Downshifting bad for your health ?

MrsE_2

ailuro2 wrote: »

Great point raised by the OP, but sadly it's degenerated into one of those threads where posts are littered with multiple quote boxes.:rolleyes:

My tuppenceworth I'm going to add is to downshift where you can do it without giving up on taste, and without giving up on nutritional value.

Downshift if the saving is 'real'

Mince is an excellent example - 500g of cheap mince with the fat drained will end up weighing a lot less than 500g of lean steak mince with the fat drained after browning.
If the difference in price is vast then it might be better value to buy the cheapest mince, but why not consider going round the corner to the reduced section to see if you can pick up some reduced price mince that isn't going to vanish in a pile of grease? - that way you get the best of both worlds. Cook it when you get home and stick it in the freezer and it will be ready to use when you need it. Now that's proper moneysaving without the need to lose quality in your food.

I had the M&S roast beef (the plain Angus one, not in a fancy box). It didn't shrink & cut so well I think it worked out much cheaper than my usual Sainsburys TTD stuff. It didn't crumble, but sliced lovely & was beautiful.

misskool

ixwood wrote: »

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/health/article2753446.ece
THE biggest study into organic food has found that it is more nutritious than ordinary produce and may help to lengthen people's lives.
The evidence from the £12m four-year project will end years of debate and is likely to overturn government advice that eating organic food is no more than a lifestyle choice.

The study found that organic fruit and vegetables contained as much as 40% more antioxidants, which scientists believe can cut the risk of cancer and heart disease, Britain’s biggest killers. They also had higher levels of beneficial minerals such as iron and zinc.


http://www.physicalnutrition.net/soil-mineral-depletion.htm
Soil is the prime source of minerals on which every living cell depends for its structure and function. Vitamins, enzymes, amino acids (protein) and a host of other biologically active substances are essential for our bodies to function properly. They virtually all include minerals as an integral part of their chemical structure. Dr Linus Pauling, twice noble prize winner, said “you can trace every sickness, every disease and every ailment to a mineral deficiency”. Yet, all over the world, minerals are disappearing from agricultural soils at an alarming rate. In 1992, the official report of the Rio Earth Summit concluded “there is deep concern over continuing major declines in the mineral values in farm and range soils throughout the world”. This statement was based on data showing that over the last 100 years, average mineral levels in agricultural soils had fallen worldwide – by 72% in Europe, 76% in Asia and 85% in North America. What has caused this staggering decline?

Linus Pauling may be a twice nobel prize winner but there are a whole host of things that cause disease and sickness, even genetic predisposition. A disease can be traced to a deficiency amongst one of the causes but you cannot say it is the primary cause or that the deficiency is the only necessary and sufficient cause for the disease.

As for the antioxidant study, the professor (http://www.ncl.ac.uk/afrd/staff/profile/c.leifert) doesn't even have that study paper in his staff profile and I can't find it a scientific journal search. I'm not sure where the assumptions are made from the newspaper article...

Fire_Fox

spaceraiders wrote: »

The trouble with studies like this is that there's no proof things like antioxidants reduce cancer rates. In fact:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15464182?ordinalpos=1&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_DiscoveryPanel.Pubmed_RVAbstractPlus
"INTERPRETATION: We could not find evidence that antioxidant supplements can prevent gastrointestinal cancers; on the contrary, they seem to increase overall mortality."

If you want to make claims like this, you have to actually show that eating organic directly leads to less cancer. I would suggest you look for evidence outside of newspapers as the media are notorious for jumping to conclusions.

Look, some of the organic guidelines make sense, some of them don't (e.g. no modern pesticides). I just get bothered when people claim that any organic food is automatically better than any non-organic food. It doesn't really make any sense why that should be the case because you can grow non-organic food any way you want.

Antioxidant supplements cannot be compared to increasing the amount of antioxidants in your diet through eating more nutritious foods. Vitamin A is an antioxidant vitamin which has long been known to have toxic effects when taken to excess. It's pretty difficult to 'overdose' on vitamin A through healthy eating, pretty easy to do so by popping pills.

MrsBartolozzi

misskool wrote: »

As for the antioxidant study, the professor (http://www.ncl.ac.uk/afrd/staff/profile/c.leifert) doesn't even have that study paper in his staff profile and I can't find it a scientific journal search. I'm not sure where the assumptions are made from the newspaper article...

As it was a European study and nothing to do with the university where he works I would not really expect it to be in his staff profile.
I have found a few links to the study mentioned.
http://www.qlif.org/qlifnews/april05/con0.html

http://orgprints.org/view/projects/int_conf_2007qlif_2_food_quality_and_safety.html

http://orgprints.org/10482/ (link to pdf of full article)

I found Prof Leifert's reasons for stepping down from the GM science review panel very interesting at the time it happened, but had forgotten about it until now. Thanks for bringing this up again.

MrsB.