On Wednesday, June 5, 2013 9:46:05 AM UTC+1, Dave Hill wrote:

Came across this interesting item
We all love our steaks and our spuds but what if we could make them
healthier? Well, according to research currently being conducted all
over the world, there are certain spices, vegetables and fruits that can
actually turn an unhealthy dish into one that burns the cals!
Horseradish: It comes from the Brassicaceae family (which includes
mustard, wasabi and broccoli) and while it may be super spicy, it can
help dissolve fat from inside your cells, which research from the
University of Copenhagen says may stop you from getting hungry. It goes
incredibly well with steak, so you’ll be having what you love while
losing weight!

'can help dissolve fat' - cut the weasel words, does it dissolve fat or not? Does it dissolve enough to counter the added calories?


Cinnamon: Research by the American Department of Agriculture discovered
that consuming a quarter of a teaspoon of cinnamon every day for six
weeks can significantly reduce your blood glucose and cholesterol
levels. Seasoning your dishes with this tasty spice or substituting
sugar for cinnamon in your cappuccino can help you lose weight in the
long run!

Cinnamon's nice but that much could make you pretty sick of food.


Pineapple: Being a natural source of enzyme bromelain - an enzyme that
breaks down protein and helps raise the metabolic rate - pineapples are
serious fat-fighters!

by how much? is it significant?


Combining this with jalapeños can boost your
weight loss and help you lose weight like nothing else, especially as
Laval University in Canada found that these spicy devils help burn 1,000
more calories a day when eaten!

is that credible?


Grapefruit: This citrus fruit is jam-packed with vitamin C and,
according to research conducted at the Scripps Clinic in San Diego,
eating grapefruit daily as part of a 12-week weight-loss plan can help
you shed an extra 1.4kg!

weight loss plans usually do result in weight loss. That one includes grapefruit doesn't mean the grapefruit is a significant cause of weight loss.


Coconut Milk: Yes, coconut milk is fattening but its fats are essential
for our metabolism; so much so, that after one meal which has coconut
milk in it, your metabolic rate could increase by 5%.

Could or does? Even if it were does, does the 5% increase offset the extra calories?


Celery: Your mind might have already wandered to a Bloody Mary, and you
know what? That’s great! This vegetable is low in calories but
super-high in fibre - meaning you’ll feel fuller for longer. The calcium
you get from it will also help bind waste fats and cleanse your body
from them.


Black Pepper: The most common spice of all, and one of the most
nutritious! Black pepper’s active chemical, piperine, gets your
metabolism working faster and burning more calories according to the
journal Nutrition Today. On top of that, it also helps relieve the
symptoms of heartburn and indigestion.

And like most digestion settling herbs, eat much and it upsets the stomach.

Same old

On Wed, 5 Jun 2013 17:12:27 +0200, echinosum
wrote:

Eat a reasonable quantity of
balanced diet with plenty of fibre, and take regular exercise, and you
can't go far wrong

The trouble is that so many can no longer recognise what is a
'reasonable quantity' or a 'balanced diet'. This is especially so if
you have not learned to cook decent food from scratch - you simply
don't know what foods are high fat/sugar. At least one generation
missed out on cookery classes, we are seeing the results of that.

Gardening on Wilts/Somerset border
on slightly alkaline clay.

On Thu, 06 Jun 2013 11:21:06 +0100, nmm1 wrote:

In article ,
David.WE.Roberts wrote:
On Wed, 05 Jun 2013 09:46:05 +0100, David Hill wrote:

Came across this interesting item
snip
Oh, and as far as I know steak isn't unhealthy apart from the links
between red meat and carbonised food with some forms of cancer.

Look harder. Small quantities are fine, but a lot of problems are
associated with high-meat diets - we aren't adapted to them, though some
people are a lot more adapted than others.

Spuds are far more likely to do you damage because overloading on
carbohydrates is the thing that piles the weight on.

