"In short. Cholesterol is healthy, saturated fat is healthy, salt is healthy and sugar is unhealthy. I have pulled those four points out of a press release by the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, which I reproduce in full, below."
That's a very good point - back to reading the labels! Personally, I would say that sugar is bad in excess - as are all things! And it's not so much the sugar itself as the way it is processed. So, we have another battle on our hands! But what goes around, comes around...
Yep. Just the other day it occurred to me that sugar itself is an artificial sweetener.
"Refined sugar is made from raw sugar that has undergone a refining process to remove the molasses. Raw sugar is a sucrose which is synthesized from sugar cane or sugar beet and cannot immediately be consumed before going through the refining process to produce refined sugar or white sugar."
Mmm, definitely artificial.
So that leaves honey. Which is natural but fructose based and a no no according to Dr Davis. Bah.
Yeah, well, whatever. I think you have to go with the lesser of all the evils - nothing is ever perfect. Personally, I think the most evil is aspartam. And then they go in descending order until... what? I Don't know. Honey has so many benefits that I wouldn't exclude it completely - even though I Don't like it, it's great with lemon and whisky for a sore throat!
And, as was said below, a little of what you fancy does you good!
My wife and daughters hate honey ,how weird! There are so many types depending on the flower source giving a multiplicity of tastes. Wonderful variety .. Then there are the various qualities of manuka honey with supposedly special health attributes justifying a big price.
Yes, but they all have that earthy after-taste that I Don't like.
The only one I've ever really liked, I Don't know the name of. I was in Bulgaria in 1968, and the lady that ran the bar decided to look after me because I was 8 months pregnant. She used to feed me raw yoghurt - all runny with lumps - with a very pale-coloured honey, and it was the best thing I've ever tasted. But then again, I was pregnant, and nothing tastes the same when you're pregnant!
I love salt, sugar, fat and flour...preferably white and sticky. Our food industry has been built up on hitting our taste buds and raising our receptors for it. Now I just stick with the fat...mainly nuts and seeds and dairy. I still don't go with paleo and occasionally fall of the sugar wagon
Brilliant article! lol But, when we talk about 'added sugars' that usually means that we're eating processed foods - which we shouldn't be, anyway! It's the word 'processed' that changes everything. But Rod is correct, of course, if sugar gets demonised, artificial sweetners are going to become more prevelant - very few people understand the dangers.
Although, of course, artificial sweetners are already added to things like cough sweets and other médicaments. I once had a huge row with The Turkey, my local pharmacist, about the succralose in tables for sore throats - in a very loud voice, of course, so that everyone could hear (oh, I'm such a horrible person! the sort of person you wouldn't want to sit next to on the bus! lol) She insisted that succralose was 'exactly the same' as sugar, no difference. I told her she should go back to pharmacy school, before she killed someone!
Has Dr Kendrik already written about artificial sweetners? If not, that should be his next point of attack!
I don't eat any processed foods now and think it's the way forward. No sugar bar the odd small bar of dark chocolate. I do however still need to sweeten tea and coffee and my home made granola. I've opted for pure stevia. What's your thoughts on stevia? (Pure not the dreaded pretend version)
I have to confess that I've never tried it - somehow I've just never fancied it, Don't know why. What I use is coconut flower sugar because it has a lovely taste. Not as sweet as normal sugare, ounce for ounce, but having had it for some time now, I Don't like the taste of normal sugar - even pure cane sugar - it just tastes too... sweet.
But whatever you go for, it needs to be as unprocessed as possible - which is the problem with white sugar (pretty as it is! lol).
I want Dr Kendrick to advocate for thyroid patients. He's written one article very recently, I want lots more! Much more important than sugar and sweeteners.
He could do both. I'm not much concerned about sugar, but artificial sweetners, like aspartame? Imagnine all the harm that is being done to our health by artificial sweetners that are already omni-present. It took me years to get my daughter off diet coke, and I dread to think of what it's done to her. So many people still believe they are better than sugar, and it's just not true. It's a battle I'm constantly fighting, and there are so many battles...
So my grandmother was right with 'everything in moderation' and 'a little bit of what you fancy does you good. And so were the old ads 'go to work on an egg' and 'drinka pinta milka day'. Haha, thought so!
Disappointing, isn't it, that it would appear we can't trust anything we are told these days?
I totally agree with you! That's my motto, too - a little of what you fancy... I'm sure that frustrating yourself by not eating what you desire has a negative effect. As does forcing yourself to eat something you Don't like.
