Health and diet

by Ms H    Judit Hadnagy

The food choices we make can have an important impact on our health. Understanding the link between diet and health drives  you to  change your lifestyle, food shopping and food preparation. What is available on the shelf will also have an impact on the choices you make, thereby affecting your wellbeing.  Unfortunately your diet greatly manipulated by the food industry, here is a list of examples; fortification and enrichment of cereal grains with vitamins, calcium and sugar, increased production of unsaturated vegetable oils and margarine, -hydrogenated fat, as substitutions for lard and butter- lowered cholesterol content foods, reduced sugar content foods, lower sodium foods, decreased portion sizes in pre-packaged foods for use in weight loss and increased calcium levels to prevent osteoporosis. Even more substances are added to food to preserve it and enhance its taste and appearance –food additives-. These additives must be assessed for safety before they are used in food. To inform consumers, each additive is allocated a unique number, called as E number, which is used in Europe for all approved additives. 

Do you check the list of ingredients when you pick up the food from the shelf?  

Studies have indicated that nutritional factors do contribute to the development of some diseases like cancer, atherosclerosis, bone disease, arthritis, and dementia. The diet could influence all of these disease states. The patterns in our food consumption have changed and will continue to change. Here are some examples. Decreased consumption of saturated fats, salt and sugar advised due to benefit of cardiovascular health. Increased intake of fish /fish oil, seeds and nuts is recommended because of the numerous effects of omega-3 fatty acids including they lower the risk of coronary heart disease and perform improvement in cholesterol level. Fish oil has also been recommended for disease states including arthritis, cancer, and diseases of the immune system. Eating healthily doesn’t have to be complicated or tedious!  Make sure you get all the nutrients you need and maintain a healthy weight. Good diet is about not eating too much of some things – like saturated fat, sugar and salt – while getting enough of others – like fibre, protein, vitamins and minerals. Research shows that people who eat plenty of fruit and vegetables are less likely to develop heart disease and certain cancers.

About the food labels

Information on the back of a pack is compulsory that gives details about the ingredients, nutritional composition, known allergens, ‘best before’ or ‘use-by’ dates and the weight of the product. The ingredients are listed in order, starting with the highest-quantity ingredient first, down to the lowest- quantity ingredient last. So, if you find sugar at the top of the list, the food is likely to be high in sugar.

The traffic light system for ‘front of pack’ labelling has been around for a while now which is an easy way to check at a glance how healthy a food is. The labels show how many calories are in the food or drink and are also colour coded to show whether the food is low (green), medium (amber) or high (red) in fat, saturated fat, sugar and salt. The information on the front of the pack also tells you how the portion of the food contributes to the Reference Intake (RI) of an adult. Try to choose foods with more greens and ambers and fewer reds.

Add Nutrients to Your Diet With Edible Flowers

By Amjath K  

Edible Flowers

Flowers have made a bold and tasty statement on the dining table and on the food platter since the Roman times. The royals and the elite class took pride in decorating their sumptuous feasts with petals of rose. The Violets, Gladiolus bulbs, Nasturtiums and Marigold have been a part of the English salads since the Victorian age. Edible flowers can be candied and are commonly used in preparing jellies, drinks, essence and soups.

Not all Flowers are Edible

Before you make way to your garden and started hunting and plucking out all the flowers for dinner tonight, it would be wise to keep some important notes in mind. Not all flowers that you see are good for consumption. There are many which are toxic and some can even poison one to death. Buying edible flowers from farmer's markets and supermarkets is a much safer option. Then again, look out for the organic fresh flowers which do not contain pesticides. Also, some of you may be allergic to pollen, so best remove them before eating.

Popular Flowers

The flowers which are used in kitchens worldwide for their amazing flavors, are storehouses many precious nutrients. Here goes a list of some of the most popular edible flowers:

o Daisies
o Pansies
o Day lilies
o Sunflower
o Achillea
o Lotus
o Borage
o Dandelion
o Artichoke
o Banana Blossoms
o Chamomile
o Carnations
o Chicory
o Yucca

Medicinal flowers

Edible flowers not only make a dish look more appetizing but also add a distinct flavor to it. But then this is not all about these flowers. Most of these flowers also have medicinal properties and are extensively used in medicinal drugs for curing various diseases and disorders. In many cases, if the petals of a flower are used in cooking or decorating food, the stem or the pollen of the same flower may find use in preparing medicines.

