Food blip

Todays blip was prompted by being asked by the server in Waterstones cafe whether we wanted anything sweet with our coffee. The answer was no. We do enjoy the occasional home made cake and also scones, although even the number of scones consumed has diminished over recent months.

We’ve been very exercised by the food we eat and whether it is beneficial or harmful to us and the planet. There are plenty of interesting books on the subject and they all make for concerning reading. Tim Spector: You Are What You Eat, Dr James Kinross: Dark Matter, Henry Dimbleby: Ravenous and Dr Chris Van Tulleken: Ultra Processed People.

The processes and additives in much of our food appears to be mind blowing and we don’t really know what their effect is on our bodies and our world.

Which brings me back to this blip. If you read the ingredients list on any of these products you will note the number of non-natural industrial produced ingredients listed. All produced by powerful multinationals.

Henry Dimbleby listed all the ingredients in an egg sandwich and I quote below. We’re often unwittingly eating all these and for a sizeable minority of people food of this type they is their staple diet as there’re cheap and don’t require much of any preparation:

“CHAPTER FIVE

Anatomy of an egg sandwich

Ultra-processed food and the gut microbiome

On the train from the Lake District to London, I bought an egg mayonnaise sandwich from the buffet car. The front of the packet carried the proud boast handmade Sceptically, I turned it over to read the ingredients.

1. Flour
2. Water
3. Malted wheat grain
4. Yeast
5. Wheat gluten
6. Barley malt flour
7. Toasted wheat
8. Salt
9. Dextrose
10. Soya flour
11. Sugar
12. Buckwheat flour
13. Monoglycerides of fatty acids
14. Diglycerides of fatty acids
15. Diacetyl tartaric acid
16. Esters of monoglycerides of fatty acids
17. Esters of diglycerides of fatty acids
18. Calcium propionate
19. Vegetable oil
20. Vegetable fat
21. L-ascorbic acid
22. Eggs
23. Rapeseed Oil
24. Pasteurised egg yolk
25. Spirit vinegar
26. Mustard
27. Xanthan gum
28. Black pepper
29. Whey powder
30. Potassium sorbate
31. Citric acid
32. Carotenes”