Post Lunch Fatigue

Just as night follows day I struggle to stay awake after eating lunch. I usually sit for a bit & maybe play mahjong or solitaire on my tablet, or read a book. Even if I'm doing something on my computer, my eyelids drag themselves down & I do start to drift off.

My calvanistic upbringing decrees that my days should be productive, so sleeping isn't an option. I have to get up & do something. Things need to be crossed off my "to do" list.

However, I've been talking to someone who told me about "post lunch fatigue" - post any meal actually. But it is more of a thing at lunchtime for me. The scientific name is postprandial somnolence. Apparently it's caused by high-carbohydrate meals that cause a rapid blood sugar and insulin spike, or by high-fat meals that are harder to digest and divert blood flow from the brain. Blood flow to the digestive tract is increased.

We know so much more now about how our body works & how complex a system it is. High-carb meals lead to a surge in insulin, which can cause a subsequent drop in blood sugar, resulting in a feeling of energy loss. Eating triggers the release of serotonin, a hormone that promotes sleep. More blood being directed to the digestive system to process food, can lead to reduced blood flow to the brain, so we are drowsy.

Apparently the solution is;-

• Eating smaller, lighter, balanced meals
• Being hydrated 
• Light exercise to re-energise the body & increase concentration
• Mindful eating

Who knew?

I thought it was simply an ageing thing & I fight it. I don't want to waste the time I have left alive by sleeping, except at night time. On the other hand my nights are very disturbed & I wake a lot & don't get prolonged restful sleep. 

So I'm now thinking I should look at time differently. Just follow my circadian rhythm. I should listen to my master clock in the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN) of the brain. 

 

I don't think my body likes the current routines my brain has created.  

 

Food Security

I was shopping in a big supermarket yesterday. The mange tout & sugar snap peas came from Peru. The green beans came from Kenya. Why aren't we growing these basic vegetables in the UK? It is the season when they can easily be grown here. My husband grew green beans every year. They are prolific. 

Beans from Kenya come by air freight. Kenya is 4,475 air miles away. Kenya sends out about 350 tonnes of vegetables and cut flowers each night ready to be sold next day in UK supermarkets. Leguminous vegetables (peas, beans, mange tout) constitute the largest proportion of Kenyan imports to the UK. Kenya is on the East coast of Africa.

Peru is on the West coast of South America. Air transit time from Peru to an airport in the UK is approximately 3 days. It is 4,032 air miles away. Transit time by sea from Peru to port in the UK is approximately 28 days. Peru is now the world leader in blueberry exports, growing from 223 metric tonnes in 2021-22 to more than 286MT in 2022-23. It is the UK's largest source of blueberries.

I fail to see the logic of transporting basic foodstuffs half way round the world by ship, never mind by air. The cost, financially & in terms of air pollution, must be huge. Then there is the ethical & human cost. The key to this is money. Agricultural workers in countries like South America & Sub Saharan Africa get minimum wages. The minimum wage in the UK is much higher. We get cheap food because the people who harvest it are not paid as much as we would have to pay workers here.

We routinely buy fruit & veg out of season. I would say we shop quite mindlessly. We just select what we fancy or what we need for a recipe. Much of it is frozen & that impacts on the quality. I'm tired of complaining to supermarkets because apples rot when left at room temperature after being frozen. I spent much of my late teens & twenties in rural Herefordshire, where there were orchards everywhere, log ago grubbed up because there weren't enough people to pick them. I've now reached the point where I'm looking at the origins of all the fruit & veg I buy because so much travels huge distances in refrigerated containers. 

We are an island. We need to be as self sufficient in food as possible. We should have learned that after 2 world wars. Hopefully there won't be a third, but that really isn't the point. In a world disrupted by the climate emergency food production is being adversely affected worldwide. Wars elsewhere impact on food production. Acute hunger remains persistently high in 59 countries with 1 in 5 people assessed in need of critical urgent action.

It isn't just fruit & veg. There is a dark side to the flower trade. There is widespread exploitation of workers. In numerous flower-producing regions, the rights of laborers are trampled underfoot. Workers, predominantly women, are subjected to grueling hours, meagre wages, and rough working conditions. The danger of pesticide exposure is a risk, with many bearing the brunt of health issues due to insufficient protective measures.Then there is the environmental toll taken by the flower trade. From water-intensive farming to the rampant use of fertilizers and pesticides, the industry has carved deep scars into our environment. Even the process of shuttling these blossoms across continents leaves a carbon footprint that feeds into our mounting climate crisis.