Some of the examples are:

o Achillea
o Rose
o Lotus
o Angelica

For more information visit http://www.freshorigins.com/edible-flowers.html

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/expert/Amjath_K/365697

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How to Design a Diet Food Plan

By Derek A. Smith  

When ever we go out to eat we're often stuck with one of two bad food choices. Either we are given too much food or the food we're given is extremely unhealthy for us. Even quick, easy to make, alternatives are similarly designed. And when we get the courage to even try to look at the so called "diet food", it is way overpriced. So how in the world can we make a diet food plan that fits who we are and our dieting goals?

The simple truth is it is right in front of our faces. We need to make our own meals. Many great foods that work to reduce fat are served fresh with basic ingredients.

Many restaurants serve excellent tasting food. This is because they tend to load up your dish with all the things that are fatty in nature. Prepackaged selections give you the food, but it's heavily saturated with preservatives and fat. By controlling what goes into your food, you know exactly how unhealthy it is.

When we think of a diet food plan, we are often reminded of bland food that is served in minuscule proportions. This is because the same people that feed us the fat filled dishes are the same people designing the health food. This means when you think of a diet food plan, you automatically have a negative reaction to it.

The truth is not every diet food plan will taste as bad as it sounds. Take for instance a chicken salad. A restaurant will hose what they call a salad in fatty dressing, mounds of cheese, and all manner of grilled chicken that may have been cooked in something unhealthy. Now if you make this same type of salad at home, you can maintain the taste and reduce most of the fat from the equation.

Cut up your vegetables, add a few spices, and grill a chicken strip without anything fancy. Lemon juice works wonderfully in keeping the chicken moist. Add it to your salad and toss. You'll be surprised how good something tastes when you prepare it yourself. And if there is something you don't like, you have the power to make adjustments and create your own personal dieting heaven.

A diet food plan does not even have to be limited by culture. Make your favorite ethnic dishes and substitute the unhealthiest ingredients with something better for you. There are dozens of guides on line to show you what to substitute. Chances are you won't even know anything changed.

Information that will help you have Permanent Weight Loss & Vibrant Health.

If you really want to learn diet secrets that will help you lose weight, then the diet secrets you're about to discover inside work so well that you can use them to lose weight quickly and easily!

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Did You Know Reading Food Label Can Be So Tricky?

By Ruth Tan  

I began to look out for nutrition information on food label when choosing honey. And when progressing from honey to other foods, the learning process didn't get any easier; in fact it only got more overwhelming. From your cabinet or refrigerator, pull out a few canned foods, bottled drinks, and packaged biscuits, and look at their labels and packaging. Are you able to make any sense out of what you read on the food label? Do you question how transparent food manufacturers are? How much is truth and how much is pure marketing tactics? You probably know what I mean by now.

Food label is an important touch-point for us consumers as it serves as a key source of nutrition information when looking for healthy food. A huge global study done by a marketing research agency ACNielsen revealed that the top six ingredients most likely checked by consumers were "Fat, Calories, Sugar, Preservatives, Colouring, and Additives". And because manufacturers recognise how powerful product claims can be, many have exploited them by being very creative in presenting of information on the food label to the consumers. Here, I have made a list of 8 simple pointers that I thought Benefits of Honey visitors could gain in one way or another.

1. Look Out for Hidden MSG!

Monosodium Glutamate (MSG), "the miracle flavour enhancer" often associated with Chinese foods, is known to be neurotoxic or harmful to our brain cells. Packaging can claim "no MSG" yet still contain MSG, which can be hidden in fancy or confusing names like yeast extract, autolyzed yeast, sodium caseinate, hydrolyzed protein, yeast food, yeast nutrient, calcium caseinate, gelatine, glutamate, textured protein, and torula yeast. And as if this doesn't boggle our minds enough, there is also "No Added MSG", which seems to imply that there is already some. The truth is MSG is much more prevalent than many people realize. Many popular fast-foods have MSG, and in general, the more highly processed a food is (or the more ingredients listed on its label), the more likely it is to contain MSG.

2. Do You Perceive "Red and Vibrant" as "Fresh"?

I began to realise how much effort food manufacturers spent on food appearance when I learnt that most commercial honey was pasteurised or treated with high heat to prevent crystallisation, which makes it impossible to compete with honey that are smooth, creamy, and appealing. Similarly, "sodium nitrates" are added to meats to make them look fresh and red on the shelf. Without it, meat would be gray and too unappealing for consumers to buy. Many scientists believe that "nitrates" or "nitrates" found in processed meats like bacon, ham, sausage, pepperoni, salami are cancer-causing chemicals. Dyes are fed to egg-laying hens to make egg yolks turn bright orange, and also given to salmons to look orange-red. Bacon and ham get their red tint from sodium ascorbate, a colour stabilizer, to make them look fresh and vibrant.

