for christ's sake NHS

[lolliwillowes]

Why are you still advising people to choose low fat margarine over butter?
The entire food plate thing is a disaster, encouraging people to stay healthy long term by substituting natural fats for Frankenstein-fats.

Surely I am not BU?

Totally agree… will not even use Marge in baking… I buy 3 different types of butter, spreadable (obviously because it’s a bloody pain to spread), salted block for cooking and unsalted block for baking…. If anyone had ever seen or smelt margarine that has gone off they would never touch it again

@lolliwillowes

our horses used to have salt licks! but that was over 30 yrs ago, maybe they all developed issues {grin} We do know that there is too much unnecessary salt in processed food though. What I can't understand is the NHS reluctance to update it's info.

As far as I am aware, they actually agreed that natural fats and such are ok, but never actually updated their public info. I currently have neighbours who are elderly and fairly trusting. Both of them are suffering various health issues including diabetes. When they have discussed advice given by tier GP ive been gobsmacked (stay away from olive oil, cheese, butter, concentrate on low fat bread, weight watchers ready meals, etc).

Odd as in their hospitals they serve little packs of butter for toast/ baked potatoes etc not margarine. Says a lot when they don’t follow their own advice !

@Temporarydairy

I'm currently a dietetics student. I've thought that govt. 'good food plate' has been massively outdated for years. I remember it from home ec. classes in the 90s. One of the things we've learned so far on the course is that it takes YEARS for official advice to change based on the results of research. The recent decision to add folic acid to flour in the U.K. has been a long time in the making. One of our lecturers was telling us about research that she was involved in which had been ongoing for decades, and the end result has been the addition of one sentence to a piece of legislation, but it should have a significant impact on public health.

Margarine is a dirty word in my house and it haven't used it in about 20 years, not since I started obsessively reading food labels and wondering what the eff all of those ingredients in margarine were, never mind the processes used in creating those ingredients.
Butter is delish.
Butter is processed - in that it has been changed from its original form - this is true of any food that's not in its original state, and that can be a simple change in its physical state, eg. cooking/freezing/dehydrating are all forms of processing.
Processing isn't necessarily a bad thing - it can make foods last longer (important for storage and therefore - historically - survival), more digestible, increase bioavailability of some nutrients.
What matters is the degree of processing - how far removed the end product is from the source product. So butter = churned cream with salt = YUM! Margarine = extracted (sometimes with solvents) & treated vegetable oils, with added chemical preservatives to prolong shelf life & prevent oils going rancid, added colours (to resemble butter) etc. etc. = NASTY!

Margarine is different now. Have you read a pack of Clover recently?

Maybe NHS haven’t updated eating guidelines due to that wee thing called COVID that’s going about, not sure if you’ve heard of it?? Honest to god get a f&cking grip, the NHS is hanging by its fingernails and your worries what they are telling you to eat.

She dodged a bullet then - but most if the people who play Russian roulette by continuing to smoke don't
Some people can jump off cliffs into the sea and survive - doesn't make it a good idea does it?

Doctors get no training in nutrition - so the NHS isn't a great place to get up to death food advice

**"up to date"!!!!!!!

@linsey2581

Maybe NHS haven’t updated eating guidelines due to that wee thing called COVID that’s going about, not sure if you’ve heard of it?? Honest to god get a f&cking grip, the NHS is hanging by its fingernails and your worries what they are telling you to eat.

They tell diabetics to eat sugar laden yoghurts and whitebread, nothing to do with covid, diabetes care within the NHS has been poor for a very long time.

@TrickorTreacle

My Nan was a 40-a-day smoker and made it to 92

My dad was a smoker and died at 57. What's your point?

@Unsure33

My dad has eaten butter and full fat milk in abundance all his life no margarines will pass his lips. He is 90

So did my Dad. Except he died of heart disease

iirc, unless cold-pressed, all oilseed rape, soya, safflower or sunflower oil is extracted using solvents. "Refined" olive oil (which is what you get unless it says virgin) is also extracted using solvents.

Most room-temperature liquid "vegetable" oil is one of these solvent-extracted sorts.

(!!)

Coconut oil, sunflower oil, milk, egg yolk, lemon juice, chives.

Frankenstein ingredients?

First butter I ever tasted was European butter mountain surplus distributed to my grandparents for free! It was a big tub of Stork SB all the way in my childhood.

So, now I ❤️ butter. Gorgeous. Problem is it’s hard to spread thin, even the so called spreadable stuff and (did I mention?) I love it so I am likely to eat a lot of butter whilst I’d only have a tiny amount of ‘spread’. What I also do is put some Mayo on instead - it was a revelation to me when I visited a Dutch business and saw it used as an alternative instead of an addition, to butter/spread on sandwiches.

@LaurieFairyCake

Butter is MILK SHAKEN

It's not 'processed'

I've actually made butter and that's ^^ all I did (you don't have to add salt - I did though because salted butter is the best)

This.

Butter is NOT a processed food.

Also, particularly if it’s from grass-fed cows, it is actually a ‘good’ fat.

I would never let margarine pass my lips.

Bo it is processed. Minimally. It doesn't come out of the cow like that. The churning process alters its properties. The fact that cream goes off very quickly, whereas butter has a relatively long shelf-life (without refrigeration too) illustrates how it has been altered by the physical act of churning.
To reiterate, I think butter is ace.

