salt is good for you, it seems

london 6.28pm rain 20.8C sunday 2017.

we all know of u turns when it comes to health advise, and it seems the latest one is salt. it seems it is good for you. suger is now the culprit.

most of us must have wondered, if we ever did question it, when we see nature programs where animals actively go looking for salt licks. it is a familiar nature program that shows animals gathering or travel miles just to access a place where they can lick salt. it does makes u ask why do we get advise telling us salt is bad for us. we know salt is necessary… we know we get cramps if we exercise a lot and sweat a lot, and then drink lots of water without salt… sodium is necessary for life. and yet we get bombarded with health advise telling us we eat too much salt and that makes us have high blood pressure, with all the attendant bad things that happen when we have high blood pressure.

except now they tell us salt is not the cause of raised blood pressure. it just goes to show that we humans think we know everything about science, it explains everything we think, but actually we dont really know much. haha.

the new culprit is suger, they say suger is not necessary for life…in one sense that is true in that we dont have to eat suger… it is because the body can produce glucose from carbohydrates… starchy foods… though eating potatoes is not as much fun as eating chocolates. haha.

from our track record of getting things wrong, and having to backtrack or make uturns with our health advise, i would take that condemnation of suger with a pinch of salt too. even though it does make a bit of sense, in that our bodies can make glucose so there is no need to eat the stuff. but if u go on the logic that if the body breaks carbohydrates into glucose, so it makes it,  it must be necessary… the only difference from sodium is that the body can make it out of other foodstuffs, so in that sense it does not need us to eat it. like vit D, it can make it so no need really to eat vit D, or foods rich in it… though foods in its complex form has lots of other things, like trace elements, minerals etc. eating the pure form may not be that useful. 

the question really is how much is too much… and that must vary with the individual’s circumstances… it seems to me that blanket advise is not helpful. dont eat this dont eat that, or eating more than x gm is not good, or the opposite advise, eating more than x gms is good.

i think the most useful advise is dont let your weight balloon more than x amount for your age and height. that might be the most useful advise for everyone and the exception to my saying blanket advise is not needed for everyone. i would say that is the most useful advise for everyone. carrying a lot of weight is a huge strain on every organ and system in the body. i would say your weight is a sign of how healthy you are. try to be as slim as possible without going the other extreme and be anorexic. and how to stay within the weight range? just dont eat so much…

maybe a good rule of thumb is eat everything, and as much as u like but within meal times, and keep it to just one dish…no starters, nor desserts. (and cut it down to two meals a day if u cannot control yourself ). and dont snack between meals. perhaps have fruits in between if u cannot help yourself  and want something in the mouth.

for myself , i eat porridge for breakfast, and then whenever i am hungry. so no set meal times. porridge is so filling, i dont feel hungry till 4pm, when i can eat a big one dish meal, and then nothing till next day. or some days another lighter meal at about 8pm. and that is it. i dont think of eating again. today i had porridge at about 8am, and now i just ate 2 scrambled eggs when i woke up and it is about 7pm… i think i might eat a one dish meal (veg and pork over rice)again later tonight and that would be it. 

so much suger in foods

london 9.42pm 13.3C (so warm even at this time) monday 2016

there cannot be anyone who  still do not know that processed foods have loads of suger. if anyone is still that ignorant, this report saying yoghurt has too much suger in it should make them never ever be able to give that excuse of ignorance again. they cannot say ‘but i did not know’.

but i can say in their defense that they know but did not realise. it is two different things. they know it is sweet when they eat the yoghurt… in fact that is the reason why they like it. they just do not realise how much suger there is in it… it is only  when they look at the label they will see it can contain as much as 5 teaspoonfuls of suger in each pot. and each pot is only 125mg. the curious thing is this… if they were to dissolve 5 teaspoonfuls of suger in 125ml of water and drink it, it would be undrinkable. it would make them sick. yet when it is in a yoghurt pot , everyone eats it like they are their favourite.

