How to love your gut?

[SunIsShiningOnMyFace]

Morning!

I'm doing some research on how to achieve good gut health and wondered if you had 3 minutes to take my survey?

jonmarshall791992.typeform.com/to/ay7OuR

No problem if not... if you have less time, I'd also appreciate any top tips you might have for improving gut health?

Or do you think good gut health is a lost cause?

I don't believe people are willing to change their diet for gut health, and most will only swallow a pill but resist eating a great variety of vegetables and other high fibre real food.
What people should understand is that a probiotic in a pill is a bit like you bringing a puppy home, a new species in your household. However if you feed that dog or your bacteria chocolate and other crap, dog will die. You can keep buying dog or ingesting pills, but unless you feed these new species their food, they will die without giving you any benefit.
So onion, witlof, leek, artichoke, garlic, flaxseeds, rolled oats, ...should be present in good quantities, not half a tablespoon of onion a week.

People are not ready to give up on bacon, chips and biscuits. Yes they might drink the odd kombucha, and think they are good.

As long as people will cook with scissors, and not a knife and a chopping board, they will not achieve good gut health and I don't think they care.

I don't think all people are unwilling to make diet changes to promote gut health. I try to eat lots of pre-biotics.

My gut hates whatever I feed it but things like onions, garlic, broccoli, peas, nuts, apples, mango, dried fruits, wholemeal bread, seeds, lentils, and too much dairy and sugar make it tons worse. Low FODMAP helped for a while but it's now worse than ever.

It copes ok (still pain and bloating but not as bad) with white bread as long as it's not more than 2 slices a day, banana, porridge, tea (but no more than 2 cups), raspberries, strawberries, babybels, carrots, tofu, spinach, red pepper, rice, rice noodles, pasta, and a little chocolate.

Even water bloats me. Immediately.

The GP hasn't been much help. Medication hasn't helped and gave me heartburn. So I'm stuck with a pretty restricted diet. I do eat foods off my really hates me list but I pay for it and look 8 months pregnant as a result.

I would happily eat a diet that guaranteed me minimal symptoms but I have come to the conclusion my gut hates food. It's just that some are hated more than others.

I think unless they have problems that most people don't think about gut health. My mum asked me to pick her up some ham from Asda the other day. I'm a veggie and wouldn't like buying meat anyway but I refused on the grounds of it being a recognised carcinogen. I got her chicken instead and a salad so she could make a Caesar salad. The lettuce gave her dreadful indigestion 😩 She can't do broccoli, peas, seeds, tomatoes, wholemeal bread etc either so some of us are restricted in how much healthy stuff we can eat.

It's not always a choice.

Of course some do care, but I think 98% of those you have a crap diet , even given the facts, will never give up the crap they eat and drink, and prefer a pill to changing their lifestyle.

Funny how people are so vocal and combative on the sunshine/skin cancer threads, but totally ignore the processed meat, alcohol , the acrylamide from chips and crisps, canceroginity.
They prefer to go for an industry promoted solution (suncream, probiotic pill) than to make changes and put a tomatoes, onions and basil salad on the table.

Or least, this is what I see here in Australia. I am French and can't believe the crap people eat at every time of the day, at any age, even the 6 month baby custard pouch filled with sweeteners or baby crisps. Seriously, the addiction to processed and highly transformed food start before babies can sit up properly and they they give baby probiotics drops!! Sweeteners promote bad bacterias. Give that baby a leek soup!

This is why I believe people faces too many challenges when it comes to gut health and they are rooted in the food culture and a resistance to accept it is rotten and harmful.

I think there needs to be action on prices but I'm not sure how it would be achieved. Crap food is cheap and healthier food is expensive. People on low incomes can not always afford healthier food in the quantities needed to make a difference. People on lower incomes don't always have the necessary knowledge and skills to make healthier choices and cook from scratch. That's true across higher incomes too but low income is more strongly linked.

Poverty needs to be addressed first and foremost. Healthy food needs to be affordable. Better education around health and food choices from very young. Regulations about offers on less healthy foods. Make food tech a bigger subject in school from nursery age right through until 16.

And get rid of all these sweeteners! As a child I used to get crusha milkshake syrup (the one you add to milk) about once a year as a treat. I looked for it yesterday in Tesco as ds is ill and won't eat and I thought a milkshake might tempt him and soothe his throat. I was disappointed to see all the sugar had disappeared to be replaced by sweeteners. I hate sweeteners, but it seems in the drive to force people to be healthier, manufacturers are using them instead of sugar. Sweeteners aren't heathy at all and consumers need to have a choice. I'd like to be able to buy a sugary drink once in a while.

The whole food industry and marketing needs an overhaul.

Survey completed op

Make food tech a bigger subject in school from nursery age right through until 16 .

^It used to be, and not just in schools too. I spent a lot of time with my mum learning how to shop, budget, and cook full meals, as well as bread, cakes etc.
In high school were were taught nutrition, time planning for meals and single recipes, and again shopping and budgeting. Between the 2 of them, I got a good grounding in what to and what not to eat to keep healthy.

I would like to say though that not everything is a schools responsibility. learning starts at home, so to say that food tech should start in nursery is wrong. It should read to start in Nursery AS WELL AS home.

I both agree and disagree.

Plant-based is not expensive. A bag of chickpeas or lentils is super cheap, even a can of beans is cheap.
1 kg of tomatoes and 1 onion is not expensive and will make a veggie side, add some brown rice and chicken breast and you have a dinner that doesn't break the bank.
The same applies to a butter lettuce, a minestrone soup with or without small shaped pasta.
I eat plant based, my family is not. I will prepare the same lunch and dinner, a grated carrot and parsley salad, oven roasted brussel sprouts , and then slice see tofu for me and put a piece of fish, meat, egg on the table for them.
Some evening we all eat the same. Polenta is quite a favourite and polenta is ultra cheap. Couscous, a simple pasta with a tomatoes and garlic sauce.
Buying vegan substitute is not only crap but expensive.

OF course, people with IBS have issues with the FODMAP food, and my words are not directed at those. It must be horrible to be in such pain.

I agree about the food industry and they have completely messed up several generations. Highly transformed and processed food is unbelievably cheap. How can it possibly be so cheap.

In Italy, Spain, France, Portugal food markets are very cheap, cheaper than Aldi. Farmers come and sell their products. In the Canary islands, the price of veggies in markets is fixed by the state.
There is room for government intervention but lobbies will fight hard and use the "choice" card.

@LiliesAndChocolate why are scissors bad? I cut lots of food with scissors - bacon (not in the good category I imagine!), but also veg, nuts, some meat and fish, and I love my herb scissors! I wash scissors after raw meat of course. I'm a left hander and I use my left-handed scissors for as much as I can as knives often have the cutting blade on the wrong side for me. Does the crushing movement of the scissors damage the nutrients somehow? Things get pretty chewed up when I cut them with the blunt side of the knife too!

I think unless they have problems that most people don't think about gut health.

Agreed

Survey completed

Thanks so much for your input and comments, much appreciated.