Food Politics

With that reasoning, it is better to eat red meat than olive oil.

Actually, if the Brits wanted to combat obesity they should outlaw foreign food styles. When they ate traditional British food, it tasted so bad that they ate less and were quite thin. Now that good tasting Indian, Italian, American and Spanish food are allowed, they are eating more and getting fat. The government must control this as the public there is just not bright enough to figure it out. This may seem harsh but it is public health and that supercedes personal choice.

Looks like European agencies actually try to protect their public’s health.
Already back in July, the European cracked down on Superfoods health claims: Now food manufacturers have to show scientific backing for their claims in order to be approved.
Yes, itemizing sugars on the nutrition facts panel into naturally-occurring and added should be included on the FDA’s agenda in the upcoming revamping of nutrition labeling, as well as a recommended maximum daily amount of added sugars.
Comment: Sugars derived from fruit, such as fructose, have actually been shown to have a negative impact on health when in high concentrations -such as concentrated fruit juice (used as sugar substitute), or in half of sucrose and HFCS. Among these effects, fructose can only be processed by the liver -where it is stored as fat. Fructose also raises insulin levels, and creates addiction -promoting overeating. Because fructose does not elevate instantly blood sugars, it has been misdiagnosed as a healthier sugar through the limited lens of the glycemic index. But when studied from other lenses, we see that excess fructose -as in added sugars- may cause highly indesirable effects.
A calorie is not a calorie. Food technologists have been tempering with this axiom to create all sorts of Franken-Foods.
That the British agency adopted such beneficial labeling change for the wrong reasons is one thing; the fact that now the British public will be better informed should be an inspiration to our own agencies.

Margo said:

“Looks like European agencies actually try to protect their public’s health.”

While the situation here in Europe with regard to some things (e.g. GMOs, food labelling) is much better than in the US, there are still many of the pressures familiar to North Americans. The EU common agricultural policy is as much a welfare scheme for the food corporations as the Farm Bill. Several of the big food processors and supermarkets in the UK have rejected the Govt. approved traffic light system for food labelling in favour of their own much more disingenuous RDA based system. WTO pressure makes it more likely that the European food system will become more like that of the US, I fear.

Traditional British food tastes bad? Actually, it is delicious, nourishing, and healthy, but people have lost sight of what is traditional British food. The industrial revolution ruined British food and some would argue that colonial expansion contributed to its decline, too. Check out Fergus Henderson’s traditional British food in his book, Nose to Tail Eating (the title is The Whole Beast in the US paperback version). The River Cottage Meat Book is another great contemporary resource for traditional British food with pastoral products. Another great resource for recipes and food lore is The Scots Kitchen, written by F. Marion McNeill and published in 1929. McNeill was a journalist and writer with tremendous insight into the changing food culture of Scotland. She lamented that Scottish national cookery traditions, wome of which had never even ben written down, were were in danger of falling into oblivion in the age of standardization. If the loss of national foods was recognized in 1929, I daresay that perhaps even most current Brits haven’t really experienced traditional British cooking.

I find it especially interesting that the modern British taste for Italian and Spanish-influenced foods are cited by Russ for making Brits fatter, when those are “Mediterranean” foods, which we are urged by the diet dictocrats to eat for health and weight control . I agree, along with the American and Asian Indian influences, that they can make people fat if they are heavily weighted with thisck crust pizza, pasta, rice, potatoes, and industrial seed oils, which is the way they are usually consumed by Westerners.

Also, while there are clearly some differences between European/British food systems, I no longer see as many differences. My husband is British with Norwegian ancestery, so we visit his family in Britain and Norway, as well as his many friends and colleagues all over Europe. They have the same food problems we have at this point.

We are often staying in homes and shopping at local grocery stores, so from that vantage point, it has become quite obvious that the “United States of Europe” (our pet name for the EU) has moved very much in the same direction as the US, towards standardization, loss of regional culture, lowering of standards, increased convenience and packaging and reduced freshness and seasonal specialties. And more and more, the Europeans and Brits are looking like Americans, fat and sick. It’s quite sad, to say the least.