Sorry, but you have just joined the bunkum wallahs.

Look at high protein/high fat low carbohydrate diets - there is a lot of
support for this as a healthy way of living.

And a lot of evidence that they are very risky. Few people do well on
the very high carbohydrate diet that suits me, but most people are best
advised to get most of their calories that they burn up in exercise
above and beyond ordinary moving around (note!) from carbohydrates.

Also, potatoes are NOT a particularly high carbohydrate food, and are a
very healthy way of getting that (if you eat the skins, of course).

I've no concerns about replacing our short term energy demands with
carbohydrates - it is generally the most efficient way to fuel ourselves -
but it is a fine line between replacing energy demands and just having a
couple more spuds, or another scoop of rice, or another helping of
pasta......

Note that I said *overloading* on carbohydrates.

I am particularly aware of this as a Type 2 diabetic.
My own testing (and that of many who discuss this online) shows a major
spike in Blood Glucose after eating a 'healthy' (by NHS guidelines) meal
with plenty of carbohydrates.

I am also aware that in my particular case carbohydrates are addictive - I
get very strong cravings for bread (especially home made wholemeal and
seeds bread) and potatoes (especially home made chips).

HFLC diets (not Atkins which forces you into ketosis, but ones with a
relatively small percentage of processed/easily converted carbs) in my
case acts to suppress hunger, aid BG control, and reduce weight.

There is also, of course, the added issue that someone with a fully
functioning pancreas can handle a lot more carbs than a T2 diabetic.

So a 'healthy' diet for a non-diabetic is not necessarily a 'healthy' diet
for a diabetic (which at times the NHS significantly fail to grasp).

On the subject of high meat diets - yes there are concerns but I think it
is possible that as cursive hunters and omnivore foragers we are more
adapted to a high meat diet than to a high proportion of processed
carbohydrates which have been made possible by modern agriculture.

I don't know of any studies to confirm this, but it could be possible that
the harder we work the pancreas to produce insulin to get excess sugars
out of our blood and into our tissues the earlier it wears out. Then again
there could be completely unrelated factors and it may just be a time bomb
thing - late onset beyond the breeding window of natural selection which
shaped our ancestors.

All interesting stuff!

Cheers

Dave R

Unfortunately peer review is no longer a guarantee of quality.
A 'peer reviewed' paper last year had the following passage in it: "When plotted the empirical data seemed unlikely, so the data was modified to match the output of the model." (Hansen et al)

The most common response from 'Natures' reviewers was, ‘It has to be wrong. I don’t know why it is wrong, but it has to be wrong.’ Which means ground breaking research frequently never gets published.

There's a good article in the Guardian out peer review shortcomings he

Publish-or-perish: Peer review and the corruption of science | David Colquhoun | Science | guardian.co.uk
extract
"Peer review is the process that decides whether your work gets published in an academic journal. It doesn't work very well any more, mainly as a result of the enormous number of papers that are being published (an estimated 1.3 million papers in 23,750 journals in 2006). There simply aren't enough competent people to do the job. The overwhelming effect of the huge (and unpaid) effort that is put into reviewing papers is to maintain a status hierarchy of journals. Any paper, however bad, can now get published in a journal that claims to be peer-reviewed."


Peer review is in a mess mainly due to the internet, the gate guardians who tried to make sure that nothing too radical rocked the boat are being seen to be wrong minded. A good example of that is Henrik Svensmark's theory on the effects of cosmic rays on cloud formation as an indirect cause of global warming, his paper was trashed by the climate change gate guardians as rubbish................... then of course a couple of years later CERN proves the theory to be valid, they had to accept it, or show it to be wrong.

If anyone has any doubts about peer review, read the climate gate E-Mails.

On 10/06/2013 10:13, Martin wrote:
Have as many meals as you want in a day, and anything you
like in the meals, but nothing between meals


Just make the meals last a long time

--
Janet T.
Amersham