Like so many areas of so called civilised life our choices & decisions are coming back to bite us. We really didn't think enough about the long term impact & results of so many consumer choices we made over the years. We became mindless consumers. We didn't think things through or even care what our choices were doing to our world or to people in other countries.

Well we do know now. The evidence is easily accessible & overwhelming. We need to stop, think, & make better choices for everyones sake. 

 

Manna from Heaven - How to feed the World?

According to the Bible God made the world & everything in it in 7 days. Presumably when he did that there was balance & the complex interrelated systems & biosphere worked effectively. Over the millennia we, who were created thinking, sentient, beings, have managed to wreak havoc & destruction on this beautiful planet. 

Not only that, we have multiplied to the point where we are using up all the natural resources at an unsustainable rate. Look at the Population Matters website, the bare statistics are there in easily assimilatable form.

https://populationmatters.org/the-facts

https://populationmatters.org/news/2022/02/un-report-food-systems-at-breaking-point/

That world population needs to be fed. Currently David Beasley, head of the U.N. World Food Program, said its latest analysis shows that "a record 345 million acutely hungry people are marching to the brink of starvation" — a 25% increase from 276 million at the start of 2022 before Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24. Globally, hunger levels are alarmingly high. According to the 2022 State of Food Insecurity in the World (SOFI) report, the number of people affected by hunger rose in 2021 to 828 million, an increase of about 46 million since 2020 and 150 million since 2019, before the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic.The inequality of access to good, nourishing food is shocking.

https://feedbackglobal.org/knowledge-hub/food-waste-scandal/ 

https://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/agriculture/brief/food-security-update

Add to this mix that there is increasing probability of acute water shortages & any intelligent person can see that we are marching towards a massive problem. The combination of both food & water shortages is a recipe for disaster.

We need to change our behaviour before it's too late. Food & water are so basic to life that countries need to be as self sufficient & sustainable as possible. The UK is an island. Importing food from around the world isn't sustainable any more. The world has the capacity to produce enough food for everyone & make sure that it is shared equitably. But that will need political will to make difficult decisions as well as individuals in the world of the "haves" to share equitably with the world of the "have nots". Otherwise there will be civil unrest on a huge scale.

Unfortunately I don't believe in "manna from heaven". We created this mess. We have to sort it out & there isn't much time.

Afghanistan, Yemen & Syria - Man made Human Catastrophes

I want to cancel Christmas! How on earth can we celebrate, giving gifts, many of which will be unwanted. Eating & drinking too much & wasting even more food than usual. Being hedonistic while the world literally burns around us. 

I really don't want to be a part of it. "Putting ones head in the sand" really doesn't cover it. 

Current Emergencies

• Afghanistan emergency
• COVID-19 pandemic
• Democratic Republic of the Congo emergency
• Haiti emergency
• North Eastern Nigeria emergency
• Sahel emergency
• Southern Madagascar emergency
• South Sudan emergency
• Syria emergency
• Yemen emergency

https://www.wfp.org/support-us/stories/families-afghanistan-need-help?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=14487154511&utm_content=127541781598&gclid=CjwKCAiA1aiMBhAUEiwACw25MXxcs5BuyJ26Fo62HbNOYLESHLoOpQuPiY3gW0czAytxXmGU6lixBxoCpf0QAvD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds

Afghanistan - Around 10 million children across Afghanistan urgently need humanitarian assistance to survive. Without urgent action, almost one million children could be severely malnourished by the end of the year. 1 in 3 people are hungry and 2 million children are malnourished. With drought, pandemic, and conflict, the food security situation will continue to worsen; and hunger will rise. 

Yemen - 16.2 million people are food insecure. 1.1 million women and children under 5 receive World Food Programme nutrition support every month. 20.1 million people are in need of humanitarian assistance in 2021

Syria - 12.4 million people are food insecure. 4.8 million people receive lifesaving food from WFP each month. WFP’s funding requirement until February 2022 is US$ 479.7 million.

