Can Big Foodie Be Controlled LikeTobacco Legislation?

There is talk of governmental pressure to force the tobacco industry to reduce the nicotine content of cigarettes. This fundamental disruption of the basic manufacture and presentation of cigarettes indicates the seriousness with which this is seen to affect health - this is because intense health warnings, heavy taxation, and restrictive advertising have failed to impact on the habit. If the supply to the public seems bound to continue then the product must change.

The food industry presents to the public a massive spectrum of manufactured goods, very many of which are bad for health. The public is constantly informed of what things in these good they should avoid - sugars, preservatives, salt and some fats. Their presence or otherwise is usually lost in small writing on the packaging or an inference might be inferred by some colour coding scheme.

What I want to see is on all packaged food and all fresh food is a big label that says it is healthy on an easily understandable scale determined by the medical profession, food scientists and nutritionists who are not paid by the food industry.

This means a person who picks up packet of Kellogs Special K will see in an instant, for this will be printed big and unmissable by the product’s name, if this is healthy and if so the manner and amount that should be eaten. It might rate this product badly but this would not matter if it indicated that little harm would occur if no more than a teaspoon was taken each day. Thus the coding would infer goodness, and the safe serving. It might indicate the ideal preparation. This type of coding would not be welcome by the food industry but at least it would not immediately blackball the product.

Many Kellogs products bear close scrutiny as their persuasive advertising can blind one to adverse components.

The real chore now is to get some real thinking into evaluating the effect of the individual components on health and the compilation of the scoring and coding system and it enforcement on packaging and labelling.

Why You Should Make Your Own 'Spread for Bread'

Margarines or spreads as they are commonly callled now came into fashion after fears that butter and similar milk products induced early heart disease. It seems that this is not necessarily the case and that some saturated fats are good for you in that the body needs them as precursors to certain hormones and vital factors. 

This is good news as it appears that many of the spreads available are not terribly healthy by virtue of the means of manufacture and the philosophy of the makers to use water as part of their make up - it seems that a great deal of heat is required to get the fats to emulsify in the added water which by the way the percentage contained is seldom if ever mentioned on the packaging. http://bit.ly/20sbAC9
The healthy answer to this is to make your own spread and it so simple.
Using a deepish plastic container put 125 grams of butter - this is usually half a pack and place it in a warm place till it is melting or really soft -  then add as much virgin olive oil - and using a fork mix thoroughly - a little milk might appear  - about a teaspoonful at most, but ignore this and store your new spread in the fridge. Using it will be so easy - if its too soft add a little more butter or too hard, use more oil.
 The ideal state is that it spreads easily as thin layer on your bread without seeping into it. Thus it also economical!

 

The elephant in the food room

 From flour millers to fast food outlets it is as though there are no restraints by food advisory bodies on what they can offer the public but it is the refined rubbish they produce and sell which is shortening peoples lives.
The media especially television ads which promote, almost as a matter of right - like the right for clean air and water - their product as being almost next to godliness in its good for one.
Cereals manufacturers, especially Kellogs continue to promote patently sugar / refined carbohydrate wheat or corn products with or without sugar, honey and chocolate to exploit the kids' market.
That there is no publicity to the contrary to refute what they say about the product, whether deemed by the viewer as good or bad, as it is drip fed into their subconscious as 'ok'. Again similarly Weetabix, probably a lot less toxic than the Kellogs products are grains damaged by heat to make them crisp. With both these brands once they are wet they become a repulsive slurry - heat having damaged the structure of the product's fibre content. To offset the drear food value these makers fortify their products with vitamins, the value of which might well be dubious allowing the heat effect during production.
   So what is the elephant in the food room ?  It is  utter failure of rubbish food products to be labelled as such in a manner which the public will take notice and therein lies a gigantic problem.

Getting back to Crumbing

There are more issues that relate to crumbing, or breading, as it sometimes called than the food value of the crumbs.

One of the functions of crumbing, like battering fish with a flour and water mix, is to provide a casing for the food in which it cooks. Nearly always this implies the use of fat or oil in the food itself or in or on the pan in which it is being cooked. The casing then becomes a part of the meal and for the most part is deemed delicious and crisp and an essential part of the meal - what would fish and chips, and KFC, be without the crunch of the fat soaked surround? Another use of crumbs is adornment and one classic example is that of crumbing a leg or major joint of ham usually with a orange dyed or yellow dyed crumb.