if u can find out the secret of why that is so, i think u will have discovered the biggest new discovery ever. better than the discovery of the wheel, or sliced bread. haha. 

i myself  got fooled too. i got into the habit of buying tesco basic yoghurts and got to like them. until tesco raised the price to 40p from 33p for 4. (they have since brought it down to 35p, but that sudden high price rise  have lost their mesmerising hold on me. thank goodness i got to my senses and saw it for what it was). that sudden high jump in price made me pause and really look at the label and i was really shocked to find it has 15.4g of suger, 17%. 1 teaspoonsful of suger=4gm. i would get sick eating 4 spoonsful of suger , yet i was able to eat that yoghurt and like it without even noticing how sweet it was. … how do they do it? how did they hide the sweetness? they must have got vinegar (which is acetic acid) in it, a lot…or some kind of acid… citric acid perhaps. that is the only way they can use so much suger to neutralise that acidic taste and not make me puke with the sweetness of it. if it can happen to me, whose taste buds are very sensitive to sweet so much so that i  am always complaining of how sweet foods are…i mean i would complain that chocolates are too sweet.

 it must be real easy for anyone else to be fooled. 

 

even i am getting hooked by suger

london 9.24pm 15.4C dry friday 2016

quite an interesting film i am seeing now. called R.I.P.D. it stands for rest in peace dept, starring a handsome ryan reynolds. who has died and been recruited to come back to earth to catch the undead, looking like a old chinese man. its a bit like the man in black films. instead of aliens they are the undead, but the cgi effect is the same. i am writing this in between the film when the adverts come on. 

i was in the tesco, and saw their basic yogurt has gone up to 40p from 33p. tesco is a bad thingy. raising its basic goods prices by so much. at first i thought it is just the small store selling it for higher, they tend to mark up the prices; but on googling it i find it does show the 40p tag. each pot of 125mg contains 15.5g of suger. that is 3.1 teaspoonfuls of suger. yet, interestingly the basic plain yogurt which u can buy 500mg pack , contains half the amount of suger per 100mg. it is still 1.5 teaspoonfuls though. and how many people just eat 100mg of it, hardly any i think, most would dish out  half the pot. 

its 4 flavors basic yogurt is nice, because it has the peach flavour, which i like a lot, as well as the black cherry flavour that has almonds in it. the other two flavours, raspberry and strawberry are nothing much to talk about. unfortunately the other supermarkets sell only  two flavours, 2xstrawberry and raspberry. they charge 33p  and if they dont increase their prices i suppose i shall buy them instead. but this price rise has made me pause and think. maybe i shall not buy them, as i had wanted to restrict my eating of them. and this might be the kick i need not to eat them so much.

they are rather addictive, must be the suger in it.

i find the only way to eat yogurt without all that suger is to make your own. but it can be rather sharp , sour i mean, so it still needs to be sugered. and u dont get all those flavours… ah well, i think maybe just as well tesco has increased the price, i was getting to like the flavour too much. i think if they sell it with only the peach flavour i will be sorely tempted to buy those. for some reason none of the supermarkets sell large packs of only one flavour anymore. i remember they used to, long ago when i used to buy 500mg pots at one go. then i stopped buying because i realise it is really suger , a lot of it; and now i find no one sells those any more. how strange that they stop it.

hmm, it makes me realise why so many cannot resist all this suger stuff , even though they know it is bad for them. even i am getting caught up in it. just as well tesco is increasing the price of it. without realising it until now, i have become addicted to it; when the price rise like this, it has made me pause and  make me question it.

i think i got to starting this yogurt thing when i wanted to cool down my mouth after eating chili. it is fresh chili and it can pack a hot punch. and i found yogurt can do that , that is why i bought this basic yogurt. but i find drinking milk can do the same thing, and i can make milk using my milk powder… then i got addicted to this yogurt and eating it even without eating chili first. 

in all this, we must not forget that their non sugered foodstuff, like cabbage, oats which i also bought today are still the same low price and very good value. and healthy too. in fact, the healthy foods by which i mean the unprocessed ones are still cheap and by rights if u stick to buying them u should not feel any worse off in terms of pricing and affordability. 

