Acrylamide again! This time a real poison to worry about in diets and food production.

Caramelising of food is a vital part of baking, of frying, grilling, barbecuing, toasting, roasting, and perhaps even 'popping'. If there is a colour change from on the way from white, through all stages of brown to black you can bet that its got acrylamide there or in the making.
What seems to be missing from all the warnings on acrylamide is the crisping factor. Crisping, crunchiness, crackling, crumbly, crusty; all these so desirable in everything we cook - pies, cakes, pastries, breads, and of course toasts and crisps that come to mind so easily. Crispness and the crunch infers a brittleness. That in itself is not bad but in the nature of the rush haste to get food into our mouths and down our gullets it is inevitable that that quite a bit of trauma is imposed on the lining of the oesophagus and upper stomach. So not only is our body coping with a roughness or sharpness, it is the most burned food that is doing this damage and thereby adding a mechanical damage to the chemical damage causing chronic inflammation, a precursor of cancer. See here
As old as cooking itself. That's how long mankind has been exposed to acrylamide. And it is as certain as day follows night that it was the caramelised animals, at first unwittingly caught up in fires, and then of course purposely, whose smell and taste inured forever man to the concept of cooking.
And it is caramelising, be it sugars and refined carbohydrates, protein or fat that produces in one form or another the acrylamides that are now getting a public airing. Cancer Research UK says crisps, chips and biscuits are major sources of acrylamide here

The headlines generated in the UK were widespread in the tablet press and well represented in the broadsheets. However no matter how much by way of warning was made the press in an attempt to expand their copy pressed many scientists and sceptics to undermine the thrust of the information.
The FSA in the UK, the Food Standards Agency, for once was trying to get a message across to prevent serious illness in the wide sense. Its failure in the horse meat scandal brought many a caustic and cynical remark - but it was at least a start.
However important it seemed for the public to be aware of acrylamide in cooking practice there was an immediate softening or amelioration of the problem by a scale of recommended level that were acceptable - this is a failure - if something is poisonous any exposure is dangerous.BBC Radio 4 article and Britains Food Standard Authority  report here.

Although the advice to cook no more than produces a golden colour is on the way to solving the problem it is only that because any colour change infers the presence of acrylamides. There needs a rethink on the way of capturing crunch in eating without the worry of producing what is indeed a toxic substance.

                   

Diet is a vital force for survival of any country

Diet is a vital force for survival for any country so 'What Are The Fundamentals In Planning Vegetable Farming On Local and Industrial Scale?’

We are learning in the ‘West’ slowly and surely that we need to know for certain that what we put in our mouth is what the body that has that mouth really is able to process and use for good sustenance and nutrition without any deleterious effect arising.

This does not mean eating something just because of tradition, family, friends and neighbours; not because it is cheap, not because we are pressurised by Big Foodie through advertising and shop mark-up.

We are all different and though our needs will be similar for whole swaths of people and even whole races or sections of a race  it is important that individual needs and nuances of capacity to digest and properly utilise  any single food especially a traditional staple.

In respect of this we in the West have, for centuries, relied on bread as a staple - ‘bread is the staff of life’ is a maxim many were brought up on. Bread was made from spelt and wheat that was low in gluten.

However, over the last fifty years, bread manufacturers discovered that by using wheat that had higher gluten content they could produce a loaf of bread that needed less grain, would hold more water and go stale less quickly. Of course this was a winner all round for them - less grain, they could charge you for the extra water they put in and the shelf life was extended. Bread manufacturers made lots of extra money selling the public a loaf that had less grain and therefore the ‘goodness’ of the grain.

It turns out that many, it might be as higher than 70%, who buy bread, are sensitive in some degree or other to the very thing that made the bread manufacturers rich -  gluten.

This complex protein, very good at holding water in the bread mix, appears to be sensitising many people making for a whole range of symptoms and even illnesses in the West.

Gradually, in supermarkets across the UK, whole sections of shelving are devoted to ‘Free From’. They don’t even have to say what - it is understood - gluten.

The point of the conversation about bread was to show that Big Foodie, in this case the bread manufacturers, have through their greed, changed what was a relatively harmless staple food.

It is important that those people who will oversee our food sourcing, look objectively at who is pushing a particular food type before they put it in their mouths. It is worth noting that Big Foodie will not pick up the tab for the damage its product do to society, the millions that society has to pay in taxes to sustain, for instance, in the UK, our National Health System.

Why Attention To Diet Is Important Amongst The Emerging Middle Classes in Africa.

 What Africa must not do now, with its greater wealth per capita and the sophistication of mobile and computer communication, is make the mistakes that have happened in Asia. The basic rice, vegetable, fish and meat diet that kept Asia going in the past is being eroded by ‘Westernisation’.

With more disposable income across Asia it is meat, wheat and dairy that are on the increase and with a marked effect on the incidence of obesity and heart disease - ‘so called Western diseases which are crippling their health systems and disabling their working populations .

Africa must not let the West do this to them.

Though it is increasingly accepted by some Africans  that some of their traditional foods and methods of preparation do not provide ideal nutrition, eg nshima, it is vital that good thinking goes into what might be best to replace them and that they be replaced gradually where they are not healthy.

Most of Sub Saharan Africa is fabulously fertile. There are of course issues about fresh water but that is there when it is wanted to water the marvellous vegetables that she sends to the rest of the world.

Slowly the West is learning, after hundreds of years, not to destroy these vegetables by cooking them.

but to eat them as they are, incorporating them into warm raw vegetable salads.

It is great for us that we can have summer vegetables in a winter many thousands of miles distant  but so sad that Africa seems not to be able to harvest for itself, to be putting on them on your plates straight out of the garden.

Africa must avoid a rapid replacing of its traditional foods with the industrialised rubbish that infests the West, products  that carry preservatives, sugars and many other unhealthy substances that cause obesity and illness.  Many natural traditional foods can be kept and incorporated with new foods that can be cultivated in your rich soil.

Companies across the rest of the world spend billions on advertising their rubbish and will take every opportunity to do so in Africa.  

Increasingly in the UK people are stalling in the supermarket walkways, taking goods off shelves and spending time reading what they might be putting in their mouths.

Public awareness is helping this to happen - food programmes, and media onslaughts about what is good and bad are helping. I am sure this is happening in Africa too but the pressure must be kept up to stop what I call  ‘Big Foodie’ - the big manufacturers -calling the shots.

THE NHS IS PICKING UP THE TAB

Like death and taxes a genuine truth is that the UK's health service is picking up the tab for the rubbish that is bought and eaten under the auspices of Big Foodie and a frail public information service. It is as much , if not even more, than that cost of the self-imposed injury we suffer on the roads from speeding, driving on the phone and other dangerous driving which reflects in more immediate death and injury.

Governments in general are beholden to Big Foodie, Big Pharma, Big Mota for taxes and employment - most all too terrified of restraining to and dictating to them.

WHAT THE GOVERNMENT WON'T DO WE MUST NOW PRESS TO BENEVOLENT CAPITALISM TO DO INSTEAD. Kudos from doing the right thing will be their new advertising.