@LaurieFairyCake

No

You said butter is EXTREMELY processed

It's processed, NOT 'extremely' or 'highly'

It does not meet the definition of highly processed- it contains 2 ingredients

The number of ingredients doesn't determine how processed it is, the number of processes, stages, treatments etc. to get to the end stage does. Butter is a processed product, minimally.

@RandomLondoner

When I was a kid I used to refuse margarine because I thought it tasted like plastic. As an adult I discovered that their chemical formulae only differ by something like an atom

Whereas butter differs from plastic by two atoms.

OK I made that up. But I doubt that two products that have such similar properties are massively different from each other, from an organic chemistry point of view.

a difference of just one atom can make a huge difference to the molecule, from an organic chemistry point of view. The very same atoms in a molecule, in a different arrangement, can be treated as a completely different entity by our bodies.

@Fordian

What oil should I be cooking with, please?

Have a look at smoke points. Saturated fats have a higher smoke point than unrefined unsaturated - they can withstand higher temperatures. Your golden liquid vegetable oil from a bottle is highly highly refined to both increase shelf life and allow for higher cooking temperatures. Coconut oil is good for light frying. Lard (saturated animal fat - yes it's refined by its very nature) works well in a deep fat fryer. Butter still contains milk solids so doesn't actually have a very high smoke point. It's good for light sautéing etc. You could try ghee - butter with the milk solids removed, aka clarified butter aka 'pure golden butter fat' to quote a foodie book I read years ago! It's used a lot in Indian cookery. You can get it in Home Bargains & the rest. But bear in mind that any cooking at high temps will alter the chemical structure of the lipids. Keep it to a minimum.

@lolliwillowes

Why are you still advising people to choose low fat margarine over butter? The entire food plate thing is a disaster, encouraging people to stay healthy long term by substituting natural fats for Frankenstein-fats.

Surely I am not BU?

They don't use the eatwell ate anymore. They changed it to cut out sugar and reduce dairy. Maybe just eat cardboard instead....? Enjoy what you love in moderation, it is better to be happy and full than hungry and moody.

Nope...NOT BU. Actually, some animal fats are very healthy. The body converts them to a detergent in the stomach that helps keep the intestines cleaned out.

@lljkk

iirc, unless cold-pressed, all oilseed rape, soya, safflower or sunflower oil is extracted using solvents. "Refined" olive oil (which is what you get unless it says virgin) is also extracted using solvents.

Most room-temperature liquid "vegetable" oil is one of these solvent-extracted sorts.

(!!)

Coconut oil, sunflower oil, milk, egg yolk, lemon juice, chives.

Frankenstein ingredients?

I feel I'm pretty safe in saying that no one out there is making their own marg and a recipe for homemade marg is a bit of a red herring. Vegans might give it a go, but that's not what we are talking about here. Normal marg is definitely highly processed and needs to be coloured to be acceptable for consumption. I think that says it all.

@linsey2581

Maybe NHS haven’t updated eating guidelines due to that wee thing called COVID that’s going about, not sure if you’ve heard of it?? Honest to god get a f&cking grip, the NHS is hanging by its fingernails and your worries what they are telling you to eat.

This shows how little attention many people pay to what they eat and how the link between disease and food often isn’t even in our psyche.

Type 2 diabetes costs the NHS £1.5m per hour or 10% of its whole budget.

People who are metabolically unhealthy (due to a bad diet) are more likely to be severely impacted by covid

I’d say it’s an absolute priority for the NHS to ensure people are eating well. And that their advice is correct.

@linsey2581

Maybe NHS haven’t updated eating guidelines due to that wee thing called COVID that’s going about, not sure if you’ve heard of it?? Honest to god get a f&cking grip, the NHS is hanging by its fingernails and your worries what they are telling you to eat.

What we eat is important.

While COVID has been going on people still have diabetes, have cancer, have heart or kidney disease, are obese, are underweight, have allergies or are elderly.

@linsey2581

Maybe NHS haven’t updated eating guidelines due to that wee thing called COVID that’s going about, not sure if you’ve heard of it?? Honest to god get a f&cking grip, the NHS is hanging by its fingernails and your worries what they are telling you to eat.

Obesity is a massive factor in dying from Covid. The policy wonks in civil service are still working you know! Mainly from home but they’re still commissioning research analysing data and sending out leaflets for GP’s to distribute with eat well advice. I suspect that pp are right- pressure from food manufacturers and (tin hat) diabetes medicine manufacturers and developers is the biggest factor.

@LemonSwan
Proving drawer - that sounds absolute heaven! Ive never heard of one. Now I want one - haven’t bought commercial bread since first lockdown (except in the odd sandwich( and I’m really into home made bread now but the airing cupboard isn’t ideal for proving!

@lolliwillowes

our horses used to have salt licks! but that was over 30 yrs ago, maybe they all developed issues {grin} We do know that there is too much unnecessary salt in processed food though. What I can't understand is the NHS reluctance to update it's info.

As far as I am aware, they actually agreed that natural fats and such are ok, but never actually updated their public info. I currently have neighbours who are elderly and fairly trusting. Both of them are suffering various health issues including diabetes. When they have discussed advice given by tier GP ive been gobsmacked (stay away from olive oil, cheese, butter, concentrate on low fat bread, weight watchers ready meals, etc).

Current advice for horses is that a salt lick is inadequate for their needs and you should add salt to their feed to ensure they are getting enough.