a lot of baking programs nowadays

london 3.14pm thursday 2015, sunny 23.9C

yesterday was the start of another baking program on tv. i would not have known of it, myself as i dont bother to watch them, but the newspapers were talking of it, and that the betting shop has stopped taking bets on the winner because there was a huge amount being betted on and they suspect the winner has been leaked.

personally, i think cakes are bad for you. and i would not teach kids to bake as their first cooking lesson. it is easy to do, because teaching them baking is quite easy for them to master… but people should resist the easy way out and teach the kids to cook main meals, rather than desserts. i mean to say teach them to use appliances… a microwave, or  an oven, ( a halogen oven is the best way, so easy and easy to clean too) for eg, as it is really the easiest way to cook. for eg, roasting chicken, take a pack of frozen chicken pieces, thaw it out , then just season the pieces of chicken with salt, (add pepper , spices if u have them) and that is it, put in oven at 200C for about 1hr. if they want, put some potatoes , carrots , parsnips, in the bottom tray to roast.

teaching kids to stir fry would be another method i would urge people to teach kids. it is a bit more difficult to master but with that skill they can make a meal anytime anywhere. but my basic premise is dont teach them to bake. just as i would tell people dont give small kids sweet things or add suger to their food. that way they grow up in their early years never getting to like sweet things. and when they grow older and start being bombarded with sweet adverts, they might just not like sweets. i say this because that is what happened to me. as a kid , we never were given sweets, nor anything sweet… too poor. so i never got a sweet tooth. and that is a blessing now i look back on it. even when i started being bombarded with desserts,

when i came to uk, i was seduced at the beginning by desserts, but later as i realised suger  is not a good thing, i can very easily cut out these desserts from my life and never feel the lack of them. now i dont have desserts, (or starters, another waste of money) and dont eat sweets .

saves me a lot of problems in my old age now…avoiding  tooth decay and lots of dental fillings or extractions, being the best one. not to mention not being overweight. i can wear clothes that fit me now when i was younger. 

a lovely day

london monday 2014

Many will be working today and some may be looking out at the fine weather and wishing they are out there. imagining themselves sitting in the sun and enjoying it. whereas here i am, all the time in the world and i am not sitting out in the grass bathing in the sun. hmm. why? i ask myself too, and wonder am i missing something?

i walk about in the sun, chosing to walk on the sunny side of the street, but i have noticed that i do so when it is in the early morning, as i walk to the library at about 9.30am. but later in the day, i find myself gravitating towards the shadowed side of the road.

I have to make a conscious effort to keep to the sunny side.

this makes me realise that just because a bit of something is good, a lot of it need not be better. well, i know that allready, so i should correct myself and say it reminds me rather than make me realise … 

and that is something that the world do not realise. that you hear of something that the world values, in this case the leisure time to sit out in the sun… and you put a high price on it. because so many work and can never do it. and you hear of these people spending a huge amount of money taking the plane to fly to places with the sun, and spending a fortune. and you dont appreciate that u allready have got all this … you can sit in the sun all day, and it is free… but u dont appreciate it. you think it is not worthwhile… because u have not spend thousands of £s to get it. the world do not value something that it can get free, but put a big price to it and they all want it… fight for it even. and there is a twist to this… you begin to feel u should value it, but then realise that it is not really that valuable, the sun is not all that great to sit in it… especially if there is a lot of it and it is very strong, and can burn you. so now u not only can pay a lot of money to get it, but it is not really very good for you .

like chocolate.