P = Extract of Paprika  E160c

A = Extract of Annatto E160b

C = Extract of Curcumin E100;   

T = Extract of Turmeric (Spice)

K = Extract of Paprika (Spice)
One hopes these ‘extracts’ are harmless but what has the heat, mostly quite severe heat, plus any ‘burning’ effect done to them - how harmless are they after that?

There is therefore an ipso facto implication that a good deal of cooked oil or fat will be needed to produce the food in the proper manner.

   This immediately changes the ballgame when assessing calorific value of the food.

   This also means the crumbed casing has to be looked at objectively.

   The order of this crumbing could be a pretty good reflection of the entire food industry as whole, as all meat types, fresh and preserved, fish and vegetables are involved - even eggs in that invention called Scotch Eggs.

   This also raises the question of how to make people aware of how bad crumbing is for ones’ health.

Making your own dressings and sauces makes sense!

The shelves of the our food stores and supermarkets are stacked with sauces and dressings most of which have components which deteriorate quickly with time, the effect of daylight, overhead lighting and a range of preservatives to lengthen its shelf life

Think of mayonnaises - the backbone of which are oils - ideally they should be olive oil but most will be cheaper vegetable oils. Think of this oil - it could be old before manufacture and you can be sure that it will not be the best quality - then the exposure to the damaging atmosphere during manufacture - the intense mixing procedures and then the bottling - usually into clear containers allowing light to further damage or destroy the natural benefits that the oil might have. On top of all this the time it has sat on the shop shelf.

Yes, buying off the shelf is convenient but what you make will be better or become better as you get the hang of making such things yourself.

Remember the next second is the beginning of the rest of your life so make it a healthy one by rejecting rubbishy packaged sauces made by Big Foodie.

The more you do this, the more it will become second nature for you and then you will not find it an inconvenience anymore!

How to Avoid Labelled Food

Labelling of food - difficult to read, won’t tell all the truth and you can do better.

Labelled food is for the most part already cooked and containing preservatives and constitutes about 80% of the goods in the store

- this is from most cereals to what is tinned and prepacked - vegetables - fruit - meats - dairy/sweets - so you have no control over how it is cooked and what is in it that shouldn’t be there.

How to avoid:

  don’t buy labelled food!

  buy fresh and cook at home!

Problem solved!

Chewing Gum and Pavements

Used chewing gum has spoiled and  is spoiling our pavements and many other walking areas and it is happening across most of the world. In the UK It costs £1. 50 to remove one such offending mark. Singapore forbids the purchase and import  of chewing gum and imposes  fines of up to $700 dollars ( £400) for spitting it out on a pavement.http://bit.ly/2cW1axe

Public awareness of six gross side effects of gum might influence consumption favourably for some http://bit.ly/1m2pfgU but probably not the disposal problem for most..

The annual bill of  £60 million to clean our streets of discarded chewing gum http://bit.ly/2nXyV1o                               should be borne by the gum manufacturers, one of which makes well over £200 million annually    http://bit.ly/2odW54c. However ideal it is unlikely to come to pass.

I believe the proper approach by the Government in the first place is to force manufacturers to package all chewing gum with an acceptable means of the discarding or disposing of it. This could be small booklet of papers or the packaging itself to contain the discarded gum. Once wrapped the gum can be cleanly pocketed or otherwise disposed of. Even on a pavement, once ‘wrapped’ it will not stick!  

Have it as a trial along with well publicized warning warning that failure of this to work will invoke serious fines or even abolition of gum for sale.  

The problem has been around for 169 years; let’s stop it now ! http://bit.ly/2oPtd5G

The Desperate Need For Undermining Big Foodie.

