To be astonished at the stupidity of the Smart Swap campaign?

[Farrowandbawlbauls]

Yes, we all need to eat better and move about more but I've just seen the advert for swapping sugar loaded fizzy drinks for sugar free ones.

Am I alone in thinking it's one of the most ill thought of things they've come up with yet?

The sweetners in sugar free drinks are dangerous. The sugar free stuff usually advertised is most of the time, worse than the full fat stuff.

Link

I can see why they are doing this as it is a huge problem in this country, but I don't thing they've thought this through at all.

The more we have been told to eat low fat food and artificial sweeteners the fatter we have got.

Children don't need fizzy drinks (water from the tap is fine) and processed low fat food is pumped full of sugar - they tend to have the same calories as the full fat version but your body burns it up quicker and, therefore, you are hungrier sooner.

I'm all for eating real food, avoiding (as a rule) "healthy" alternatives.

timid talked about only buying food your grandmother would recognise - I'm all for that, too. Except that my grandmother (born in the 1920s) used to make cottage pie from Yeomans mash and tinned mince

Oh, I would have been able to see what the poster meant by the one molecule claptrap once. When I was 12 and hadn't done my GCSEs yet. I also read a book about plants feeling pain and believed it (what central nervous system?) and a book that claimed evolution was like expecting a tornado to rip through a junk yard and assemble a working Boeing 477. Nuff said.

Oh and she wouldn't have recognised quinoa if it blew about and bashed her gently in the face

Chemicals!
Its the dihydrogen monoxide you really need to look out for! It's in EVERYTHING! And it's SO dangerous! Just inhaling it can kill you!
But on we go, merrily injesting it!

it's. just. food.

all this classist and elitist and bizarre morality projections on it are messed up.

we need to stop obsessing and tell the whole food industry to back the fuck off with their nonsense.

i'm not great at eating healthily all the time but i know full well how to. i feel best when i'm eating plenty of protein and lots of veg and not a lot else. i eat a fair bit of crap too, late night sweet tooth attacks and occasional obsessions with takeaways. when i need to lose weight, feel healthier, improve my digestion or whatever i cut down on the crap - i don't looking for low fat versions of crap.

we all know what is healthy really and that is a simple diet and minimal processed crap. everyone knows - we don't need public information campaigns let alone public misinformation campaigns. if the state really wants to get involved in improving our diets they need to ban trans fats and glucose fructose syrup, ban advertising to children and force food producers to use decent ingredients and food preparation methods etc.

this idea that the poor peasants need educating because they don't realise that eating crap is bad for you is ridiculous and insulting.

johnny - my mother used to make bolognese from tinned mince and muligatawny (sorry i cannot spell that) soup

MrsD absolutely agree with each and every one of your posts.

Saggy Been waiting for that one.

Yet another one here who will happily feed full fat, full sugar to the kids, and tries to avoid artificial sweeteners and low fat. I've got a friend (also scientifically qualified) who thinks we should be avoiding glucose spikes, so feeds the kids sweetener filled stuff. We have discussed, and agreed that both methods have potential to be praised as good, and we go with whatever the general eating habits of the visiting house are.

All this low fat stuff - have you looked at the sugar content to make it taste nice? And no, I don't mean low fat milk in that - after all, back in the days when milk wasn't homogenised, we probably did add semi skimmed to most thinks - unless you got up early and got the top of the milk on your cereal!

Numpty yes also agree.

I miss that creamy bit from the top of the milk . Cornflakes just haven't been the same since.

i drink skimmed because i don't like the taste of anything else - also with milk it's not diminished in the sense that there is just as much calcium in skimmed as full fat milk. i don't see it as a 'diet' food but a taste preference.

one thing that made me laugh recently was tonic water - the 'full fat' version and the 'diet, sugar free' version side by on the shelf had a difference of something like 3calories per 100ml in them total marketing nonsense but i wonder how many people actually think they are making a big difference to their lives by picking up the diet one full of aspartame?

In my business I have a lot of contact with some very gifted scientists. And I know one who's research proved that aspartame is very very nasty stuff. He was very much "leaned on", funding removed etc and basically threatened by one of the big companies. He couldn't publish.
But aspartame doesn't cross the lips of anyone in his family, and he seriously advised me to do the same

DH won't have sugar free drinks in the house because of Aspartame.

also DS can't take sweeteners as they go straight through him!

Cross posted with moomin

I've heard that Aspartame never leaves the body. I'm not a scientist and I don't know if that is true but for that assumption alone, I wouldn't want to have something that contained it.

Farrow - see if you can get milk delivered. I get a creamy bit off the milkman every morning. Fnarr fnarr.

I've tried Pocket, we did used to have it delivered but he stopped as he couldn't compete with the supermarkets and wasn't getting enough business to keep going.

Mrs D - I agree with you, as another child of the 70's.

I have changed my diet recently due to health reasons and have lost weight without even trying. I have started having big breakfasts, proper lunch and a big dinner of meat, potatoes etc. Lots of meat, milk, eggs etc but I have not felt the need to snack between meals.

Previously, I would have had cereal for breakfast, then a salad for lunch, then about 3pm I would start snacking on crunch bars, biscuits etc as I was hungry and did not feel satisfied. Then a small dinner, and then more snacks in front of the tv as I would not ever feel full. This is the problem today, and all this diet food is making it worse as people would be better off eating filling full fat substantial meals.

SpottyDottie

"I've heard that Aspartame never leaves the body. I'm not a scientist and I don't know if that is true"

It isn't.

Mrs I'm under no illusions that 'good' food isn't the same as 'healthy' food, but I'd rather eat unhealthy tasty food than bland healthy stuff. Sorry. Taking pleasure in eating and enjoying it is good for you. There's no reason why food can't be healthy and tasty anyway - you can easily make healthy food tasty rather than bland. Sure we were healthy during WWII but we were also bored and it ruined our palates - and our restaurants went to shit and have only just recovered. Food that's tasteless and boring is pointless to me and I'd just rather eat less of the unhealthy but tasty stuff.

As for only buying food my grandmother would recognise, I doubt she'd recognise curry leaves or dragonfruit, but they are still not unhealthy foods! Eat food, not too much, mostly plants is a better motto to take on board. Still get to keep chillies and lemongrass

Meant 'I'm under no illusions that 'good' food is the same as 'healthy' food!

Anonynon Butter is NOT 'ok'. Nor is milk.

of course it's ok. food is ok. and we've been eater butter and milk for a long time.

half the trouble is they come up with something and it sticks in people's head oh that is bad for us, when that is debunked it doesn't get half as much attention,

re: there are still people who believe that eggs are bad for you and should be severely limited even though that was based on false science and it turned out eggs didn't raise the 'bad' cholesterol they mistakenly thought they did.

also much has proved that animal fats are better than some others that were considered superior not so long ago as they can be better received and broken down by the body and nutrients properly released.

oh and potatoes - potatoes became much maligned as fattening and terrible at one stage when in fact they're better for you as a starch carb than processed, refined carbs in pasta and also have a lot of nutrients.

all the obsessing over food always makes me think of the old 'while rome burns' adage. it is reminiscent of eating disorders in terms of an easy thing to focus on and be able to control obsessively.