I saw in my wordpress reader a quartz article showing a video of some african cocoa farmers given chocolate to eat as they have never tasted the finished product of their harvest. the author laments that he finds it a disgrace that they are unable to afford the chocolate, that they cannot afford to eat the fruits of the end product of their harvest.

i was minded that if u grow something to sell, it is not wise to eat the end product.

i was thinking of heroin producers , the poppy farmers may well be wise to keep clear of the end product of their opium harvest. you might say now, now, that is taking analogy too far, but generally it is wise that producers dont get to be addicted to their products…  or there will be none left to sell.    

the interesting thing about the whole video is this… instead of saying how delicious the chocolate is, the first thing they all say when they taste it, is that it is so sweet. i think they got it right. it is sweet, you never can taste the cocoa in chocolate, because it is so sweet. u can taste cocoa in a drink, but that is only if u make it yourself and not add suger… otherwise a normal shop bought chocolate drink is very sweet and it kills any taste of chocolate. u can never get the taste of chocolate. what  u will like is the taste of sweet. give someone who says they like chocolate a cocoa drink without suger, and i can guarantee that they wont like it.

I have tasted cocoa without suger, i make it myself from cocoa powder, and believe me it is an acquired taste. it is slightly bitter. i enjoy it, as i feel i am getting the real taste of cocoa, but i bet not many will like it.

it is the same with coffee. a real coffee drinker will drink it neat, no suger, and as an espresso. any others who drink it with suger are simply drinking coffee for the suger in it. maybe u will say hang on, that is being rather harsh… harsh but true.

I have a feeling that those farmers are not so deprived after all, at least as far as not tasting cocoa is concerned. they should quietly thank the stars that the west is so brainwashed to value cocoa so much in their sugered drink, that they are willing to pay for the cocoa. And quietly thank the stars that they  have a product that finds ready buyers from the west.

 it seems to be  real easy to grow the fruit, as once the tree is mature it does not seem to take much looking after, and only need to be harvested once a year. they should use the rest of the time to find other work, or enterprises. or seek work elsewhere. then come back once a year at harvest time to get the fruit. and take it as a nice supplement and easy way to make some money. and if they have other sources of income, they wont be so desperate to sell the fruit too any middle man , and can hold out for a higher price.

so that if there is a low rainfall and less fruit, they can hold out for a higher price. and so poor harvest  wont be so devastating to them. there was talk of people getting rid of the cocoa trees and planting rubber, but if i were a cocoa farmer i will hold on, because there will be a shortage of cocoa if they all change to rubber and i should be able to sell my cocoa at a huge price. 

it is the desperate people who cannot hold out for a higher price for their cocoa that is spoiling the market for every cocoa farmer. that is what happens when u are poor, and have no other source of income. that is why low paid jobs are low paid, because there  are too many desperate people who want the job even though it is low paid. if enough people dont apply for these low paid jobs they will have to raise the wage. that is why all those who are waiters or macdonalds servers or lowly paid staff, they are in a market where too many people are willing to work , even though the wages are too low to make a living. those jobs are not a good jobs to seek work in. they are unskilled jobs. which is why it is generally not a good thing to seek work in those. it is better to find some skills and upgrade the kind of jobs you can get. jobs that not many can do, and so u can get higher pay for it.

i am thinking of nurses working for temp agencies… they can get a lot of money for each shift as they are skilled and in demand and there is a shortage. any locum work in jobs that demand is high will be good jobs to go for. look for any jobs where not many people want to do them, either because of unsocial hours or shortage of skills, or even jobs prone to wild swings of demand. if u are starting on the road of working, look carefully at what is in demand and chose those rather than just go for the low skilled jobs that everyone is fighting over.

One twin gave up sugar, the other gave up fat. Their experiment could change YOUR life | Mail Online

One twin gave up sugar, the other gave up fat. Their experiment could change YOUR life | Mail Online.

read this this morning. in the debate about healthy eating, i think we have got the wrong end of the stick. we call this food is bad, that food is good.

So, what were our conclusions? If you want to lose weight it will be much easier if you avoid processed foods made with sugar and fat. These foods affect your brain in a completely different way from natural foods and it’s hard for anyone to resist eating too much.

And any diet that eliminates fat or sugar will be unpalatable, hard to sustain and probably be bad for your health, too.

