Now that processed meats have been deemed carcinogenic by the World Health Agency...

[Whoknewitcouldbeso]

Can I ask if you will be allowing your kids to eat sausages, ham, burgers etc? They are also warming about red meat in general so I can no longer feel virtuous when I cook homemade lasagne or shepherds pie.

My son loves sausages, I tend to buy the 98% pork ones but again, now thinking that I'm hurting him by letting him have sausages at all.

What are other people giving their children for dinner? I feel like I'm royally fucking up nowadays although I did make fresh cod goujons in a tempura batter two nights ago and he thought they were great. I must get at least one brownie point for the fish!

[rogueantimatter]

ivy

Good advice about adding foods into your diet - a positive approach to healthy eating if you like.

A 'rainbow' diet is advised, from naturally colourful foods - basically fruit and veg.

Healthy fats from hemp, coconut, flax seed and oily fish.

Cooking with turmeric.

Green tea. Other herbal teas, perhaps rosehip, hibiscus, nettle.

Plenty of fibre.

Foods with probiotics eg natural yoghurt, and prebiotics (they help probiotics to live in the gut) eg bananas, onions, Jerusalem artichokes, chicory (and others that I can't think of off the top of my head)

[maybebabybee]

[ivykaty44]

Ourblanch I agree that the lifestyle of a vegetarian could well hold other factors. Interesting in that one study the vegan diet made even more impact on cancer overall and female cancers. I wonder if there is a large difference in the lifestyles of vegans and vegeterian? I could see differences being far greater between meat eaters and vegeterian lifestyles but would have presumed vegans and vegeterian very similar, for a difference to be seen between the two factors would surely point back towards the food differences?

[OurBlanche]

I had a quick look for some more lifestyle vegan/vegetarian studies, but I could only find some magazine style ones... all a bit scary.

Food differences will be a big part of it, just not necessarily meat, if the Indian study was on to something. I am guessing that over the next decade or so there will be more evidence, especially as the alternative protein sources come on line in a more palatable way than those weird insect burgers

In the meantime the trick will be working out how to avoid the meeja hype and requiring a wide variety of organisations to publish more widely and more simply when they make any recommendations.

[SlipperyJack]

I think genes are the big invisible here (from what little I know of it all). I think that as we learn more about the human genome, the more we'll understand why some folk can smoke 40 a day, eat nothing but doner kebabs and live to be 90, whereas others can't. There are a number of genes already identified which predispose someone to particular cancers (breast, bowel) and I have no doubt that more will be identified. The interesting question will be how far genetic predisposition + external factors (like poor diet, exposure to toxic chemicals, etc) = cancer. And, as a corollary, which individuals can then be advised to avoid those external factors.

[CalypsoLilt]

IvyKaty and Blanche ....I've been vegan for nearly 2 years (I was vegetarian for 20 years before that). The first three months of no dairy products, I didn't ovulate. I can only assume this is because of the dramatic change in hormones (natural or otherwise) in the dairy products I was no longer getting. I'm now 24 weeks pregnant so it hasn't effected my fertility in the long run :)

[Blodss]

That's interesting Calypsol. I stopped all diary a couple of months ago and my hot flushes disappeared. Only return if I eat any products with dairy in.

[SlipperyJack]

Anecdata, calypso. You might not have ovulated for a number of reasons - one of which might have been drinking milk (though why it would affect you adversely, and not the millions of women who do drink milk, is unclear). Correlation is not causation.

[Blodss]

Slippery could you break down what you are saying a bit more please. Not sure I am following you.
Calypsl stopped drinking milk and periods stopped.
I stopped all dairy and meno hot flushes stopped. Have also heard many other women who have improved hormones when removing dairy.

[OurBlanche]

I'll give that a go:

Peri meno and meno women are going through a lot of changes and, if having problems may make lifestyle changes to alleviate them.

So having stopped dairy a) may not have been the only lifestyle change made, b) may have been coincidental with a natural rebalance

The re-occurence of hot flushes on eating dairy wouldn't necessarily be called the root cause as the timescale is probably to small for consumption and absorption to have any real effect. Such things are often a misremembering.

Mis-remembering is a powerful confounding aspect, many studies have found reporting of all sorts of behaviours is wildly inaccurate. Not because the participants are lying, but because memory is and odd thing. So anecdotal evidence is never taken as evidence of causality. At best it is an unsupported correlation of events that may have been honestly misreported.