I've never trusted these people on nutrition, anyway. How can something like salt - that people have consumed for an eternity - suddenly become bad for you? A whole culture has been built up around salt - with expressions like 'Worth his salt', etc. That wouldn't have happened if people had dropped dead like flies after eating salt! Our ancestors weren't stupid! (The exception to that is, of course, PROCESSED table salt.)
When I was a kid, and food was short in the late 40's early 50's, my grandmother had the good luck to work in a butcher's shop, and she brought us home what she could. One thing I remember - apart from the wonderful herby sausages - was the kidneys, still wrapped in suet. To my mother's horror, I used to eat the suet raw. I craved it. It was better than chocolate! And I reckon that that - plus the NHS cod liver oïl and oily orange juice where what kept me alive in those tough times.
Unfortunately the eggs and the pinta you get today are NOT the same as those which were available when those slogans were popular - most cows are artificially fed and so are the chickens which lay the eggs. Animals which eat grass should not be given grains because it makes them as unhealthy as we are!
Yes, apparently feeding cows on grains, instead of grass, lowers stomach acid (sound familiar?) which means that they are more prone to bad bacteria in the gut (like nasty strains of e coli, which can get into the water supply from manure from these cows), so the cows have to be given mega doses of antibiotics, which the bacteria more antibiotic-resistant and so it goes on
On that note. Try and find something healthy to eat on your next hospital visit. Because you can't. Sweets, chocolate, crisps and sandwiches. That's your lot. Ridiculous.
I NEVER stopped eating butter and lard, I still cook in the way my mother did which excludes all packaged and processed food and artificially produced 'substitutes' such as sunflower spread, and in fact I go so far as to try to buy naturally produced food such as grass-fed meat and butter, and unhomogenised milk.
Although I have just had heart surgery, it was not for heart disease but for a birth defect (bicuspid Aortic Valve) which had never been identified until I was 70 years old. Every test I had showed me free of any heart disease such as inflammation, hardening of arteries, and a recent angiogram came back completely clear.
I have never, ever agreed with the lethal dietary advice which has been spouted for the last 30-40 years, nor do I agree with eating factory-processed food which hides excessive amounts of sugars - particularly liver-damaging fructose - and cheap dodgy fats like palm oil, rapeseed oil and corn oil.
There isn't anything wrong with sugar if you know how much you are eating - but why do they put sugar in meat products like burgers? Make your own - it is so easy!
Its the brain washing which has gone on which concerns me.
Take salt for example, we have friends who don't even have salt in the house because it is so dangerous! How damaging is that to people who don't actually have high blood pressure? The whole population has been convinced salt is bad and of course it isn't, its essential.
I watched "back in time for dinner" as a nostalgic trip back through my childhood foods and shops of the 70's however they pointed out that during the 60's and early 70's we were eating a block of butter each a week there were very few obese people, clothes sizes were smaller back then too, plus we were all round healthier, skip forward through the later 70's of higher consumption of convenience foods and sugary foods and suddenly we start gaining the weight and the poor health associated with this, skip forward further and we start with the low fat high filler, high sugar, high sweetner foods and the problem has spun out of control - I personally have found that by returning to the good ole days of butter, cheese and high fat, salt diet with little focus on sugar except the odd fruity pud, decent vanilla ice cream or homemade smoothie - staying well away from choc, biscuits, cake and sweets etc has upped my energy levels and my weight has not soared in fact it may well have lessened!!
Absolutely. I remember once, about 20 years ago, seeing a programme about The English Breakfast. The interviewer looked at the plate of fried bread, eggs, mushrooms, tomatoes, sausages (now I'm drooling!) and bacon, and calling it a 'heart attack on a plate'! And I thought no, that's just good food. lol I've never ever bought into the fat-is-bad brigade.
And that's why I Don't believe people should be counting calories. Because fat is very high calorie, and if people want to stay on a restricted number of calories, they tend to cut it out. The fact that fat has a high calorie count should tell us that calorie-counting is not natural. In fact, before the 60's, nobody counted calories. I think that in itself should tell us something.
I always thought there was nothing wrong with a proper breakfast, sets you up for the day (but couldn't manage it first thing) and 'go to work on an egg' too.
Meanwhile, as we know, cereals were pushed & fortified with vitamins you would have got from a proper breakfast anyway!
Dad always said cereals were only supposed to fatten up piggies - 'whole' grain included the sweepings, & as for 'skimmed' milk - the best bit skimmed off etc etc.
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