These situations are directly brought about by Western Government policies. By our actions or lack of action. We voted for our governments who seem to treat these people as "collateral damage". Then the NGO's have to go in & try to pick up the pieces.

We should all be angry about this. An accident of birth means that we are relatively safe & secure. We have spare money to spend on Christmas & New Year. We are going to celebrate. 

What the hell is there to celebrate at the moment? 😪

 

 

Regenerative Agriculture - No Till Farming

I have been listening to the reading of the Sunday Times bestseller "English Pastoral - An Inheritance" by James Rebanks who also wrote " A Shepherds Life". It makes me want to weep at what we have lost, which I am lucky enough to be able to remember. I can also remember the coming of the agribusiness farmer & the complete change they wrought on the landscape & wildlife. All in the name of higher production & more profit.

Many years ago I remember coming home from a springtime walking holiday in the wilds of Greece, surrounded by an idyllic landscape filled with wild flowers & butterflies. The farmer, whose fields surrounded my house, had not only created huge fields, constantly spraying & planting right up to the hedge margins, but he had killed every blade of grass in the field adjoining my house. The whole field was a wasteland. He was very annoyed when I wrote to the local paper about my environmental concerns.

Man has managed to ruin one of the most basic & important elements of the world we live in. We have created soil depletion & erosion. There is less & less natural organic matter, which makes soil naturally fertile. We have disturbed the natural water cycle & contaminated that most precious & basic necessity to life. We have also contaminated our own enviromnemt, resulting in unhealthy effects on ourselves.

 

Monitoring water and the impact on the environment

We have saturated the land with herbicides & pesticides & been forced to use more & more artificial fertilizers containing methane, carbon dioxide, ammonia, and nitrogen. Pesticides contain organophosphates which have a deadly effect on the nervous stystem. Fertilizers pollute waterways, can cause chemical leaf burn, increase air pollution, cause soil acidificatioon & mineral depletion.

In turn emissions from these have contributed to a great extent to the quantity of greenhouse gases present in the environment. This in turn is leads to global warming and weather changes. 

Generations of farmers have turned their back on traditional methods of farming, which husbanded the land & valued soil quality. That has had a devastating effect on earthworm & insect populations. Because of the interconnectedness of nature, these depleted food sources have caused the decimation of birds.... And so it goes on right through the food chain. 

A perfect storm of destruction. We are literally biting the hand that feeds us.

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

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No-till_farming

https://www.healthline.com/health/organophosphate-poisoning#symptoms

http://www.sallefarms.co.uk/crop-rotation/

There is another way. We do know how to do it better. We need to change all food production radically, before it's too late.

Bees

I have just read a thriller, "Coffin Road", by Peter May, an author I really enjoy. The title works on several levels, not least the coffin mankind is creating for itself by deceminating bee populations all over the world.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_May_(writer)

I wondered if May was exaggerating the science - but unfortunately not.

The thread of the story is the part "Big Pharma" is playing in "Colony Collapse Disorder",(CCD), of bees due to memory damage caused by mono culture agribusinesses use of pesticides & insecticides containing Neurotoxins like Neonicotinoids.
https://www.epa.gov/pollinator-protection/colony-collapse-disorder

Neonicotinoids damage bee brains & memory so they can no longer communicate to other bees the whereabouts of nectar sources from flowers. Pollination is a by product of the bees gathering nectar.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/apr/27/eu-agrees-total-ban-on-bee-harming-pesticides

 

Insecticides & pesticides cause destruction of habitat & floral diversity & also cause water contamination. Lobbying by the hugely powerful & wealthy Agrochemical businesses means that these dangerous chemicals are not universally banned.

http://sos-bees.org/causes/

http://sos-bees.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/BeesInDecline.pdf

The situation in the USA is particularly bad - between 30 - 50% of bee populations are dying every year.
https://abcnews.go.com/US/40-decline-honey-bee-population-winter-unsustainable-experts/story?id=64191609

On top of all of this the poor bees have to cope with parasites like Varroa Mite. No wonder bee populations are suffering.
Parasites - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varroa_destructor

The thing is if we don't do something about all of this we are the ones who are going to be under threat. Our species depends on bees pollinating every single fruit, vegetable & plant. The very real danger is that bees will become extinct & so will we. All animals, including us, depend on plants.