[ivykaty44]

With regard to the menopause and the effects, there has been mutterings that Japanese menopausal women do not have the side effects that western woman have. This is reputedly down to their diet, it would be interesting to see a study of western woman taking on the same diet and seeing if the changes diminished the effects of the menopause.

[ivykaty44]

There is no name for hot flushes in Japanese..

[SlipperyJack]

Thanks ourblanche for explaining it (more succinctly than I could), I'd succumbed to child-induced exhaustion just after my post!

[OurBlanche]

Ivykat much of that, that I could find, is in magazine style publications. There are some research studies that suggest yellow and green vegetable intake, others more complicated ideas.

But they all warn that the nature of the studies, longitudinal, diary/recollection based, is open to all sorts of confounding factors. Also, the population comparison is a problem, Japanese as a nation are markedly leaner than other, Western, populations, which sounds like diet, but could be a whole host of other, lifestyle related factors.

This is one of my favourites., apologies for the DMnes, but it really did make me smile
www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1286569/British-women-worst-menopause.html

It is all because we are Brits and we do like to moan, maybe

[ivykaty44]

Well I wondered if the Japanese woman just don't mention the menopause and may well have side effects but keep it secret as is their nature? A mixture if less symptoms and more decorative about private matters

[Onthepigsback]

Ivy if anything, the Japanese are more vocal about bodily functions than any other nation I have ever met. I have heard from my Japanese friends that they, their mothers etc don't suffer from menopause, and I think something I read about it a long time ago said something about their high soya based diet and low meat consumption being considered the reason.

On the other hand, all the Japanese people I know are sick as dogs when pregnant. Horrendous morning sickness. I remember at a pregnancy clinic in Japan all the women waiting for their appointments with their faces buried in hankerchiefs and retching quietly in the corner. But apparently they suffer more widespread morning sickness than other countries. Again, research indicates this is due to diet and slim bodies.

Interesting stuff.

[OurBlanche]

It is, isn't it? I have to say that I have really enjoyed being able to disagree with someone, do a bit of research, post some additional info and have an exchange of thoughts, rather than an exchange of defenses. Fun and, sadly, a bit rare around here

[Blodss]

Thanks OurBlanche. From what I have researched Chinese women have one of the lowest rates of breast cancer in the world and it is said that it is in a large part due to their not eating of dairy.

[Blodss]

Sorry Slippery I didn't mean to cause any offense its just that I really couldn't work out what you were saying in my head. Lol!

[ivykaty44]

Blodss, Japanese did have low rates of breast cancer, unless you took them out of their own environment and placed them in a western country and then it seemed if they took to the same diet as their contempories they also got the same rate of breast cancer.

As for Japanese's and their habits, I only have my experiences of living with Japanese for the last five years and have found them reserved when they live with me!

[ivykaty44]

Blodss, Japanese did have low rates of breast cancer, unless you took them out of their own environment and placed them in a western country and then it seemed if they took to the same diet as their contempories they also got the same rate of breast cancer.

As for Japanese's and their habits, I only have my experiences of living with Japanese for the last five years and have found them reserved when they live with me!

[Blodss]

That's what I have found with my research too ivy only I have been reading about Chinese ways more. Fruit and veg, small amounts of protein, fermented soya, rice. It is only when they move to a more western diet or country that they become more liable to disease. I read that in China breast cancer is known as a rich womans disease which is interesting. I went to school with Asian girls and when eating at their homes the food was amazingly tasty but always simple ingredients.

[SlipperyJack]

None taken blodss!

Re the Japanese menopause thing, I remember reading up on this a while back and IIRC there were some anthropological/sociological factors potentially involved too. Like Japanese women not fearing menopause generally, and it not being seen as the disaster to womanhood that it's seen as here. I vaguely recall that other societies which report unproblematic menopause also accord greater status to older women. So some of it may be less medical, and more sociological, IYSWIM?

[ivykaty44]

Rich woman's disease as the less money they haave the more their diet is vegetables, grains and less meat. Asians havnt eaten milk and dairy but now import these types of food. Whether this has anything to do with the rates of cancer amongst the people that eat it I don't know?

[SlipperyJack]

Could be eating more generally that causes problems? See the 5:2 diet theory about whether we're geared up to manage 3 square meals a day. The research on intermittent calorie restriction is really interesting.