Chefs and all those who show their food skill in the media would do well to have new mores about what they recommend.
It used to be said of Normandy and Brittany too but to a lesser extent how can food fail there when their is so much fabulous dairy and great fish from the sea in the hands of French flair.
Well of course it never did fail being just great.
But like those counties of France we across the western world have fabulous food sources at hand and we fail.
Well we need to rethink food so that it precludes what is unhealthy both in substance and in preparation and yet allows itself to be yearned for.
But here lies the problem; the public in general cannot disentangle itself from what it has known in the past and what the eternal drumming into our consciousness what advertising is letting Big Foodie impress us with.
We need to be able to justly rubbish food companies whose produce is unhealthy with impunity. An American company is selling biscuits for breakfast under a label suggesting a real healthy food when indeed they are convenience pap -  the rub is the price which is breathtaking - but a bit like a popular cereal maker.
The supermarkets generate interest in the product by half price offerings - still at painful prices and then put the price back and wait for those who have taken the bait.
Till a construct or algorithm is generated which will keep exposure of Big Foodie from taking it opponents to court we need thousands of volunteers who will go into super markets and where rubbish food are on sale surreptitiously stick on the shelf edge an appropriate label warning would be buyers.
Any ideas how to get this idea into a wide spread practice would be welcome. Perhaps the popularising of a blog listing those products could be a start!

Scrumptious Turkanga Patties

Have the Australians crossed turkeys with kangaroos to produce a new meat for the market? No, I’m afraid not - there would be a lot of people jumping up and down and be hopping mad if that was the case.

The answer is no. But in Australia kangaroo meat in a variety of cuts is fairly easily available in supermarkets as is turkey.

Using mince from both animals mixed to make patties, rissoles or meat loaf produces really tasty and healthy item which is liked by kids and adults alike.

Turkanga Meat Patties.

Essential ingredients-

  Equal amounts of kangaroo and turkey mince - a big handful or around 350 grams each.

  An egg

  A big breakfast cup full of finely cut onions - its a good idea to sweat these a little seperately - just to soften them so they conform to the shape you make the mix

  A big breakfast cup full of finely grated sweet potato

  Half a big breakfast cup of cooked brown rice   

  A heaped dessert spoon  of psyllium or an another egg

  Pepper and salt to taste.

Optional

  Some finely chopped parsley

  Some dried herbs of your choice

  Some chillie fresh or dried - take it easy to start with especially if you want kids to eat them!

Mix thoroughly in a good sized bowl making sure the mince is well broken apart and evenly spread. Leaving it for a while at room temperature lets the flavour permeate and develope.

At this stage you can pop the mix in the fridge ready for later or go ahead and make the patties.

It’s a nice idea to coat them just before you cook them and I use an oatmeal and rice flour in equal portions in a clear plastic bag. Rolled oats works a treat too.

Using a biggish spoon as a measure, depending on the size you want your patties, take a dollop of the mix, make into a rough ball and drop it into the bag with the rice flour and oatmeal coating and jiggle this about till it is coated- this makes coating so easy and so much less messy ..

Remove and place aside - repeat  this till you have a suitable number ready to cook.

The cooking! Pop a little butter and/or rice bran oil in an open pan over which you can place a lid.

Let it heat through on a really low jet - if you use butter, it is ready when it  has stopped making bubbles.

Place the coated balls gently in the pan and press down to make a flattish pattie and allow a little space around each.

Keeping a lid on cook on a flicker of heat for 20 minute or so then turn them over for another 15 minutes with lid on. If a little browning is desired leave the lid off for five or ten minutes turning once for each side.

Keeping the heat down and the lid on means thorough cooking of the meat but also little tendency to break up or to express liquid from themselves meaning they are really moist and tender.

Cooking on a flicker of heat this way the meat component contracts very little and thus does not express all the nice juices of the meat and keeps the patties from swimming in gravy.

Serve on really warm plate with turmeric infused brown rice and warmed raw greens - chopped Chinese broccoli and/or celery give a nice crunch.

Cooking without recipes is a smart thing to do but it requires a little thought. It has the advantage that you do need to think whereas with recipes the thinking has been done for you.

Therefore I apologise for the above but I can assure you your variations on the above will produce a marvellous meal meaning strict adherence is unimportant.

But the important principle here is that in cooking anything containing mince it lends itself to being infused with great flavours at its very heart and very things that do that keep the texture open and tender.

The onions and the rice breakup the tenacious meat mince allowing its juices to surround all the particles and sink into the rice. The egg and the psyllium do the same plus bind the mix.