Actually it isn't just bees. We have presided over the plummeting loss of insect species worldwide.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/feb/10/plummeting-insect-numbers-threaten-collapse-of-nature

Our meddling in the balance of the worlds ecology is really coming home to roost. The trouble is it has already happened - on our watch & we are sleepwalking towards real destruction. No one knows when the tipping point is.

2:5 Fast Diet - Michael Moseley.

Trousers too tight - some have given up the unequal struggle with the increase in size of my waist! Waist fat is the most dangerous. It isn't necessarily what you can see, but the layers of fat around your organs. What a delightful image that is!

The scales & the tape measure don't lie.

Too much cake & biscuits & chocolate, eaten without thinking, over the weeks & months.

I refuse to buy a bigger size or give the unwearable trousers to the charity shop. Something has to be done & only I can do it.

So, this is the first week of fasting for 2 days a week. Already completed one day. Today is the second day. Actually it really isn't that bad. Check out the web page.

https://thefastdiet.co.uk/

It's all a question of getting your mind adjusted & keeping occupied. The incentive of a wardrobe full of clothes you can't wear is useful too.

3 months - then I should have lost at least a pound a week. I will also have got into better eating habits. Theoretically you can eat what you like on the 5 days you don't fast, but I am going to try to avoid sweet things & cut down on carbs.

Some foods send messages straight to the pleasure centres of the brain & they are the baddies - chocolate for instance. I'm aiming to shut down my pleasure centre & reduce the size of my stomach.

In todays techie jargon I'm re-programming myself. Hope it works.

Eating - Food for Thought?

I was brought up in much simpler times. There were 3 meals a day & not a lot of choice. That was partly because the vast range of foods we have today simply wasn't available, but also because most people I knew were on quite limited incomes.

Most of my childhood & adolescence I had family meals & school dinners sitting at a table, where you ate everything put in front of you. You definitely didn't get pudding if you didn't eat your main meal, which was generally meat & two veg, (boiled). Either monitors, teachers or parents supervised behaviour. Sweets were a treat, as was fruit, (mostly it was tinned). Meal times were fairly sedate. There was conversation, but you were expected to sit & be polite.

Nowadays it couldn't be more different. Children are literally spoiled for choice. A worrying number of people have a very disfunctional relationship with food & family meals at a table seem a distant memory.

When I usher at the theatre we have to clear the rubbish after the performance ends. I am frankly appalled at how much packaging & food is simply thrown on the floor & left. Drinks & ice cream are spilled on the newly refurbished carpet & seats. I simply don't understand why the public seems to be unable to last for an hour or less until the interval without drinks & food. People even go out of the auditorium mid performance to buy a drink or something to eat, admittedly mostly in Panto performances. Do they not eat a meal before they come to the theatre?  It seems so rude to me to interrupt the performers & the audience.

We seem to have developed a really bad habit of constant snacking. People walk along the street eating & drinking. Usually that means highly salted or sugary foods, which have caused the current health problems which threaten the very existance of the NHS. I can remember a time when a coffee in a cafe was a real treat, not any more. It's become so important to our lives that we even post on Facebook when we are in Starbucks or Costa - Why should anyone be interested in that???  

It's ironic that now we know so much more about good nutrition & our bodies we eat & drink more bad processed food than ever before. From my perspective change hasn't been for the better.

Having largely stopped smoking ourselves to death we now seem to be hell bent on eating & drinking ourselves to death.

Hughs War on Waste & Famine in Ethiopia

Don't these two news items just say everything about how f.....up our society is?

Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall is trying to stop us & the Supermarkets from wasting vast amounts of perfectly edible food. On the other side of the world Ethiopia is again heading for an even worse famine than in 1983 - 85 when more than 400,000 people died.

http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2015/aug/25/un-ethiopia-need-food-aid-after-poor-rains

While we squander precious resources Ethiopia is in the grip of drought which will make 4.5 million people need food aid and be close to starvation.

How do we tolerate this?

We don't actually see it - it's a film on the TV - we are distanced from it. We don't have to look into the eyes of people who literally have nothing. We don't have to watch children die in front of us. It doesn't really touch our lives.

We are not responsible for the drought or the famine, but we are sure as hell responsible for our own wasteful actions in a country of plenty. We are guilty of complacency & think that donating a little money is enough - It isn't.