Sugar v Fat on BBC2 tomorrow at 9pm. (quote from article)

i suppose it is one way of looking at it. 

i think that is the wrong way of lookng at it. all foods are good, it is the amount you take that is bad. moderation in all things should be the motto.

there used to be something called ‘a balanced diet’/  i wonder why no one mentions that anymore. it encapsulates a healthy way of life.

eat everything, but in moderation. i guess the argueing point is how much is too much. that would vary with different people i guess, but in the end, a rule of thumb may be this… leave the table still wanting more.

and eat when you are hungry and no snacking in between meals.

i think if u follow that u can ignore all these experiments with extreme measures.

One very important side effect of just eating enough and not bother with stigmatising this food is good or bad is that you stop obsessing about foodand you dont think dwell on it . i think if u think too much about food, it makes u hungry and want to eat.  like seeing adverts about food, it makes u hungry. Correction, not hungry, because you did not feel hungry before seeing the advert; but it makes u want to eat something, anything. haha.

spaghetti has suger in it.

london

I was reading this blog where he talked about suger and in his list, he mentioned spaghetti as having suger. i was very surprised and could not believe it… why would anyone put suger in spaghetti. so i had a look at my value spaghetti and sure enough, the guideline table in front of the pack  says 1.9g . then i read at the back every 100g contains 2.5g suger.

Going back to that signposting i saw it was for 75g . so not only do they put suger in it, but they deliberately put a lower figure by using a lower standard of measure. clever. 

I am not that fanatical about wanting to remove suger in the common everyday foods we eat. everything in moderation is my motto. so no harm in suger in foods as long as u dont eat a lot of one kind of foods. 

Basically dont add suger to your drink or food and you should be ok. 

but it is still rather a revelation to know that even spaghetti has suger in it. i think take as a rule of thumb , any processed foodstuff will have suger , salt, fat in it. i mean even spaghetti has 1.5g of fat.

though it is not really anything to worry about, esp when people add parmesan cheese to their spaghetti and that is like 1000% more fat there. it is why i dont add cheese to my spaghetti bolognaise haha. or why i dont eat pizza either.

their souls want it

London
I have finished the heretics, by will storr some time ago, but delayed returning it to the library. It is not due also but also I thought I might write a review and need it for quotes. 

But every time I start I find it might be better for you to just read it. Haha.

As the book said, we all have our viewpoint which we have long ago decided is the story we are happy with. So reading the book will only reinforce your viewpoint, as anything that it said that do not coincide with that viewpoint , you wont notice.

That is it, really.

What I would like to know and it is something that the book does not address,  is how come some of us change our viewpoint , in fact sometimes drastically.

Like for eg, some one who turns gay when the children have grown up and get divorced and become gay.

Now they would have been living a straight story all these years, so if we only look at things to confirm our story, why then did this guy, (and it is usually a guy), become gay when he gets old.

Some say he is always gay but repressed it. He has a straight story imposed on him by society, it is what he had been told and so believed it. Until one day he does not …

I always say his soul decided to change the story. And his soul is the one who started the straight story too.

But it does not explain anything, by saying his soul wants it.

Maybe we humans love to have a reason for things … and my saying ‘his soul wants it’ may irritate a lot of people who wants more substantial  reasons in their life.

By saying ‘my soul wants it’, or ‘their soul wants it’ may be like others who are religious saying God wants it, or Allah wishes it. though by saying my soul wants it, i also imply that i have a say in it, and can influence my soul to move in a direction i wish.

I know it is complicated. is the soul deciding things on its own with no reference to what I want? when i say ‘I’ i mean the ego, (i suppose the soul would be the ‘id’).

You can see there are holes in my belief. haha.

how far can my ego determine what my soul wants? if it can influence it 100% then my soul follows my ego, but we can see in our life, what we (the ego ) wants do not happen always. So it seems the soul has some say but how we reacte to the things it brings into our lives, is something we can control. it seems like the soul bring to us things or events ( like a dog bringing us things in its roaming) and let us decide to take it up or not. 

