Is marg and vegetable oils ......

[wildirishrose]

Bad for you?

Shop-bought biscuits aren't likely to have too many transfats because they use palm oil in a lot of baked confectionery, which has a high saturated fatty acid content and is therefore more stable than polyunsaturated oils, and is cheaper than butter.

Palm oil has its own problems though - primarily (IMO) that the orangutans' habitat is being systematically destroyed to build palm plantations to feed the western world's need for baked confectionery. :(

Hi Lamazeroo - help me feel better about the big bottle of rapeseed oil that I recently bought having learnt that olive oil is a baddie at high heat. Yes, I hear you about genetically modified, pesticides and allergenic. But is it okay in terms of how the body deals with the fat intake? If I tracked down an organic rapeseed oil, how would that be?

Thank you for the link Travelincolour, that's really interesting. It's as I suspected - it's as bad as the rest but dressed up to look healthier. (Aren't they all though?) I knew that emulsifiers exist to make the texture more "desirable" or to stop things separating, but not what they were made of.

I suppose peanut butter must have emulsifiers added these days? When I was a kid the oil used to separate out and come to the top, but that doesn't happen any more.

I saw orange flavour yoghurt for sale somewhere a while back, that must be full of rubbish in order to stop it curdling. You never used to be able to get it when I was young. (I'm only 35, I sound like I'm 70!)

I recently discovered a health food shop near my house, I can see me going there more and more. And it's butter all the way as soon as this tub of Bertolli is used up.

I am interested in nutrition and have considered studying with a view to a career in that area somewhere, but I am not really science-y, it seems like you have to have a good grasp of science to understand nutrition. To anyone working in that area, would you say that's the case?

MrsPennyapple - you don't have to start off with a good science background but you do need to take courses in science to really "get" it, yes. There are foundation science courses in basic biology and chemistry that may be required; these take you to the level needed to start the nutrition course; and then there will be more biochemistry, physiology and other sciencey bits on the course (if it's one worth doing). Any course that doesn't require you to learn the science behind it, isn't worth doing, IMO.

Shamelessly marking my spot as I am trying to be healthy / lose weight.

Butter = good

Margarine (and spreads) = "the devil's sperm"*

Squash = devil's wee

I forget to whom this should be attributed, however I agree.

Aspartame is def. on my black list. It is hard to find a low sugar product without it though. Low sugar/ salt beans for instance have aspartame. Low cal drinks, and tonic water too. Apparently the human body does not know what to do with it. ( can't remember how I knw this )

Thanks Thumbwitch. I'd be looking at doing an OU course probably, but it wouldn't be for a while yet as I'm pg with DC2. My background is in accountancy & finance so it would be a complete change, I'd have to start from scratch with the studying, but it does interest me, so I may look into it in the future.

MrsPennyapple

Few margarine products in the UK now contain hydrogenated fats, there's a lot of misinformation on this thread. If hydrogenated fats are included (even partial) they have to be labeled as such by law. Check out ingredients on a tub of Olivio for yourself (sigh).

Sigh away, lljkk but maybe re-read my posts first? I have twice listed the ingredients on the tub. Perhaps your information is out of date? After all, Olivio changed it's name to Bertolli a fair while ago.

Mrspennyapple I did the OU understanding human nutrition course, it was interesting but I have forgotten a lot of what I learnt!! I don't think it would take much to brush up though and its great if you are interested in food and health. It might be a good place to start.

Australia study finds Butter contains 20x more trans fat than margarines. Not surprising, since transfats naturally comprise 2-6% of the fats in most animal products.

Fiddle I did have a look at what OU had to offer a few months ago, I saw that course and thought it looked like the kind of thing that would be good to start with.

So then a normal (and cheap!!) packet of lard from the chiller cabinet next to the butter is a decent alternative to expensive coconut oil for frying, roasting potatoes etc? Better for you than sunflower oil.

Maybe someone has answered this already over the fo;;owing 4 pages but

No, lard may not be a good idea - in theory, nothing wrong with lard, but unfortunately there is plenty wrong with the methods used to commercially extract lard from beef waste - dissolved in chemicals then more nasty stuff added to remove those chemicals.

If you roast meat joints, pour off the fat and let it solidify in a cup, you will get a disc of pure white fat which is great from frying and totally natural.