These principles will work with any mince, even elephant ( heaven forbid ) or crocodile or fish.

Just heating a piece of mince will result in a uninteresting product which in which the meat has contracted to squeeze out the natural juices to become hard.

Shaping up a public mind set about better food

Allowing that we, the paying public, are the problem that gives power to Big Foodie, how do we now get on an even footing to fight back? The middle men, the main ones, that is, are the supermarkets and in no way is it in their immediate interest to undermine the manufacture and presentation of pricey alternatives to basic foods that they sell. They almost certainly would not allow warnings to be attached to the shelves holding such products nor offer cheaper and healthier alternatives.

The governments are weak and will give into pressure to avoid widespread public warnings.

Education of the public is the answer - but allowing the media are dependent on advertising revenue they will be reticent in taking part so where to we go from there.

NGO’s (non-government organisations,) and non- profit organisations could be a start.

Assistance from Crowdfunding ( the practice of funding a project or venture by raising monetary contributions from a large number of people and is a form of crowd-sourcing and of alternative finance.) could underwrite advertising and media exposure.

But how to shape up the project so it captures the public imagination! The spectrum of foods being involved is gigantic, the responsible companies so wealthy and the likelihood of litigation so high that a foolproof algorithm is necessary.

Big ships take a lot of turning!!

Please let me know your ideas.

Food for thought

Perhaps one of the reasons Big Foodie and it's mostly unhealthy products have such a penetration into the food market is that the public itself allows it. How has this come about?

I think, as always, of the convenience factor. Decades ago the housewife stayed at home, looked after the kids and spent good deal of time organising the purchase and the husbanding of food in and into the household. The cultural finesse that she would have had handed down from her mother would express itself as a continuance uninterrupted and inviolate.

In the twentieth and now twenty first centuries across the world women are supplementing their husbands income by working full or part time and are therefore not in the house to offer time to that cultural culinary finesse that they once did.

Big Foodie has hopped on the bandwagon and with money, mass production, a packaging revolution and intense marketing practices filled the food shops with a spectrum of items aimed at a minimum of preparation to seduce the now time deprived housewife.

Big Foodie is making billions from goods that cost next to nothing. The first high price the public is paying is, at the counter, a lot more money. The second price is that they are paying for a stale product,  the cost of seductive and mostly non-recyclable packaging, and the highest price of all for a product that is almost universally unhealthy containing a range of preservatives with documented risks to cardiovascular and other body systems.

What is needed is for the public, male and female, to be made aware both of risk of Big Foodie products and how easy it is, with a minimum of inconvenience, to make something at home that is better and cheaper.

The conglomerates that constitute Big Foodie must be stopped.

There is a breathtaking ruthlessness by the major food manufacturers to impose much of their rubbish on their paying public. For example Kellogg's appear to have no conscience producing breakfast cereals for kids with chocolate incorporated in them with the concomitant sugar in them as well. In a world where diabetes, obesity is rife and kids are suffering from dental caries in droves this company patently is showing that its share of the breakfast cereal  market should not suffer. This is rank and overt capitalist greed and shows a complete lack of conscience. In the face of well published evidence for the health risks they show they don't care. Many other major cereal brands follow suit and do, if not precisely, something else to enhance acceptance of their product. Quaker make an oat breakfast wherein the oats are treated to become a seemingly more acceptable product through a treatment that makes them a runny slurry when hot milk is added. Their treatment of the oats has reduced the roughage effect of normal rolled oats for the advertised impression of something creamy and hot for breakfast totally denying their customers of a healthy alternative.
For this they charge a ridiculous extra cost and make so much money they can pay an astronaut to push their product on prime time TV.

A solution might be to legislate labeling on all such products a cheaper and healthier alternative in easily readable print so it cannot be missed just as the health warnings now exist on cigarette packets.

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.

The Great Future Challenge With Food.

A great deal if not most of the pleasantness of food has been hijacked by Big Foodie, ( the food version of that manipulating and money making shower Big Pharma ). Using advertising, with a good deal of salt, sugar, refined and processed dairy, carbohydrate, protein and fat they are manipulating our taste for all food.

