the choices of the poor, who don't have the time or the money.

So the reasoning goes is that the rich, that's you reader, buy our shopping at out of town supermarkets. And eat better. (Yes the rich are generally thinner).

This is true, it's about what you can afford. And your cooking ability.

But

When my father was frail I'd go to M&S and buy microwave ready stuff for him to heat up and was amazed by the hordes of fat rich women buying prepped mashed spuds and trimmed broccoli. Lazy? Or just ignorant, I wondered. Lazy fat cows I concluded. But these innocent foods mentioned are still processed to sit on a shelf till picked up.

Rich fat women go to M&S, Poor fat people go to Just Eat...

I look at other peoples trolleys in Tesco's and think that's all processed I wouldn't eat any of it, some sort of chicken in a sauce, ready meals (yes I eat them occasionally) Aunt Betties toe nails, breakfast cereals, ice cream, mayonnaise, marge, sauces, white bread, pizza. In fact everything.

I would love to teach basic cooking to those that would listen, but I fear those that won't listen are destined to a life overweight.

The real problem is that the population eats food that is so over processed to keep it longer, to make it last longer so it can be shipped, so that it can be made cheaply by substituting this chemical for that ingredient so it still tastes great and makes you want more. 

So that it can be be fed to the family quickly and cheaply. 

This is why we are fat, it's not about going running, It's about cereal manufacturers loading your coco pops with salt so you eat more, it's about the sugars in fizzy drinks, it's about the gums in your mayonnaise, the over refined wheat in your loaf. It's about ambient foods, it's about shelf life and pennies.

I ask you. 'How may bags of plain white flour have you bought this year?'
My answer is two, but I make my own pastry. My Gran would have got though much more.
So if your answer is one or less you are eating too much processed food.

Oh and fats are fine, least butter and lard is. You'd like my pastry I roll it out with my hands and it crumbles in your mouth. Shop bought pastry is processed. Bad fats bulk out crap food.

It's like this, look at the packet, if it has more than one more ingredient on the packet that you don't have in your kitchen then leave it on the shelf.

The thing is tho that even simple things like mayo are adulterated. It's time that we take Hellman's or Heinz at NOT face value. Yes it's fine, yes it's safe, yes it tastes good. But it's processed with ingredients NOT found in recipes for mayo. It's time for us who care about what we consume to consider what will happen to our bodies if we continue to eat food that isn't food. And more worrying about what happens about long time exposure to this.