We have to tackle the root problem of a world of two very different halves - the Have's and the Have Nots. The Have's must give up their wasteful ways & over indulgent choice & be prepared to equably share all the worlds resources. We don't own the land, the food, the water, the natural abundance we are blessed with. We are just custodians. Unless we are prepared to adjust the huge imbalance that rabid consumerism brings & give freely to the developing world there may come a time when they say enough is enough & rise up and take their fair share.

I for one wouldn't blame them.

The Wallace Collection - Food for thought?

I took a party from the Ashmolean to the Wallace Collection in London on Friday. It has a world-famous range of fine and decorative arts from the 15th to the 19th centuries with lots of French 18th-century paintings, furniture, arms & armour, Sevres porcelain and Old Master paintings. The stunning Great gallery reopened in September after re-furbishment.

Trying to do the 25 galleries in one day is exhausting.There is a particular kind of weariness which comes with mooching round galleries & museums. You glaze over into sensory over stimulation. If you have a guide your brain ceases to process the reams of information. Really the only sensible way to "do" a gallery or museum is to cherry pick a few things you are most interested in and concentrate on those. However, if you know you probably won't go back, the temptation is to see it all. Then you end up not really seeing a lot of it.

In 2000 the inner courtyard was given a glass roof &  a restaurant was started named "Cafe Bagatelle" after the Hertford's chateau Bagatelle. The Wallace Restaurant is now run by Peyton and Byrne as a French-style brasserie. It's a really nice space for a restaurant, which makes the fact that our experience there was appalling more than disappointing.

We arrived for pre booked & paid for coffee & biscuits which was fine. We were given menus & asked to make a selection for lunch in advance. When we arrived back exhausted after a  2 hour tour they weren't ready for us. There wasn't a designated area a for our group to sit together, so the waiters could concentrate on serving us as a group. There simply weren't enough waiters to cope.

No one seemed to know what people had ordered. The food simply didn't arrive - for a very long time. Over an hour in most cases. More than one person gave up & left because it was eating into our individual time to look round the gallery. You would have thought that with a couple of hours notice the cold food could have been plated up, covered & the customer identified. (They had taken our names).

People ordered wine to go with their food, several times. It didn't arrive until they had almost finished their meal. The waiter took one bottle away before the table had finished it. We had to ask for cutlery. One lady asked for some pepper & was told "you can see that it is s for salt" by a very harrassed waiter.

The portions were miniscule - Nouvelle Cuisine gone mad. Mains were more like starters. A "piggy terrine" was served in a small glass yogurt pot with no celery salad & a small slice of bread. The lady was told that they had run out of the salad when she complained. Nothing was offered in it's place. Presumabaly they hoped she wouldn't notice the absence. One lady had  a smoked salmon salad which was less than I would give for a starter. Others had the soup which was cold and watery & served with no bread. When I spoke to the catering manager about how poor we thought the restaurant was, she said "well it's a set menu for ladies who lunch"!

By this time there were justified rumblings among the group. Fortunately a senior manager came to speak to me to ask what the problem was. As you can see from the length of this, it was quite a long converstaion. However, he was brilliant. He agreed that it wasn't acceptable & said the people I had been trying to help didn't need to pay, which I thought was generous. (The prices for what we had were outrageously high). How refreshing to have someone who is decisive & doesn't try to come up with pathetic excuses.

Having now looked on line I realise that our experience is far from unique. Another Friend of the Ashmolean who wasn't with us also told me that his NADFAS group had had very similar problems. It's such a shame. To have such a prestigious international museum & lovely venue totally let down by the catering is unforgivable. Goodness know what foreign visitors think.

Are the Wallace trying to make up for not charging an entrance fee, or trying to pay for the gallery refurbishment? Whatever the reason they need to address this, sooner rather than later.

Fast Food Killers - Hunger & Greed

I'm reading a very interesting book called "Fat Chance - The Bitter Truth About Sugar" by Dr Robert Lustig, published last year. It's the most comprehensive & informed look at the diet of the developed world that I've come across. It's full of the most up to date research on our food & how what we eat adversely affects us. It's not particularly difficult to read, but it's not a novel, so requires your full attention. I recommend you to read it if you want to avoid obesity, diabetes & heart disease etc & live a longer life.