The real difficulty now is that we have the ‘need’ for the taste and texture and seek it no matter how bad we know it is for us.

Crisps are a prime example and they have become almost de rigeur, at least a small portion, in kid’s lunches in the UK - sliced potato burned in much used fat till it is crisped and flavoured with familiar items like cheese, sausage and mash, onion in packet where the retained fat in the potato can become rancid.

The popularity of such rubbish foods will persist till there is something to take their place.

That is the challenge!

What could be nicer for a sweet that apple pie and cream. The cream is probably the healthiest bit but the apple usually has refined cornflour as a carrier with added sugar. The pastry is fat and refined flour, the latter being probably the most unhealthy of the two with almost certainly some sugar as well.

Imagine the pastry being of a high fibre flour and butter, the apples being tart Bramleys, no sugar but a dash of lemon juice and cloves  in a carrier of gluten free flour and some psylium to make the carrier a little gelatinous and to make the apple pulp a continuum.

The cream stays as it is, whipped into peaks, and then the contrast comes between the relatively sweet cream and the sharp apple and lemon. Textually and taste wise all contrasting and fabulously healthier than the usual sweet mix.

Note that I said healthier not healthy! It's just a step on the way to getting the taste buds in a new frame of mind.   

My recipe for bread using hay (with a warning)

I am proposing the use of oat hay because it is roughage, very high in fibre and offers a light and interesting texture to the bread I make. I bought a bale of hay from a horse supplier and it was extra-ordinarily cheap. I understand the hay I bought has been cleaned of dust and dirt and is for the use of horses .
The internet shows that hay can contain aspergillas - a fungus, and mites and an assortment of bacteria
I take the view that I am cooking my bread and that should deal with that - also I examine the hay before I put it in the coffee grinder to make it into a mixable fluff to see that it looks clean.
I understand that storing of hay under some conditions can cause it to ignite spontaneously and cause a fire. I do not know the allergy issues which relate to hay.

Like many I can afford bread from any shop, boutique or bog standard white gunge. However both have the problem of high gluten and starch, and low and most insoluble fibre with the added worry that many have a burnt crust rich in cancer promoting acrylamides. For these reasons I propose you try the following:-

This is a modestly leavened bread using two modes for this - a small amount of yeast to react with its low rye flour content and bicarbonate to assist in aiding a raise in the psyllium in the mix.The rye is the only gluten containing  component and represents about 0.7% by weight of the finished product

The bread tastes good in it’s own right but is just super if very lightly toasted. The texture is chewy and invites the keeping of it in the mouth for some time with the attendant benefit of saliva for digestion. It slices really well..

The following is one of many attempts to solve these problems from a home made bread with the minimum of effort and cost.

Using a microwave with safe glass moulds produces a pleasant crust which is not burnt and therefore eliminated the acrylamides issue. A pyrex mould is good for this, tough as old boots and cheap to buy. I think silicone rubber bread moulds are pretty safe but I’m not dead sure on this, silicon derivatives usually being very stable and un-reactive - they certainly work well!

There is no kneading involved and the recipe makes three really hefty loaves.

After decanting the mix into the moulds they are put in a warm oven or place to rise.

I cook one in the microwave then and there and put the other two ‘gently’ into the freezer for later  when they can be thawed and microwaved straight off.

I carefully slice the cooked loaf as soon as it is cooled and freeze most of it. This frees up fridge space and ensures that it doesn’t dry out. Popping a frozen slice or two in the toaster defrosts it and then I can give it a light toasting if that’s what I want.

I am unable physically to handle or stir a large mix so I use a machine mixer  friends lent me for this - a fit person perhaps will find this unnecessary but you will need a really big bowl. I repeat - there is no need to knead.

The mixer they lent me is an ancient  Kenwood Chef Food Mixer which I think is a typical household mixer.

I checked on the internet and these second hand can be bought for a fraction of the new cost.

I make three loaves but naturally just divide quantities to suit the mixer you have.

1.

Thoroughly mix the following dry in the bowl of your miixer do this very slowly at first so it doesn’t spiral into the air and cause a mess.

