Fat, sugar and salt - do you agree?

Anyway you started that thread!

Why did you stop there, Jingl ?

Last week, as a direct result of the "less than 6 teaspoonfuls sugar a day" thread, I ate five Mr Kipling Fondant Fancies, straight off, one after the other.

Depends whether you eat it all at once Petallus

I don't know, but we could test it for you petallus

Yesterday I made a Victoria sponge using 6 oz butter, 6 oz sugar, 6 oz flour and three eggs. The filling was 4 oz icing sugar and 3 oz butter.

So, is the cake healthy or not?

Haven't the 'experts' recently done a u-turn on fats being a 'demon' and are now declaring that consumption of fats not only helps to prevent heart disease but also to lower cholesterol and that eating fat-reduced meals put people's health at risk by exposing them to statins

www.express.co.uk/news/health/438600/Eating-fat-is-good-for-you-Doctors-change-their-minds-after-40-years

The 'experts' do this kind of thing so often (recently over the passive smoking claims that can't be proven it now turns out, eating tons of fibre was the way to eternal life but then turned out to cause cancer, etc) that I no longer have faith in any advice they give. I'm convinced they are just carrying out mass human trials to see what effect X, Y or Z has on people.

Just be sensible and moderation in all things.

Most responsible food companies have stopped using transfats because they know that people will read labels and not buy foods with them in. They have not been banned by law. It's a voluntary agreement.

Fat, sugar and salt are not the 'demon 3'. They are all necessary for a balanced diet. Overconsumption of them is not good for you, but then people have died from drinking too much water.

What I would like to ban are all these constant 'health and food' reports which have medicalised what should be a normal and pleasant occupation of eating the food we require to function around the family table and has pushed us towards faddy and unhealthy diets eaten on an individual basis.

'Eat well, not too much and most of it plants' is a quite adequate rule and add, cooked from scratch. It is a nonsense to say that busy mums (why always mums?) do not have time to cook from scratch, there are hundreds of recipes on the web and elsewhere that provide recipes for food that can be cooked and served in the time it takes to fiddle around with ready meals that everyone chooses for themselves.

The best message is back to a family meal around the table with everyone eating the same food. Do not say young people today do not/cannot do that because there are plenty that do.

Education is one answer Bags, but it would be good to see the food industry taking some responsibility too.
Gangy5, can I just gently say that I think it would be good to refer to Dads as well as Mums when talking about responsibility for shopping and cooking.

I think people do care what they eat in the sense that they want to eat stuff that appeals to their evolved taste buds. Long ago sweetness and saltiness would have been hard to come by but both are useful (some salt in the diet is actually essential) so we evolved a liking for them which we still have. It's natural to want sweet and salty foods.

Similarly, foods high in fat were (and are) very good sources of energy so when food was not plentiful high fat foods were prized. Think eskimos.

So I don't think we should be judgmental or blaming, in a superior sort of way, about people's food choices.

As with many another human problem, education is the answer. It's not quick but it is effective.

Yes, I agree mollie that cooking needs to be taught. Although it was supposed to be compulsory in schools from 2011 I don't see much indepth teaching happening with my grandchildren. It appears that it's up to the school as to how much of it they cover. I am hoping to set up a cookery club for young Mums in my area - they are the one's I feel that need the help.

We are rather naive to think that people will make sensible choices. I would think that over 50% of the population don't care what they eat and what's in it. Yes, I agree, in an ideal world we would all be cooking from scratch if we want to know the content of what we eat. A good start would be to ban trans fats. I also don't think it would be difficult to restrict quantities of sugar and salt. Poor diet is putting huge costs and pressure on the NHS and why should the rest of us pick up the tab? - and janeainsworth please don't get onto labelling and manufacturers claims! That's 2 more subjects which tend to get my knickers in a twist.

ThanksJulie for the housekeeping - had no idea there was a special spot for e-petitions

Beg your pardon about the drop in incidence, aka. My mistake. I've just read jane's post which seems to be suggesting that the incidence of heart disease has not gone down much if at all even though deaths apparently have. I wonder what people die of instead? CHD is still the main cause of death. At least that's what one of the sites I looked at said.

I have to admit to being sceptical of some of these statistics. The person who dealt with my grandfather'sd eath certificate said he'd died of heart failure. Well, yes, in the end, but he'd had emphysema for years. That's what really killed him.

Housework was harder work back then, jings. That counts as exercise. And walking to the shops.

Yes, crossed posts. It would seem that 40-50% is due to medical interventions and treatment. The rest is due to other reasons.

Incidentally you might wish to re-read your penultimate sentence

(I did do loads of exercise)

(don't think my granny did any though )

I don't think I do agree. I think we could be heading for a generation of undernourished children.

My granny ate bread and dripping. Lived to a healthy ninetysix. I was fed bread and lard with sugar on it as a kid - loved it. And then there was the treacle tarts and treacle puds my mum made. And the 3d bags of chips and crisps with plenty of salt. Thank the lord the government forced milk into me.

crossed posts Aka. Sorry, I thought we were having a sensible discussion about the OP.

Thank you for the link, Aka
It just confirms what a complex, and complicated, picture it is, but I would suggest that changes in diet have not played that great a part, and probably medical practice (prescribing drugs to prevent heart attacks and stroke, and other interventions before they happen) and the fall in prevalence of smoking have had a greater influence.

The main points from the summary are that, as Bags said,
the incidence rates for heart attack have decreased for all age groups
and both sexes since the 1960s.
Also,
- survival rates from heart attack have improved since the 1960s.
– In 2008, around 266 million prescriptions were issued for CVD
in England, nearly five times as many as issued in 1986.
– Over 80,000 percutaneous coronary interventions are conducted
every year in the UK, more than three times as many as a decade ago.
– The prevalence of smoking in Great Britain declined sharply
between 1972 and 1994. Since then, prevalence has continued
to fall, but more slowly.
– The quality of the average UK diet has improved in some aspects
since the 1960s, such as reductions in saturated fat and sugar intake.
– The prevalence of heavy drinking has not substantially increased
in either men or women since the 1970s.
But
– Childhood obesity has been increasing since the mid 1980s in both
boys and girls in the UK.
– Adult overweight and obesity rates are also continuing to increase.
– The number of people who have suffered a heart attack has
increased since 1961, due to increased survival rates and an
aging population.

Who knows what the future holds.

That was a stated fact Jane. People were eating more fats and deaths were double today's rate.

Nowhere did I say that this was the main factor of CHD. That was your assumption. I also mentioned in passing cigarette smoking. I could have mentioned age, gender, heredity, dental hygiene, lifestyle, etc but I was responding to a remark by another poster which may have implied that years ago people ate lots of fat, salt and sugar and were none the worse for it.

That is my last word on it because I am sensing you just want to score points rather than discuss and that is not what I want to enter into.

Jess agree with you about labelling being misleading - my favourites are the fruit pies which claim to be one of your '5 a day'

Aka I said you 'seemed to be implying that diet is the main factor in CHD'.

I think that was a fair comment on this sentence in your post:
"Years go people were indeed eating a lot of fat in their diet and coronary heart disease (CHD) deaths were double what they are today."

I wasn't assuming anything.

and

BHF Report

In the spirit of a good, friendly, discussion let me please ask that words are not put into my mouth.