Basically, the book confirms what I have long thought. We eat and drink a load of crap & it's not doing us any good at all. In fact it's killing us. Processed food is addictive because of the sugar & salt the manufacturers add & the fibre they remove. Even when we think we are being healthy we aren't because the food industry doesn't tell us all we need to know on the labels. If you think drinking a smoothie is one or more of your 5 a day think again. It's pure sugar, more than in a Coke for example, because all the fibre, which you really need is removed.

I remember going to America years ago & seeing obese people for the first time. I was appalled & disgusted that anyone could be so greedy and stuff so much food down that they became a grotesque parody of a human being. Until I read this book I thought that obese people were just lazy & didn't exercise. Not true. Our relationship with food & the modern diet has messed up the complex mechanisms of our beautiful bodies to the point that they can no longer function effectively. We really don't know what hunger is. We have lost the ability to know when we are full. Think addiction, like smoking, drinking or drugs & you are closer to the truth.

A lot of this has been known for some time now. We know when we are eating rubbish, but it's quick & we are time poor. It's also cheap, so the disadvantaged relied on it most. However, now it's appeal has spread to the middle classes because they are too busy to cook good food from scratch. Especially when both parents work. How many people regularly cook a meal from good quality, raw, ingredients nowadays, despite the plethora of TV chefs?

Then there is the all powerful food lobby. Cheap ingredients, mass produced = massive profit & greed. They aren't going to let scientific fact about the danger & damage they do get in the way of a very healthy bottom line. They are one of the most powerful lobby groups. Add to that the billion dollar diet industry, which promotes the fallacy that they can make you slim  & there really is very little hope that this epidemic is going away anytime soon.

We are lemmings rushing over the cliff to suicide. Me too, I could do with losing a stone. I'll just have that last chocolate biscuit first!

Food - Keeping body & soul together.

One of the things that happens when you suddenly become single after years of being part of a couple is that your relationship with food changes. I have always cooked from good fresh ingredients & mealtimes were when we came together & talked - about all sorts of things from the mundane to the philosophical. Mealtimes were looked forward to, sharing food with someone you like being with is one of life's simple pleasures.

Suddenly mealtimes simply punctuate the day. Even if you do continue cooking from scratch, and I do, you don't linger over your food. In fact sometimes you barely notice what you eat because you are reading a book, doing a crossword or watching TV news. Sometimes you can't be bothered to go to all that effort just for yourself, so simply have something on toast or a sandwich to stave off hunger.

Occasionally I'll have a bought supermarket meal because I foolishly think it might be a treat. It never is. I've never had a frozen or cook chill meal that compared to anything home cooked. I don't know how people live on them permanently. Presumably they haven't ever tasted good food.

I sometimes think that I should lay the table properly, concentrate on enjoying the food & a glass of wine with a CD playing in the background. But eating alone is a very solitary thing - obviously, and to me the whole point of food is to share it & make the meal more than just keeping the body going like putting petrol in the car. It's important to taste the food, savour it, notice the flavours & textures in the mouth.

Whether it's family or friends, sitting around a table enjoying good food & conversation is something to be treasured. You don't realise how good it is until you lose it. So I am sad when I read that few families do that today. People eat different things, in different places & at different times. Often people eat "on the hoof" or at their computer screens. It's summed up in the phrase "grab a bite to eat".  Everything is wrong with that statement & attitude.

If the plethora of TV Chefs & their money making books could achieve anything at all it should be to get us all back round a table with a good, home cooked meal eating and enjoying food together. If they can't do that they are just a highly paid,  egotistical, waste of space.

Intermittant Fasting

http://www.beliefnet.com/Faiths/2001/02/Fasting-Chart.aspx#
Although I'm not in religious in the conventional sense, I am interested in the belief systems of different religions and I found the above chart interesting. Fasting - self denial / giving up. Christians do it for the 40 days of Lent & Muslims do it for 29/30 days in Ramadan.

I started intermittant fasting yesterday for much more mundane reasons. I know I have got into unhealthy eating / drinking habits & put on too much weight. Apart from the look of an overweight body, I know it is bad for my health. My self image is definitely slimmer & I can no longer ignore the tightness of my trousers!

I think I can do this because after one of the two fasting days a week I know I can eat normally within reason. I might be able to get into the habit of eating more sensibly on the non fasting days. It's even possible I will be able to ignore the biscuit & cake tins & the crisps & nuts. But I can go out with friends for a meal & eat & drink anything I want & counterbalance any excess by fasting the next day.