1 kg of jumbo oats

200 gm of Rye flour

100 gm of oat bran

30 gm of oat hay ( this is optional but needs to be refined somewhat using a coffee grinder or such till it becomes fluff like ie no stalks to choke on! - the point of using it is to offer the loaf lightness and roughage)

3 heaped dessertspoons of psyllium

A sachet of dry yeast granules (around 60gm)

3 heaped teaspoons of salt ( I use 2 of lo salt and one of common salt - lo salt is very high in potassium)

3 heaped teaspoons of bicarbonate of soda

Any herbs or spice of your choice - rosemary is good, dried basil is good too and very inexpensive.

2.

Add 1400 ml of warm water bit by biggish bit and mix .

3.

Decant into  greased glass or silicone rubber fmoulds leave to rise for half and hour

4.

Cook at full power in the microwave

for 10 mins where the oven is rated 1000 watts

for 12 mins where the oven is rated  850 watts

--- if you choose to use a conventional oven I'd reckon about half an hour in a preheated oven at 200 or 160 fan assisted.

Protein And Your Immune System

The basic building blocks of food are proteins, fats and carbohydrates. The last two have considerable  notoriety in our present food culture. Protein and its building blocks less so and I suspect that this is because much less is known or maybe not that less is known but less to what remains to be known.

Although a generalisation I think it is fair to say that proteins and amino acids are the only things that our immune system can react to. And react can be an understatement when one considers the anaphylactic reactions we can have to peanuts, certain fish and shell fish and stings from insects especially bees. When you think about the latter it is hard to believe that the poison the bee deposits when it stings is only a tenth of a milligram.

Such responses are mediated through one of our immune mechanisms.

Food tolerances or intolerances are in the same kettle of fish and as best I can make out form the strategy of certain diets and food advice books -  Eat right for your type.

The drift of that publication is that you can protect your immune system by eating the right proteins based on your blood group.

So while we strive to avoid sugar and refined carbohydrates and a small number of damaging or worrying fats and oils,  the spectrum of proteins that we are able to purchase, or are exposed to, raises a much more difficult problem simply because there are so many.

Since it is our immune system that is responsible for us fighting inflammation and cancer it is important that we watch what protein we eat.

Is there such a thing as a truly healthy biscuit?

If there is I don’t know about it. The problem lies in the makeup of the biscuit. Wheat flour: refined, and high in carbohydrate and gluten is the backbone, with sugar and fat in various quantities cooked at high heat to produce an essentially water free and crunchy product. It might surround a sugar or chocolate paste or be coated in the same or contain dried fruit .

To be healthy or rather healthier it should be of flour that is gluten free, high in fibre, barely sweet and cooked slowly so its oil or fat content is left as a residual but also so it is not burned and producing acrylamides at the surface.

As regards sweetening I would like to see the concept of ‘barely sweet’ become commonplace - a sweetness that declares itself as such but only just.

Such a sweetness can be achieved in cooking if one soaks dried fruit in as much water by volume and uses both in the making of the biscuits. This is not good sweetness in the health sense but the fruit ( I like to use sultanas and some shops sell them ungraded in size very cheaplyl ) itself is less sweet from being soaked - say for 24-48 hrs and that soaking water has been correspondingly sweetened.

The fruit, dried somewhat from the slow cooking, also offers a pleasant chewiness so use lots of it.

As regards fat I would be inclined to use butter but only if the cooking temperature is lowish and the duration long. This should produce a texture and colour somewhat like a pale shortbread. If one wants to bake quickly I would use rice bran oil as this has a high smoke point and will not be too damaged by the extra heat.

Being high in fibre, let’s say 15-20%, it will be less likely when in the mouth to become gooey and adhere to the teeth - biscuits incidentally are one of the worst foods ever to destroy teeth - due to this clinginess I have mentioned.

One of the pleasures of eating a biscuit with tea or coffee is to dunk it and not have it fall off. The shortbread texture should allow rapid ingress of the liquid but the fibre, fat and the lesser carbohydrate should offer resistance to the dunked section falling off.

As for shelf life this should be good as the fat content acts as a not too toxic preservative.

As for amounts just experiment - you will not go to jail if it goes wrong and you will always be able to eat the result whatever happens - but importantly always note down the amounts you use and oven time etc so you know where you are next time.