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Consider tougher regulation in obesity fight - Labour 
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jonbwfc wrote:
Hmm.. not sure eating a 200kCal bag of crisps often will make you obese of itself but it implies a .. certain lack of care about one's diet that might lead to such a problem.

I really don't know, but it's accumulative. If you ate 200Kcal every day in addition to a healthy diet, I suspect it would add up significantly over the years. It could be as much as 10Kg per year, so going from 70Kg to 100Kg from the age of 28 to 31.

ref: http://www.bmi-calculator.net/bmr-calcu ... weight.php

And you're right; the heaviest of the people in my office also eats enough cake to feed an army of cake eaters in addition to her usual triple-decker bacon sandwich. She must be about 200Kg. She's the size of an entire family, and she eats like it. One of the others is famous for always taking the largest portion of everything, and they both drink a lot of coke.

The slimmest in our office is actually a total chocolate addict, but it's always in small amounts. She would eat a chocolate bar in two sittings, or share it. She also can't finish a whole can of Coke. I don't think her diet is healthy, but her calorie intake isn't excessive.

I actually have a very sweet tooth; I can drink glycerine by the bottle for example. Rich things make me feel ill though. I've never eaten a rich diet so I guess I'm not just used to it.

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Sun Jan 06, 2013 11:52 pm
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While I agree in principle with the idea of standardisation of nutritional information, I also read the thread and think, what the [LIFTED] is wrong with you? It's fairly obvious what a portion should be and whether something is good for you or not, what happened to common sense and thinking for yourself?

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Sun Jan 06, 2013 11:53 pm
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tombolt wrote:
While I agree in principle with the idea of standardisation of nutritional information, I also read the thread and think, what the [LIFTED] is wrong with you? It's fairly obvious what a portion should be and whether something is good for you or not, what happened to common sense and thinking for yourself?

If we're talking about buying ingredients, cooking and following recipes, absolutely. If I see a recipe and it says 'feeds two' and then further down it says 'ingredients - 50G of butter' I'm going to say '[Lifted] that'.

The point I've been arguing is though that food manufacturers have been/are attempting to disguise exactly how unhealthy the food we are being sold is, because they know we all want to buy healthier food and are shying away from unhealthy food. So you get things like buying a pasta salad for lunch and finding that the information listed on the packet is for a third of it, which is about two forkfuls. Or that example of a dessert I mentioned where the numbers were listed on the front but exactly how bad they are was hidden in small letters on the bottom of the packaging, so you have to rely on people knowing how much fat or sugar is the recommended daily amount or being nosey enough to look on the bottom. I know how much some of those are but I couldn't tell you (say) how much the recommended maximum of salt is (and add another one by the way - some say salt, some say sodium. One is 'worth' roughly half the other i terms of effect on the body but do you know off the top of your head which way round it is?)

Yes, 'use your common sense' is fine to a degree - apples good, doughnuts bad - but getting into the detail is a battle against the manufacturers, when they should be required by law to help us.


Mon Jan 07, 2013 12:12 am
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tombolt wrote:
It's fairly obvious what a portion should be

I think we've proved conclusively that it isn't obvious at all. Everyone has their own differing opinions. I obviously think that my opinions are correct, but others disagree.

Going back to when the "five a day" policy first came in, I remember a politician being asked what a portion of veg was. A lot of people were asking. He was flustered and replied "it's obvious", demonstrating that he actually didn't have a clue. There is now a guide, and apparently the correct answer is 3 heaped tablespoons if it's peas or carrots, or 4 spoons if it's spinach or green beans. A portion of fruit juice is 150ml, so a litre should last one person a week.

http://www.nhs.uk/Livewell/5ADAY/Pages/ ... sizes.aspx

Looking at a carton of juice here, it does say that 150ml is one portion. However, I know a few people who would regularly drink a whole litre in a day and certainly more than 150ml at a time.

What would you consider a portion?

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Mon Jan 07, 2013 12:23 am
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JJW009 wrote:
big_D wrote:
A lot of the "flavour enhancers" have an addictive quality, meaning people eat more than they need to.

Really? That's interesting. I thought cocaine was banned several decades ago in human food, and more recently in pet food. I've never heard of any other addictive ingredients apart from sugar.

Do you have examples or references?

Not only opiates are addictive.

Caffeine is one, Glutamate is another, It has an addictive property.

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Mon Jan 07, 2013 5:18 am
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JJW009 wrote:
Looking at a carton of juice here, it does say that 150ml is one portion. However, I know a few people who would regularly drink a whole litre in a day and certainly more than 150ml at a time.

What would you consider a portion?


A glassful. Looking at the Ikea site, they can hold around 350ml. Now I wouldn't fill it to the top, probably a centermeter from the top, so I would probably consume between 300ml-350ml.

Now that I've done the maths it looks an awful lot, but before I've just thought of it as a 'normal' glassful. I probably wouldn't drink a pint of it, it would always go in a 'small' glass, but not a tumbler that I'd drink rum from, but it appears that that would probably be a better sized vessel.


Mon Jan 07, 2013 8:19 am
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forquare1 wrote:
not a tumbler that I'd drink rum from, but it appears that that would probably be a better sized vessel.

I find that when I have breakfast at a hotel, that's exactly the sort of glass that the OJ is served in.

Have you ever squeezed the juice from a fresh orange? You don't get much! Fruit juice is concentrated sugar with much of the fruity goodness left behind. OJ has the same sugar content as Coke.

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Mon Jan 07, 2013 9:53 am
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JJW009 wrote:
forquare1 wrote:
not a tumbler that I'd drink rum from, but it appears that that would probably be a better sized vessel.