A lot of eating is habit. Meals at certain times of day. Cups of tea / coffee / hot chocolate with a couple of biscuits. Savoury snacks with a glass of wine. I find sweet things like chocolate and salty snacks addictive. I am totally incapable of eating just one chocolate. The pleasure centres of my brain send strong messages to my mouth & I can't stop.

There is a battle going on in my head between the self that says - who cares, you're 68, food is one of the chief pleasures in life, and the self that says -  you care about what you are doing to yourself by over eating. At the moment the former is winning. But it's only been one day. I need to make this a permanent way of life. So I won't replace or buy the things I know I want to avoid. I've even bought green tea!

p-Lent-y - Fasting, Fast food, Fast diets.

In this 6 week period of Lent many faithful Christians commit to fasting or giving up certain types of luxuries as a form of penitence. I'm not a Christian, so I don't. I've just eaten 3 segments of a chocolate orange & 2 digestive biscuits with a mug of tea, yet I had a perfectly adequate lunch a couple of hours ago. That doesn't stop me pondering on the whole issue of plenty as related to food, or the issue of voluntary fasting in a world where so many have an inadequate diet or starve.

I find the the whole concept of half of the world voluntarily fasting or limiting their intake, while the other half struggles to get enough to eat, one of the great dichotomies of the modern world. Yet we seem to be oblivious to the irony.

Research now shows that a couple of days fasting actually does you a lot of good & can even prolong life. Fast diets on the other hand rarely work in the long term. Except for the people who devise & promote them, who make fortunes out of overweight & obese people trying to control what they put in their mouths. We in the developed world are willing to pay good money to conquer the fat and the flab, when all we really need to do is limit our intake of food & exercise more. Many people now are truly living unhealthy lifestyles. Perhaps we need to remember we were "hunter gatherers" or small mixed farmers originally. When we had to catch or produce our food we had to work hard & we really valued it. Now we can have it delivered to our door.

Fast food doesn't have to be junk food, but all too often it is. If you haven't prepared the food you put into your mouth you really have no control over, or idea of, what has gone into it. It isn't just the quality of the ingredients which is bound to be poor if the food is cheap. There are also all sorts of things to mask that very fact - flavour enhancers, bulking agents & preservatives for example.

I should lose some weight, ideally about a stone. I know exactly how to do it. However I live in a land of plenty & I enjoy my treats. I find it very hard to reduce my intake. Temptation lurks in the biscuit / cake tin & the bottle of white wine. I'm lucky & I know it. Perhaps we in the developed world need a regular "famine day" so we really experience what it is like to not have plenty to eat.

"Food glorious food...."

I can't believe there can be a single adult in the UK with half a brain, that doesn't realise that if you pay peanuts you get monkeys - or horses in this case. Media chefs & diet programmes have been telling us for years that we should eat freshly cooked food using raw ingredients and a have balanced diet. There is a whole multi million pound book & TV programme industry based on it.

We are as culpable as the food processing industry in some ways, with our demand for ever more cheap food. Seemingly we don't care what we put into our mouths, so long as it isn't expensive & it cooks quickly with no effort on our part. We are time poor & a lot of us have given up preparing and eating good food with our families. We don't care how that food is produced as long as we get instant gratification.

I bought some cooked, sliced, chicken pieces for my lunch from Tesco. Not the thin sliced re-constituted, rubbish you get in the deli counter. Something that did actually look like chicken breast. It was so nondescript it could have been anything. There was no taste or "bite" whatsoever. I wouldn't have been able to identify it blindfold. It was watery & bland, even with a liberal helping of mayo.

 I cook for one, which can be quite difficult. I do buy "cook chill" foods for convenience. But I still cook from scratch & really enjoy the results with a nice glass of dry white wine. Cooking pasta for example is almost as fast as a ready meal. There really is no excuse when you can get good nutritious recipes from cookbooks or the internet. We should value our health & bodies more & know exactly what is going into our mouths. Even more important - the mouths of our children.

So I have little sympathy with all the coverage of the latest food scandal. If we aren't prepared to pay reasonable prices for good, tasty food we deserve everything we get. Even if it is unmentionable, mechanically scraped, meat from God knows where. Criminals go for the jugular. They see moneymaking opportunitite & don't give a damn about any consequenses.

