And here we are again re my articles on hilaryagreen.com.
A news report I read yesterday was talking about the adverse effects of eating high proportions of Ultra Processed Foods (UPF). Currently the ratio is roughly 48% UPF, and 52% all the rest. Although in some consumers the number is often heading toward 80%. These facts worried me two years ago and still do today. More so because of rising numbers of children and young people now suffering from overweight, obesity, Type 2 Diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure and really high cholesterol in children as young as seven years old. One of the problems of course, is that with government health departments working to try to regulate the sale and advertising of UPFs in an effort to tackle the major worldwide obesity epidemic, manufacturers are fighting back. And they have multimillions to spend on their assertions that their foods are perfectly healthy, even though with the results of all the research and studies that have been done in the past few years are proving the opposite.
An example
Sausage and Mash Home
Ingredients Sausages, Potatoes, Onion, Butter, Milk, seasonings, broth or water for gravy, gravy seasoning, flour for thickening.
Sausage and Mash Supermarket
Ingredients Sausage, water, starch (Maize, Potato), Fibre (pea, potato), rice flour, salt, sugar, mineral salts (451,450), dried vegetables (onion, garlic), preservative 223 (sulphiles), herbs, yeast extract, antioxidant 3156, spice extracts, herb extracts,.
I confess it never before occurred to me to actually check the ingredients on the back of the packages in the supermarket. The example listed above (one of my favourites) is just a small example I came up with, others I checked when shopping later have so many ingredients, few of which I had even heard of and which few of us would use when cooking at home, that I found it really scary.
BUT, it doesn’t have to be this way. As I have discovered since beginning my own journey. The obesity epidemic CAN be reversed. If I with just spending a few dollars ($50) on pension day, before treating myself to a large flat white, ($6.50), can now look out of my window and in my refridgerator and see easily cooked/prepared vegetables, ANYONE can do it.
OK, so for me it’s Summer heading toward Autumn, for many of you it is Winter heading toward Spring and a great time to begin your own journey toward growing your own food (or at least some of it), and depriving the food manufacturers of some of the huge profits they make by seducting the rest of us into making ourselves sick. I can’t help but wonder if they, with their enormous incomes, actually eat what they sell, but I doubt it, they don’t have to worry about the cost of fresh vegetables do they?
SO next, –
Step 2 – Count the ingredients contained in the item.
Step 3 – Note how long it takes to cook.
Step 4 – Work out first the cost in money, then the cost in time to reheat or cook from scratch, then the cost of both on both your and your childrens health.
Let me know your results? I would really like to know if your test agrees with mine.
Mine was an easy example that most of us have cooked at sometime or other, and fewer ingredients. But those I saw at the supermarket yesterday when I was doing my fortnightly shop only confirmed and endorsed my own small trial.
On checking online today I found it sad that even someone high in the Food and Grocery council can appear to endorse UPFs and insist it is all a matter of choice. Well, it is if you are on a decent budget, which these days fewer and fewer people can actually admit to.
Something else I noticed yesterday, my actual food spend was up by a staggering 20% over pre Covid, while my income is just the same. As a result I had to make a special effort and bought potatoes instead of chips at the chip shop round the corner (potato $2 for 2, Chips $$4.50 per bag. (It only took me to slice, boil, then fry in frypan for 5-10 minutes).
So, if you are in a financial position to choose, then chances are you will opt for the most healthy choices for your family. Unfortunately for those on a minimun fixed income, this is rarely possible, especially those who have to work and then feed their family when the get home.
Perhaps those making the most in the industry shold try living on the type of income that so many of our peope have to live on.
these post Covid days of the high cost of living? I reply to all emails within 48 hours as check my emails daily.