I find that when I have breakfast at a hotel, that's exactly the sort of glass that the OJ is served in.

Agreed, juice in the morning for me was half a tumbler full, roughly. Just enough to get a sugar kick to start the engine as it were. However I always used to have a bigger glass after a session at the gym but that was more because they had one of those machines to squeeze fresh oranges that looks like something from the Mousetrap board game than actually wanting a big glass of juice.

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Have you ever squeezed the juice from a fresh orange? You don't get much! Fruit juice is concentrated sugar with much of the fruity goodness left behind. OJ has the same sugar content as Coke.

Machines get surprisingly more juice than doing it manually I find. However you're right about the sugar content in orange juice (even fresh). When I was warned about how my families genetic propensity for diabetes might express if I had a diet with lots of sugar in it, I dropped the juice pretty much altogether.

In pure dietary terms though isn't the sugar in juice fructose, which isn't quite so damaging to the health as the glucose in manufactured soft drinks?


Last edited by jonbwfc on Mon Jan 07, 2013 11:17 am, edited 1 time in total.



Mon Jan 07, 2013 10:13 am
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In excessive quantities fructose is more damaging than glucose, which is why high fructose corn syrup is so controversial. It's processed by the liver, as opposed to glucose which doesn't need any processing.

Table sugar is half fructose, half glucose once it's been processed by enzymes:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sucrose#Me ... of_sucrose

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Mon Jan 07, 2013 10:19 am
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For me a glass is 250ml, which is a small water glass.
I realised since I moved to the UK that I drink more coke and more juice that I used to as the glasses are significantly bigger than at home (pint etc). Softer bread seem to encourage eating more of it too. If you crunch through hard crust you feel a lot fuller. Also living alone at uni is lethal as you always to overcook if cooking for 1 person.


Last edited by TheFrenchun on Mon Jan 07, 2013 11:03 am, edited 1 time in total.



Mon Jan 07, 2013 10:22 am
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Cooking for one is very difficult.

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Mon Jan 07, 2013 11:00 am
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I've never found cooking for one an issue, because I always cook for multiple people and freeze stuff down. What I have found recently is that I can't be arsed to cook full stop.


Mon Jan 07, 2013 11:26 am
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tombolt wrote:
Cooking for one is very difficult.

I've never really found that with cooking meals specifically to be honest with you. Most things can either be split into portions and frozen (stuff like pasta sauces, chilis and currys) or are available to be cooked in 'one person' portions anyway - most meat for example; you can cook one steak or one chicken breast just as easily as two and vegetables go by weight or eye. The only example I can think of is I have a rice cooker which requires a minimum amount of (rice+water) to be cooked or it boils dry and that minimum is too much for one person. And I'm somewhat leery of keeping and reheating boiled rice.

I do have a problem with waste food due to being single - for example it's quite hard for me to get through a loaf of bread on my own before it goes stale and I only ever buy single pints of milk because anything larger also goes off in the same way. Plus as a single person I can't really do something like a whole roast chicken because again I'll end up with some of it inedible and I hate to throw food away. I did used to do a very good roast dinner too :).

Baking is something of a thing too - baking is chemistry and you can't always just proportionally reduce the measures without adversely affecting the final results. But it's not as if it 's hard to give away the excess at work or something...

There are a lot of prepared foods that are portioned for two, that's undoubtedly true. I don't buy them.


Mon Jan 07, 2013 11:29 am
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forquare1 wrote:
I've never found cooking for one an issue, because I always cook for multiple people and freeze stuff down. What I have found recently is that I can't be arsed to cook full stop.

+1 for cooking more than you need to. I used to make meals to last two days, which meant the second day I was eating the same thing. Never concerned me in any way and that includes rice.

jonbwfc wrote:
I do have a problem with waste food due to being single - for example it's quite hard for me to get through a loaf of bread on my own before it goes stale and I only ever buy single pints of milk because anything larger also goes off in the same way. Plus as a single person I can't really do something like a whole roast chicken because again I'll end up with some of it inedible and I hate to throw food away. I did used to do a very good roast dinner too

For bread - as a uni student, I used to freeze half the loaf. Nowadays you can buy "halve loaves" or smaller loafs of bread. Milk is always difficult because some days I used to have cereal and other days I didn't. WRT roast dinner - either I'd go out and eat, or have the meal with family.

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Mon Jan 07, 2013 1:10 pm
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cloaked_wolf wrote:
forquare1 wrote:
I've never found cooking for one an issue, because I always cook for multiple people and freeze stuff down. What I have found recently is that I can't be arsed to cook full stop.

+1 for cooking more than you need to. I used to make meals to last two days, which meant the second day I was eating the same thing. Never concerned me in any way and that includes rice.

jonbwfc wrote:
I do have a problem with waste food due to being single - for example it's quite hard for me to get through a loaf of bread on my own before it goes stale and I only ever buy single pints of milk because anything larger also goes off in the same way. Plus as a single person I can't really do something like a whole roast chicken because again I'll end up with some of it inedible and I hate to throw food away. I did used to do a very good roast dinner too

For bread - as a uni student, I used to freeze half the loaf. Nowadays you can buy "halve loaves" or smaller loafs of bread. Milk is always difficult because some days I used to have cereal and other days I didn't. WRT roast dinner - either I'd go out and eat, or have the meal with family.

This is all fine if you have fridge and freezer space. Currently unable to freeze much at all and no fridge space, so it is a case of eat or chuck.


Mon Jan 07, 2013 1:49 pm
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