>>animal food is out of balance says dr Michael Crawford of the Institute of Brain Chemistry and Human Nutrition
How is it that, despite 50 years of government and now EU recommendations, public campaigns and ever-increasing investments in the NHS, there have been ‘Catastrophic Failures in Public Health’ (The Lancet, March 2004)? There are many answers to this question but let me deal with one factor - fat.
Nearly 30 years ago, the Royal College of Physicians and British Cardiac Society published their joint recommendations on diet and the prevention of heart disease. Among the recommendations was advice to reduce the consumption of fatty red meat and choose chicken because it was lean with little fat. This was true then. The government’s food composition tables in 1940 had chicken with 10.3g fat and 26.2g protein, translating to a calorie ratio of 92.7/104.8 in favour of the protein.
Today the Food Standards Agency web site has a table in which you can find 23g fat and 16g protein, which translates to 64 calories from protein and 207 from fat - meaning you are buying 3.3 times the amount of fat calories than protein.
The FSA data is similar to our analyses. However, to again check the data, we purchased popular chicken thighs from an organic farm shop. The calories in the thighs worked out at 154 fat to 74 protein/100g thigh edible portion. That is a ratio of more than twice the calorific value coming from fat compared to protein.
The public image of chicken is a protein meal, not a meal of fat. And another way of viewing the data is that for every gram of protein you eat, you are eating twice as many calories than people did in the 1970s.
As the recent Dispatches programme showed, chickens are produced in an environment without exercise, fed high-energy, weight gain-promoting foods, and genetically selected for fast weight gain.
The same scenario has been seen in beef but the process started at a much earlier stage, starting with the 17th century enclosures, which led to limited exercise for cattle, their selection for weight gain and the beginnings of high energy feeds.
Now what does your doctor tell you to keep healthy? Exercise regularly, eat a calorie-controlled diet and choose your parents! Farmers have been subsidised to do exactly the opposite. There is little point in David Byrne or his successor as European commissioner for health and consumer
protection complaining about obesity when they are subsiding so much more fat going into consumption than protein.
However, what is worse is the rise in mental ill health, which comes in the wake of the previous rise in death from heart disease caused by diet. A proper balance of Omega-6 and Omega-3 is essential for pregnancy, infants, brain and heart health.
In the past 20-30 years, the linoleic acid (Omega-6) in chickens has doubled and the DHA (brain Omega-3) has fallen four to eight-fold. The problem has been the more than1,000-fold escalation of the use of cereals and soya as feed stuffs for animals and ourselves. Breakfast used to be Omega-3 containing eggs, bacon, herring and kippers and is now Omega-6 cereals and cows milk.
The people at Ruakuru Research Station in New Zealand have shown that if you take cows off grass (Omega-3 rich) and put them on intensive feeds, their blood Omega-3s fall rapidly. Chicken feed is likely to be based on maize or corn - again Omega-6 rich.
The food industry is doing for you what the doctor tells you not to do - unknowingly eat obesity and you become obese. Then there is the joint but more sinister rise in mental ill health among young people - not so visible, but now already the second burden of ill health in the UK.
The prime minister has called for a reform of EU subsidies to the meat production industry. This call could be an opportunity to correct the distortions in the food chain that are blindingly obvious. At stake are the health and abilities of children and those yet to be born.
How is it that, despite 50 years of government and now EU recommendations, public campaigns and ever-increasing investments in the NHS, there have been ‘Catastrophic Failures in Public Health’ (The Lancet, March 2004)? There are many answers to this question but let me deal with one factor - fat.
Nearly 30 years ago, the Royal College of Physicians and British Cardiac Society published their joint recommendations on diet and the prevention of heart disease. Among the recommendations was advice to reduce the consumption of fatty red meat and choose chicken because it was lean with little fat. This was true then. The government’s food composition tables in 1940 had chicken with 10.3g fat and 26.2g protein, translating to a calorie ratio of 92.7/104.8 in favour of the protein.
Today the Food Standards Agency web site has a table in which you can find 23g fat and 16g protein, which translates to 64 calories from protein and 207 from fat - meaning you are buying 3.3 times the amount of fat calories than protein.
The FSA data is similar to our analyses. However, to again check the data, we purchased popular chicken thighs from an organic farm shop. The calories in the thighs worked out at 154 fat to 74 protein/100g thigh edible portion. That is a ratio of more than twice the calorific value coming from fat compared to protein.
The public image of chicken is a protein meal, not a meal of fat. And another way of viewing the data is that for every gram of protein you eat, you are eating twice as many calories than people did in the 1970s.
As the recent Dispatches programme showed, chickens are produced in an environment without exercise, fed high-energy, weight gain-promoting foods, and genetically selected for fast weight gain.
The same scenario has been seen in beef but the process started at a much earlier stage, starting with the 17th century enclosures, which led to limited exercise for cattle, their selection for weight gain and the beginnings of high energy feeds.
Now what does your doctor tell you to keep healthy? Exercise regularly, eat a calorie-controlled diet and choose your parents! Farmers have been subsidised to do exactly the opposite. There is little point in David Byrne or his successor as European commissioner for health and consumer
protection complaining about obesity when they are subsiding so much more fat going into consumption than protein.
However, what is worse is the rise in mental ill health, which comes in the wake of the previous rise in death from heart disease caused by diet. A proper balance of Omega-6 and Omega-3 is essential for pregnancy, infants, brain and heart health.
In the past 20-30 years, the linoleic acid (Omega-6) in chickens has doubled and the DHA (brain Omega-3) has fallen four to eight-fold. The problem has been the more than1,000-fold escalation of the use of cereals and soya as feed stuffs for animals and ourselves. Breakfast used to be Omega-3 containing eggs, bacon, herring and kippers and is now Omega-6 cereals and cows milk.
The people at Ruakuru Research Station in New Zealand have shown that if you take cows off grass (Omega-3 rich) and put them on intensive feeds, their blood Omega-3s fall rapidly. Chicken feed is likely to be based on maize or corn - again Omega-6 rich.
The food industry is doing for you what the doctor tells you not to do - unknowingly eat obesity and you become obese. Then there is the joint but more sinister rise in mental ill health among young people - not so visible, but now already the second burden of ill health in the UK.
The prime minister has called for a reform of EU subsidies to the meat production industry. This call could be an opportunity to correct the distortions in the food chain that are blindingly obvious. At stake are the health and abilities of children and those yet to be born.
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