I am thinking of the time when i find things. i figured it is like the soul brings it forth. Sometimes it is not obvious that i might need them.  but i pick it up anyway. only later, sometimes months, years later, i find they are useful. or my friends find it useful and i can give it to them.

Also there are times when my soul does some things in my life. like make things go missing, or make the washing machine stop working.

i could chose to get upset and call in the repair man, or hunt high and low and turn the house upside down looking for the missing thing. but i figured the soul is acting up so i just stop looking for that thing, or switch the washing machine off and just do other things.

and i find that things revert to normal. the missing item turned up , the washing machine starts and works again. usually i say to myself. now what fuck is all that about? and i mentally say to my soul stop this nonsense will you. i wont have it!! i dont mind scolding my soul when it does that. trying to make my life difficult is what it is doing, and i mentally give it a slap or two. 

I know it sounds ridiculous doesn’t it? but some people’s souls do want to make their lives difficult. and i will scold my soul if it does that to me. i have no wish to make my life difficult. 

I hope u dont think i am losing my marbles. haha. but when they raise the gas and electricity tariff, in 2008, i decided i am not going to make my life difficult, i shall cut out all that nonsense about gas prices rising. i simply switch off my gas supply and stop using the boiler to boil water, but use the kettle instead. by only using electricity for all my power usage, i dont have to pay the gas bill. it so happened that british gas stop the standing charge. u only pay if u use it.

so at a stroke i dont have a gas bill.

Then there was the time when they raised the price of fresh milk.

i decided i wont bother with buying it. it goes off and so u have to finish it or else u throw it away because it goes rancid.

It is ridiculous really.

so i decided to buy milk powder instead and it lasts me months. it is the same with cereals , and needing fresh milk for it. i decided it is a waste, much of it is full of suger , and so decided to just buy oats. no suger there. and put sultanas in it, or fresh fruits if i got it. well problem solved. haha. the porridge makes me regular, no constipation, and that is wonderful.

At the same time they increased the price of suger. well i decided that i shall not use it any more. same with salt. so that means two items less to buy. and tea, i decided i shall use tea leaves, they last so much longer, as they can be refilled. tea bags just are not strong enough for reuse and does not taste nice and it has an awful colour. so at a few strokes like this i simply got rid of things making my life difficult. 

its the same with the car. i decided it was a ridiculous waste of money, and so when the engine blew, it seems it ran out of water in the radiator, i got rid of it. and that made my life a whole lot less difficult. it made me wonder why i wanted to make my life difficult in the first place by buying that car.  i guess it is something we want to experience just so we can get rid of it, and be able to say i experienced it and so no need to experience it anymore. i have a feeling there are lots of things in this life we want to know, just so we can be satisfied it is no great thing after all, and let it go. 

People may think if we don’t have reason we are nothing better than animals. Man is much more than animals, that would be their story, their belief. 

You can see it is a complex issue and maybe there is no explanation to why some people believe this thing, and others that, and so on.

I feel my saying’ their souls wants it’ is good enough reason for me.

Update, 6.30pm

Something happened after i wrote the above, and u tell me if my soul have anything to do with it. 

I mentioned the washing machine in the post earlier, and that brought to mind to clear the outlet pipe of any debris or washing powder. In the past I have found it can completely block it.

Well, I unscrewed the special valve- like connection that connects the outlet waste pipe from the washing machine to the pipe that leads from the kitchen sink to the main rising mainswaste pipe running down the length of the flats to the ground below.

After cleaning the special valve , (there was not much debris or blockage,) I was screwing it back and it slipped and fell through the hole in the cupboard and into the space where that big waste pipe runs to the ground.

When I felt with my hands the vast space under there and into which my valve has fallen I thought well that is that. I have lost it now, it must be lying way down there, maybe even as far as the ground.

I had visions of me trying to find a replacement in the bathroom shop, and trying to tell them what I need. Not a nice prospect.

But for a wonder, I saw a pale white thing lying a distance down across the chasm and on a ledge. And it was my valve.

Thank goodness my soul don’t want me to have a difficult life. I retrieved it carefully and rescrewed it back and now all is shipshape.

