Cycling UK Forum

Not only are Heinz Baked Beans one of your 'five a day', so is Heinz Spaghetti. It must be the tomatoes.

I read somewhere recently that they now recommend eight a day, as someone else said. However, they are also saying that the majority of the eight should be coming from veg rather than fruit.

Between the ages of 40 and 65 my weight increased from 13 to 15 stone and I apparently developed type 2 diabetes and had to start taking Metformin the basic diabetes medication. My slim 80 year old grandfather had both legs amputated from gangrene a classic sign of diabetes. All through my life I have always eaten 5+ a day. Injuring my back at 40 made squash, my main source of exercise, impossible. My weight gain was caused by eating fatty snacks and reduction in exercise.
This year I got my weight down by 3 stone and stepped up exercise. In April I was tested for my diabetes. When my GP saw those results in August he said "your diabetes is under control probably due to the weight loss. You can stop taking diabetes medication”. Since then I have lost more weight and my weekly self administered glucose tests confirm that the diabetes has disappeared. I think it will come back if I cut down exercise and relax my diet thus putting on weight.
Whilst 5 a day is undoubtedly good stuff, I think keeping healthy and staving off type 2 diabetes is more about controlling your weight and getting exercise which also keeps your cardiac system healthy. Thats why although I think that whilst 5 a day is a good slick slogan we need to invent one that exhorts you to control your weight AND take regular exercise that stretches you a bit. Cycling or swimming would be my favourite. Everyone I know who has been running for years ends up with knee problems.

Al

Vantage wrote:I have the view that if the human race survived the ice age, the stone age, the iron age and all the other oldish ages without the nanny state of dietitions and their recommended daily vitamin allowances then it can survive this age.

Well I know what you mean but what was the average ice age life expectancy?

The race can survive on a lot of nasty brutish and short lives as long as the individuals manage to do a bit of breeding before popping off.

The fat commuter wrote:Not only are Heinz Baked Beans one of your 'five a day', so is Heinz Spaghetti. It must be the tomatoes.

I read somewhere recently that they now recommend eight a day, as someone else said. However, they are also saying that the majority of the eight should be coming from veg rather than fruit.

Is that push towards veg because of all the sugar in the fruit.

I went through a period of five fruits a day for lunch with a load of low fat yoghurt but that must have had a high sugar content.

I am amazed that Heinz spaghetti is still sold - I associate with that bizarre age when folk bought carrots and potatoes in tins - gawd knows what an Italian would think of it.

Sweep wrote:

Vantage wrote:I have the view that if the human race survived the ice age, the stone age, the iron age and all the other oldish ages without the nanny state of dietitions and their recommended daily vitamin allowances then it can survive this age.

Well I know what you mean but what was the average ice age life expectancy?

Probably longer than mine if the motorists in this country continue driving the way they do.

The race can survive on a lot of nasty brutish and short lives as long as the individuals manage to do a bit of breeding before popping off.

I have two daughters. I'm covered

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-30395975

Pizzas being considered.

!!!

Reminds me of a someone I used to work with.

She told us that her boyfriend was a strict vegetarian, careful what he ate - this seemed to consist mostly of Margherita Pizzas.

Got tomatoes in them haven't they?

In this link (given by Axel_Knut) it has an example calculating, from its ingredients, the amount that a Pizza would contribute to your five a day.

I am now going to the kitchen to make Pizza for our tea, this Pizza will be made from raw ingredients so I know exactly what is in it. It does take me about 2 hours to make them though which would remove the appeal that Pizza normally has to most domestic slaves.

Five a day was dreamt up by the New York fruit marketing board, yet it seems to be now hailed as a truth, There is no doubt that fruit and veg are good for you, but five a day and how its consumed are largely a myth. Dieticians need no more qualification than an iniate of Wicca. remember the So called Doctor Gillian McKeith, who bought her degree.Using Sudo scatology as science for telling people there diet was wrong on national TV, then giving them ridiculous diets to follow, which you know they were never going to follow once the TV cameras were off.

The news today is that half the UK population is popping pills, mostly Simvastatin! That stuff amplified all my aches and pains at bedtime so I packed it in. Apparently Quacks are told to put you on these if they consider you have any remote possibility of getting a heart attack. I also read recently that fruit juices are packed with sugar which is now seen as very bad, they were once seen as one of your five a day?
Saw the diabetes nurse for my annual checkup yesterday. Weight down 22 kg BMI 24, Hba1c 4.2, BP 110 over 60, Cholesterol 6.2. She said because of my cholesterol she should advice statins, I said no, not taking them. Because of cycling regularly I can ride up local 1 in 5s quite easily and I am sure cycling ensures my healthy strong heart doesnt need any pills.
I still think that the 'five a day' slogan needs updating to include a reference urging exercise. Kids in some schools are having to be taught how to use knives and forks! They never sit down to a table to eat at home? That Baroness gets pilloried for straight talking saying a lot of the poor dont know how to cook, when she is absolutely correct!
Theres too much hype and bull and not enough honesty with people who wont help themselves and a woeful lack of succinct and clear health advice. Our free health service appears to be being abused by smokers and the grossly overweight if yesterdays visit to the hospital waiting room is anything to go by.

Confused

Al

Five a day was dreamt up by the New York fruit marketing board

Did they then pull levers to get it put into the WHO recommendations or did they dream it up after reading them?

I still think that the 'five a day' slogan needs updating to include a reference urging exercise

I totally agree that diet is only one part of a good healthy life. The slogan however is only about the diet side of things and even then only about getting your fruit and veg. There are other slogans for the other aspects of a healthy existence.

The recommendations for exercise are similarly aiming very low, two and a half hours a week I think, which would hardly even slow down my weight gain. Yet apparently over ambitious for a substantial number of people.