We are complicit - we allow it to happen. It will continue to happen untill we all do something about it & vote with our purchasing power.

Meat & 2 Veg

I don't remember a lot about my early childhood - I've probably blocked it out. It was very definitely "working class", although that isn't why I have blocked it out. I do remember how limited food choices were though. I even have a vague memory of when sugar came off ration. (I was born in 1945). Before that there were no sweets & I remember being given cocoa powder mixed with sugar as a dip in a "cornet" of paper. I also remember a big treat was being able to lick out a tin of condensed milk.

My mother was of the meat & 2 veg school of cookery & the veg were not cooked unless simmered for a good 20 minutes. Consequently the idea of "bite" in veg was unknown. We always had potatoes & "proper" gravy - None of your Bisto rubbish. Chicken was a special treat for Sunday lunch, which was always a "roast", & I think we also had it for Christmas. We were used to German food, as she was originally from Germany, having arrived well before 1939 on her way to Australia. So I had Buckling (fish), & sauerkraut (cabbage) & dill pickles (gherkins). We regularly had red cabbage, which at the time was little known as a cooked vegetable. Menus tended to be repeated with little variation, on the same day every week. Always fish on Friday. Everything, needless to say, was cooked from fresh ingredients, because the ideas of "cook chill", "fast food", "take away", (apart from fish & chips), or anything "convenience" simply didn't exist - except for tinned food. We didn't have a fridge or a freezer so food was mostly bought on a daily basis.

My mother was very good at cakes & pastry, so once rationing was over we did have those. Her "pound cake" & "gugelhupf" were gorgeous. She also did fantastic pancakes with apples or plums. She did potato pancakes with jam, which sounds vile, but I loved. German cookery mixes sweet with sour quite often.When I was in Junior school & we went shopping in Birmingham, a special treat was to have a "knickerbocker glory" ice cream in a big department store called Lewis's.

When I was at college in the mid 60's & sharing a house, the fact that I could cook was very handy. The menus were more adventurous than my mother's, but still fairly limited. So we did do spag' bol' but none of the huge range of pasta dishes we are used to today. Campbells condensed soups were useful as the basis of things like tuna (tinned) bake.

Even after I got married, as soon as I left college, meat & 2 veg was probably the staple of my new status as housewife. I did enjoy cooking though & liked trying new recipes from magazines & cookery books. It was all within a very tight budget, & I can remember producing egg & chips on consecutive days when the housekeeping money ran out. I made my own yoghurt in the airing cupboard & bottled fruits & made jams & pickles.

Two things that made my cooking more adventurous were becoming a vegetarian & having 2 salaries when I returned to teaching after my daughter started nursery. By then we also had a wider range of convenience foods, so there were the delights of Vesta Curries, Angel Delight & Instant Whip for example - None of which would pass my lips today!

As a more established, middle class, married couple we also started having dinner parties which required hours of preparation for 3 course meals for up to 8 people. This required at least 2 starters, 2 mains & 2 puddings + cheese & biscuits, coffee, chocolates & liquers. Thank God for "pot luck suppers" now, & far more simple & quick recipes!

I really appreciate the plethora of ingredients & influences that we have available to us now. Cookery books are almost food porn, lavishly illustrated & simple to follow -As are some chefs TV cookery programmes. A huge variety of ingredients are available, year round, from the 4 corners of the world. (What a silly saying, the world doesn't have corners). Therfore it is mystifying to me why so many people don't cook from scratch or even eat together. We have no control over what is in food which is processed in some way. It is more expensive & less healthy than cooking from scratch.

It seems to me that we are paying the price for this laziness in the health time bomb which is ticking away. New generations won't be able to cook or appreciate the difference between mass produced & home cooked food. The joys of family conversation around the meal table have already died the death in favour of meals "on the hoof" or on a tray infront of the TV / video game. All the glossy cookery books must be languishing on many shelves & TV cookery programmes are just  entertainment.

Food should be a pleasure to the eye & the taste buds. It should nourish & stimulate. Good conversation & food should go together & encourage sharing of the meal & our lives. What a shame if we lose this simple way of nourishing our soul, bodies & relationships.