It got me to thinking it could easily have gone the other way, the valve fallen through to the ground and me having a difficult time trying to get a replacement and my washing machine out of commission till then.

Finding it on the ledge saved me a lot of bother. Well, I thank my soul for saving me from it.

suger and obesity

london

4.1.12
Read this article in the guardian about suger being the cause of obesity. 
It works like this. The suger raises blood levels which raises insulin levels and the insulin deactivates the leptin hormone, which is released by fat cells when they are full to tell the body to stop storing fat. 
Whatever the mechanism, it seems suger is the culprit.

And suger is everywhere hidden in processed foods. That is why people advise u not to eat too much of those processed foods.

It cited an eg, asking how much suger do u think in those bottles of flavoured water that they sell instead of just plain water. 
They are delicious to drink, even for me, which makes me suspect them. Haha.

They have the flavour of whatever fruit is on the label, most probably chemically induced because we all know how clever they are at mimicking flavours with laboratory made chemicals, but it seems they have a lot of suger in them as well.

And all those low fat foods sold in ready made meals, or yoghurt or whatever, it seems removing the fat makes it tastes awful so they compensate by using lots of suger in the form of corn suger.

So the article argues that obese people are not to blame. By eating all those processed foods, drinking soda, etc, they don’t realise they are eating a lot of suger . Their high suger intake makes them fat, and makes them gluttonous. And they don’t realise they are eating so much suger.

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/food-and-drink/features/how-much-invisible-sugar-do-you-eat-8437575.html

I think I had suspected long ago that a lot of processed foods have suger in it, and that suger is not good for you. That is why I stopped adding suger to my foods or drink. And stopped eating processed meals, or pizza, or cakes, or cereals. I don’t have desserts.

Fortunately, it is not a Chinese custom to have a sweet dessert after a meal. nor to have a starter for that matter.

We just put all the dishes on the table and eat. It stops us overeating, because if u have food coming one after the other as courses, u tend to eat more.

Whereas once you have all the food in front of you, and u soon eat your fill, the dishes all get emptied and that automatically means u stop eating.

Most people dont ask the hostess to refill the empty dishes and bring in more food. once the initial hunger is appeased most of us will have enough.  Haha.

It is no hardship not to eat those sweet things, though many of u reading this must be thinking, what a sad life to deprive yourself of all those goodies. Haha.

Well, it is easy to stop eating those things because I have not made myself crave them. It is all in the mind. I just made up my mind that I don’t like sweet things. And as a child I have never been given sweets as a treat so never get to believe that sweets are a treat. Something that parents should refrain from if they don’t want their children to develop a sweet tooth.

5 bad foods and other thoughts about healthy eating

London
1.1.13 tuesday
Watching this tv program on bbc2, called nature’s weirdest, presented by chris packham, showing travellers to foreign countries being infected with parasites and bringing them back in their bodies, makes me glad I am not travelling now.

And that I am glad I did not pick up these parasites when I was travelling in my younger days. U might say many of us travel to cities and towns and so are hardly likely to meet up with these parasites.

But many of these parasites are spread by flies and biting insects and these will invade towns and villages.

There is one that lives under the skin moves about and cause the immune system to reacte to its presence by causing a swelling in the skin. So over the years, u might find different parts of your body mysteriously swelling and subsiding for no reason at all. The worm do not damage the body of the host, which is clever of it, because if it did and kill the host it wont do itself any good.

I guess it is up to your soul whether u will get infected. After all many have gone there before and came back unscathed, until u came along and picked it up. So why you and not the others? It must be your soul wants to experience it.

I saw ‘Up’ the movie on tv just now. I am glad I did not see it when it first came out. It got a lot of good reviews, with people saying it is so feel good a movie, but I just cannot believe the story line. A house that flew away on balloons, is impossible.

And all those talking dogs … it was so ridiculous, I switched the tv off and went to cook my dinner rather than see it to the end. It was too childish by which I mean it was creating silly sentimental situations.