3. Don't Expect All Ingredients to be Listed

Food companies can get away with using non-natural processes and chemical ingredients and claim all natural. For example, foods fried at high temperature, resulting in the formation of cancer-causing acrylamides. There is no requirement for food ingredients lists to include chemical contaminants or toxic substances found in food and manufacturers need not declare all of the ingredients they use. Additives which are used as processing aids or serve no technological function in the finished product also don't have to be listed.

4. Definition of "Natural" can be Ridiculously Loose

A food labelled "all natural" can contain pesticides, herbicides, heavy metal toxins, hidden MSG, synthetic chemical vitamins, and a host of other non-natural substances. "Natural" does not mean organic. As there is no official definition for "natural food", food producers and manufacturers have the liberty to call anything natural. Another trick is to pad the list with itsy-bitsy amounts of great sounding ingredients like natural berries and herbs. Having a tiny amount of a superfood appear at the end of the ingredients list often doesn't mean anything in terms of health value.

5. Beware of "Natural Coloring"!

Artificial colours like FD&C Red No.5, FD&C Yellow No. 5 (Tartrazine), FD&C Blue No. 1 (Brilliant Blue FCF) come from coal tar which is basically a petrochemical product. Found in ice cream, canned processed foods, sweets, drinks, soaps, shampoos, and cosmetic application, they have caused allergic reactions such as migraines, itching, rashes, anxiety, and general weakness in some people. Carmine, a well-known natural food, drug, and cosmetic additive found in "strawberry" yogurt, ice-cream, milk, fake crab, lipstick, eyeliners, nail polish sounds like an innocent pink food colouring but it's actually made from the smashed bodies of cochineal beetles (shocked?). Despite reports of severe allergic reactions, it's still been regarded as safe and imposing "no significant hazard" to the public.

6. Know that Sugar and Fat Have Many Names

One of the most common tricks is to distribute sugars such that they don't appear in the top three of the food label. For e.g, a manufacturer many use a combination of sucrose, high-fructose syrup, corn syrup, brown sugar, dextrose to make sure none of them are in large enough quantities to attain a top position on the ingredient list. The same goes for fat; "total fat" includes all kinds of fat: saturated, trans fat, polyunsaturated, monounsaturated. Many foods that claim to be "low-cholesterol" can be full of saturated fats.

7. Nutrition Claims Can Be Awfully Deceptive

The name of the food product has nothing to do with what's in it. For instance, a "cheese cracker" doesn't have to contain any cheese, or a "fruit juice" doesn't have to comprise any drop of real fruit juice. Nutrition labelling is required when a nutrition claim is made e.g "High in calcium", "High in Fibre", "Low in Sugar", "Zero Trans-fat". By the way, any food containing 0.5g or less of trans fat per serving is allowed to claim zero trans fat on the packaging. Hence companies arbitrarily reduce the serving sizes of their foods to ridiculously small amount (e.g 1 small cookie) to bring trans fat down to 0.5g per serving. If you take 30 cookies with 0.5g of trans fat each, you would have taken 15g of trans fat in total!

8. Think Twice When Laying Hands on "Sugar Free" and "Diet" Foods

Watch for hidden sugar in processed foods like bread, salad dressing, soups, and be careful with "fat-free" products, as sugar is often used to replace the flavour that is lost when fat is removed. Fat-free doesn't mean calorie-free. You think brown sugar is less refined and processed, and healthier than white sugar? Wrong, brown sugar is a gimmick to fool consumers into paying more; it's just white sugar with brown colouring and flavouring added. And don't be fooled by what artificial sweeteners can offer you. They mimic the taste of table sugar but have virtually no useful energy. In fact sugar substitutes like saccharin, aspartame and sucralose are toxic to the body. So be more sensitive to food label claims with words like "diet" "low calorie", and "sugar free".

Be an intelligent shopper; fill your carts with lots of fresh raw foods like vegetables and fruits. Don't get fooled by deceptive food packaging, see through the marketing hype on food packaging, be sceptical about claims such as "less", "natural", "reduced", "free", "light", ask if the serving size indicated is the amount you would usually eat as one portion; be an avid food label reader.

Source: http://www.benefits-of-honey.com/food-label.html

R. Tan is the owner of the website http://www.benefits-of-honey.com which is a rich honey resource community specially built for all the honey lovers and fans in this world. She has packed this website with a wide range of quality contents on honey based on her knowledge and experience with honey, so as to promote its invaluable benefits which she believes could bring many positive spin-offs in everyone's daily life.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/expert/Ruth_Tan/34081

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