Cold pressed, raw coconut oil is fantastic stuff. Cheaper to buy online ie Biona raw organic coconut oil, expensive yes (about £9 for a large jar), but a little goes a long way (it is for coating and shallow fry or roasting - not deep frying!), it is full of brain friendly compounds.

I use organic butter too and cold pressed olive oil (as a salad dressing).

Why I prefer 'real' fats to those others:
About seven years ago, I broke my arm, badly. I was quite traumatised, and didnt leave the house much for 6 months or so. Over that six months, cooking and eating kept me sane. Someone gave me the River Cottage cookbook. It was excellent. For 6 months I cooked with butter, cream, cheese, meat, fresh veg... I didnt use anything processed. One week, I used 2.5 litres of double cream! When I returned to work, (after 6 months) I weighed 1 stone less than when I left!

CATPUSS, I love this wee story - tallies very much with my own experiences of ditching anything processed and decreasing carbs, increasing natural fats including double cream (minus the broken arm ).

Catsdontcare Can you recommend any good websites. I suffer from IBS and am looking for more ideas on how to deal with it.

Bunbaker, you might want to try removing ALL (yes all, absolutely all) grain products from your diet for a short time (a month), to see what happens. That would include rice, oats, barely wheat, maize... if you get a big improvement in your symptoms you could then reintroduce one at a time (I suggest trying white rice first, as that is the least likely of the grains to cause ibs symptoms). Eat the reintroduced food daily for several days before adding in any other new foods.

But I guess with a name like bunbaker you might find that a little hard

Scotchandwry I found elana's pantry good for recipes and if you google gaps diet quite a lot comes up. I'm reading gut and psychology syndrome at the mo.

Cats - I'm Paleo/primal, interestingly often used as a template for Gaps and similar diets - no grains at all (well, very occasional small bowl of white rice), it's certainly interesting to read into this stuff. I think some people can tolerate grains (and other inflamatory/insulin spiking foods) better than others, but in the long run, imo our modern processed/fake food diet makes us ALL ill to some degree, and many of us, very ill!

Interesting point about how lard is produced, Scotch (although do you mean pork rather than beef?). Good tip about saving the fat from roasts for frying.

Thank you all for your advice. Although my nn implies I do a lot of baking, I don't bake as often as you think. I will give the no grain approach a try.

"grains (and other inflamatory/insulin spiking foods) "

I'm very curious as to what "inflammatory" means in this context. Are you saying that out body's inner tissues swell up as we digest these foods?

I was at a lunch with this expert and she tried to convince me that meat is "inflammatory", can't be digested, and "rots in your colon". I went easy on her because, well, she is dying. Still, I can't even understand what made her think so.

And now you seem to be saying that actually grains are inflammatory. Do you think meat is inflammatory, too?

Cote - do you mean that she has the cancer back again?

I can only assume that she was talking about the fats in meat, which tend towards producing pro-inflammatory prostaglandins; but also over-cooked meat is hard to digest because of the denaturation and toughening of the protein fibres, so it's hard going for the stomach acids to open up the proteins and provide the proteases with their access points to break down the protein molecules into polypeptides and oligopeptides, which can then be further broken down in the small intestine to dipeptides and amino acids, which we can absorb. But then amino acids in excess create an acidic environment which can be considered inflammatory as well (contributes to joint inflammation etc.)
"Rotting in your gut" - well, if you have poor/slow digestion then yes, it's possible that partially digested meat will stay in your colon for an extended period of time, which has been linked to colon cancer.

Inflammatory grains - certainly possible - the damage done to the small intestinal villi by the immune response mounted against gluten in coeliacs could be described as inflammatory, I suppose. Not sure that the non-glutinous grains could have the same effect, but if a person was actively allergic to them, then they could.

I met her about a year ago. She got up and talked about her beliefs re raw food & vegetarianism, and also told her story. Then poor girl sat at my table Anyway, she talked about how she was so much better because of her new diet, but also said that her cancer has metastised which basically means that cancer has won and she doesn't have much time left

I have to go now but will come back to comment on inflammation & digestion of food. I thought her account of especially the latter was quite fictional, bordering on fantastical.

So I was just thinking about the small amount of butter being okay for lactose intolerant people as it is pure fat.

So surely this would mean that cream would also be alright as it is the fat the butter is made from?

I may have to run a (potentially very smelly) experiment on this...

"So surely this would mean that cream would also be alright as it is the fat the butter is made from?"

I don't think so as I find that cream gives me the most horrendous diarrhoea and butter doesn't