2.1.13 Wednesday
I got an email from stumbleupon.com I subscribed long ago but forgot to visit it for sometime now. This emailed sent me some suggestions so I clicked on one, and came across this website, with the headline 5foods that are bad for you.

i did not realise it at the time, but it was an advert for a weightloss website and the video is a standard one used by all of them to catch the eye.
The link went to a weightloss website but the video is very interesting, even though it is a spiel for joining their membership, (quite reasonable I thought at £29 for a one off payment, and money back if u don’t lose weight.)
And their list of 5 foods that are bad for u is very good.

It is concentrated fruit juice,
Wholemeal bread
Margarine
Soy
Gm corn.

They are all processed foods made by manufacturers.

U might think soy is natural, it is from the soya bean and we in Malaysia all know it as the soya bean milk drink and tofu. In their natural state they are very healthy, we used to buy these drinks at the hawker stalls, and slabs of tofu in the wet market; but not when the manufacturers have got their hands on it. Haha.

As for the genetically modified (GM ) corn, it illustrated it with a picture of a corn on the cob. i think corn on the cob  should be ok, but all the stuff they add in foods by the manufacturer to bulk it out will be bad.
I don’t buy the suggestion by the website that GM is bad.

It is the amount of any foods eaten which determines if u gain weight or not. I think u can still eat all the above so called bad foods, and not lose weight provided u eat very little of it and mix it with a lot of other types of foodstuff that is in its original state. Like fresh veg, fruits, and foods u cook from scratch.

My suggestion for what it is worth is that they are not bad, per se. You can eat them just don’t eat a lot of them.

I find the secret to weight loss is really eat very little of any one type of foods. but have a vast variety of them, so that add them up and u can eat as much as u like.

In the video it is mentioned that sweet increased glucose levels and affect insulin production, all of which affect the suger levels in the blood and that have an effect on fat storage by the body.

So cut out the suger and that is why the concentrated fruit juice is not good for you. They have a lot of suger in them. I don’t hear them say don’t put suger in your tea or coffee. That would be the natural conclusion of not having sweets in the diet.
Needless to say I don’t put suger in my drinks, nor drink soda or squash drinks.

The bread? It is a processed food, like pasta, pizza.
I eat them, but I keep them frozen so I don’t feel I have to finish off the whole loaf at once, for fear it goes off.

Margarine, is because of its transfat. So now they are suggesting u eat butter instead. But again, don’t slather the butter on like there is no tomorrow. I bet u can eat margarine, but just coat it thinly and not pile it on. I spread it very thinly if I use it . I don’t spread jam on top of my magarine on bread. I just spread one layer and that is it.

Soy and corn will be in a lot of processed foods so best just avoid processed foods. And remember, cheese , olives are processed foods.
Quite a lot of foods are processed though u might not suspect at first.

U cannot eat fresh olives by itself, it is inedible.

So best to not eat a lot of them, because in many cases it is hard to know what is processed or not.

This guy says there are 5 foods that are absolutely so bad, u cannot even eat them in moderation.
He lists doughnuts, soda, French fries, chips(I think he meant what the british call crisps, tacos, corn chips), fried non fish seafood.

The non fish seafood, like shrimps, lobsters, clams, oysters, shell fish, he says is full of mercury. And parasites.

I like shrimps, but they are expensive anyway so that limit’s the amount I eat them. So I guess they naturally limit my intake of them. Sometimes it is good not to be so rich … because it makes u eat less of these expensive stuff and save your health. Haha.

If u are very rich u can eat loads of meat, fish, seafood, caviar, etc that cannot be good for you, just the sheer amount u can eat, it makes a glutton out of you. And u have to have great discipline to limit yourself. If u are rich, and u cannot eat all these things as much as u like, it kind of take the fun out of being rich, don’t you think?

I doubt their advise about not eating those things. Health wise it is not that big a factor. once in a while it is ok to eat them. Anyway, don’t get so obsessed about them, the amount of mercury poisoning is so small, u will die of something else first.

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2003/10/18/worst-foods.aspx