Trust me I'm a Doctor

In the 1970s I bought a book on nutrition which I thought was most helpful and tried to follow a lot of the advice in there.
From the way the book was written one would assume that the (American) author would have lived to her 90s in robust health, however she died at the relatively youngish age of 70.

Willshome; thanks for that!

Michael Pollan added 'if it is made from a plant eat it. If it was made in a plant don't.. I might embroider his two sayings on a sampler some day. They are the (flexible) rules that broadly define how I try to eat.

Oops, that was in answer to the lasagne verdi question. I seem to have missed some posts!

Waitrose do it.

My sister did the High Fibre diet which worked - in more ways than one!

Totally agree with that quote Flickety

"Eat food, not too much, most of it plants"
Michael Pollan, American food writer.

Those sort of diets were all the rage back then, anno. I did 'The Doctors Quick Weight Loss Diet' and the weight fell off me. I was mostly protein. My breath smelt awful and it's a wonder it didn't make me ill. I then moved on to the 'brown rice diet'; didn't make me ill but nearly died of boredom [I did add worcester sauce to it to make it more exciting].

I remember my mother losing weight in the fifties by cutting out bread and potatoes (Ryvita anyone?). Then suddenly fat was the enemy. I think the no carb lobby is a bit extreme, but I can see why they feel the way they do.
The other thing I like about Zoe Harcombe is that her basic message is eat real food. I don't know if anyone else is watching The Kitchen, but there is one family whose diet seems to be almost entirely composed of carbs and processed "food". Makes you weep.
How did the "food industry" get such a grip?

In the early 60s, I was talking to a complete stranger in a lunch buffet queue, and he introduce me to the diet devised by Prof John Yudkin, who was fashionable at the time. This was low carb, high protein. He had a system of carbohydrate units which I followed successfully and brought my weight down painlessly to an easily maintained level. I wish I still had his book!

I think her starting point is "why would you bother eating carbs", really. I don't particularly agree with that and durum wheat is actually not bad from a GI point of view (44 I think). We have about 50g each about once every couple of weeks.

She seems to have missed the point entirely when she talks about 'nutrients' being destroyed in the cooking process.

I don't think that is the premise of the extreme low-carb diet Flickety. I think on that you eat lots of saturated fat, cream etc and you lose a lot of weight because of the way the body reacts. It isn't something I would do because the early stages involve cutting out fruit and quite a lot of vegetables, but I think the science behind "you don't get fat from eating fat" is interesting. I read the blogs of Zoe Harcombe and John Briffa and follow Ben Goldacre on Twitter. They are all good at exposing some of the dodgy science funded by big pharma and the food industry.
I have always thought that artificial fat substitutes are wrong on every level (I know you do too).

Thank you for the link mamie

It is interesting, but I would question some of her doubts.

There was nothing in the recooking section that suggested that we should be eating lots of carbohydrates. It was just pointing out that heated cooled and reheated pasta had less sugar in it. This is of interest to anyone with diabetes who has been following a lowish carbohydrate diet but would like now and again to have a reasonable portion of pasta or rice (say 1 - 1 1/2oz dry weight). To know you can reduce the sugar spike you will get from this helpful. Not everybody has a diet high in carbs and sugar.

Yes, I agree the sudden introduction of calories in fat is irrelevant to the issue, but for anyone trying to reduce their weight or keep it stable and wanting to increase their fat consumption needs to rememeber that it is higher in calories, unit for unit, than fruit and veg or carbohydrates, so if you are going to eat more fat, you need to eat considerable less in comparable units of other food items.

An interesting blog post on the programme from Zoe Harcombe here:
www.zoeharcombe.com/2014/10/trust-me-im-a-doctor-not-on-nutrition/

No one can now say 'I didn't know'

Precisely, so we all use our knowledge and common sense to make sure this never happens.

Uncooked rice can contain spores of Bacillus cereus, a bacterium that can cause food poisoning. When the rice is cooked, the spores can survive.
If the rice is left standing at room temperature, the spores can grow into bacteria. These bacteria will multiply and may produce toxins (poisons) that cause vomiting or diarrhoea.
The longer cooked rice is left at room temperature, the more likely it is that the bacteria or toxins could make the rice unsafe to eat.

Source NHS Choices

Surely, at the end of the day, it is a question of using our knowledge and common sense. I have been cooking and reheating food, including rice for decades. No-one has ever got food poisoning from my cooking.

But I am careful. I do not keep food warm after it has been cooked. I cover it, leave it to cool and then where appropriate reheat it to boiling point. I rarely, if ever, put leftovers in the fridge, they go straight into the freezer. In fact I use my freezer more than my fridge for any food that will be stored for more than a day.

My son used to eat all sorts of left over takeaways for breakfast when he was a student and came to no harm! My SIL is Italian and often eats leftover pasta which he reheats by frying in a little olive oil so it does not go all soggy .

If rice is to be re-heated at a later time it must be cooled quickly to prevent the toxin developing.

Ah, that might be why it has never been a problem for us - the rice that is left over I've always run cold water over it (more to stop the remaining heat from turning the rice 'soggy') and when it's drained, it's either been put in the fridge or frozen.

Reading about Chinese restaurants, I have a friend (who has MS and Crohn's) and she and her husband will reheat Chinese takeaway food the next day!

I was told about it when I had just got married in the 70s, so have always rinsed it in cold water. I cook pasta and rice in bulk and freeze it in portions, so have always rinsed both with cold water so that they cool quickly and can be frozen within half an hour. All this time I have been reducing my blood pressure without realising it!

As said on a similar thread, I've re-heated cooked rice for decades and not come to any harm.

I batch cook chilli con carne with rice, tagines with rice, etc., and portion in tupperwares and freeze when cooled.