Making sure your diet has gotta lotta bottle

If there’s one thing that’s guaranteed to have you looking again at your diet and wondering if it’s nurturing you or killing you, then it’s something such as a heart attack in the family.

The Other Half is now attending rehab sessions after his recent Event and these include a weekly talk.

Recently, one on nutrition provided the news that no, locally-produced honey does not render you immune to local pollen. It also included a call for those present to drink more milk, since there’s a risk of an osteoporosis timebomb and they need their calcium.

It’s probably already far more of a problem than most of us realise.

According to Guidelines for diagnosis and management ofosteoporosis (1997) by JA Kanis, P Delmas, P Burckhardt and others, which was published by the European Foundation for Osteoporosis and Bone Disease, in “women over 45 years of age, osteoporosis accounts for more days spent in hospital than many other diseases, including diabetes, myocardial infarction and breast cancer”.

And that’s just women – osteoporosis affects men too.

Of course, the milk-drinking advice included stating that the milk should be skimmed or semi skimmed, and noting that, while calcium can also be found in cheese, you should only to eat a matchbox-sized amount of that in a single day because of the mortal threat of fat.

Look away now – this could be the death of you

Bad luck: today’s lunchtime salad – made at home – included about two Swan Vesta-sized matchboxes worth of feta (together with chick peas, broad beans, sultanas, a little couscous and a ‘dressing’ of plain, Greek-style yogurt).

Having had a small glass of apple juice before leaving home, my breakfast had consisted of a hard-boiled egg, a little poached salmon, some edamame beans and a squirt of teriyaki sauce, with an espresso on the side.

Thank you Itsu: tasty, healthy food, and actually cheaper than the far more conventional breakfast fodder I’ve been having recently.

There was a mid-morning ‘snack’ of a few dates.

Oh dear – never mind the cheese, am I in danger of eating too much fruit, given how it all sugars?

The point, though, is that my rule-shattering amount of feta for lunch should be considered within a wider context of a fairly healthy diet as a whole.

But back to osteoporosis and calcium intake.

I recall reading, approximately 15 years ago, that women on a  diet had a bone density deficit of 22%.

This should surprise nobody, given that one of the first things that goes out of the window when you start dieting is dairy produce.

And on this subject, let’s take a little look at figures for osteoporosis in France and the UK, since the French notoriously eat more cream, cheese and butter than any other nation on planet Earth.

In 2010, there were approximately 377,000 new fragility fractures in France. The number of people aged 50 plus, with osteoporosis, was approximately 3,480,000.

Bone – healthy and not-so healthy

The economic cost of new and prior fractures was estimated as €4,853m each year and it is further estimated that, by 2025, that figure will have increased to €6,111m.

In 2010 in the UK, there were approximately 536,000 new fragility fractures. The number of people aged 50+ with osteoporosis stood at approximately 3.21m. The economic cost of new and prior fractures was £3,496m (€5,408m) each year; by 2025 burden will increase by 24% to £5,465m (€6,723m).

These statistics are from A Svedbom, E Hernlund, M Ivergard, et al, Osteoporosis in the European Union: A compendium of country-specific reports, 2013.

It’s worth noting that calcium deficiency is not the only cause of osteoporosis, but that alcohol consumption and smoking both also increase bone fragility.

In which case, given levels of smoking and alcohol consumption in France (and given that it has a higher population), the lower number of fragility fractures is even more remarkable.

But then again, the French have not – thus far – lost any sense of a national cuisine; of the traditional and largely seasonal food that has sustained them down the centuries.

We have. We expect asparagus and strawberries in December, and are faced with a dizzying array of culinary styles in shops and restaurants.

And in a way, the culinary snapshot from our recent trip to Rye is indicative of that: poor versions of a ‘national’ dish – fish and chips – cooked on the basis of pre-prepped, largely-frozen ingredients, while local gems such as Cromer crab were noticeable primarily by their absence.

That’s not to say that there is no place for culinary evolution and global influences – or that the French don’t have these (see couscous as an example of the latter), but merely that we have gone to an extreme.

Subject to the whims of British culinary fashion

We fall out of love with genuine British ingredients – and then it takes a celebrity chef to bring them back into fashion. See cooking apples and cauliflowers as but two recent examples.

Sainsbury’s summer TV advertising campaign, “tigers don’t eat quesadillas”, also illustrates the current climate, starting from the perspective of a family where the children get to say what they will and will not eat.

I know it’s not hip parenting these days, but what was actually wrong with ‘Dinner time! Come and sit down!’ followed by (if required) ‘that’s what’s on the table – if you don’t like it, there’s nothing else’?

The idea of giving small children a choice about what they eat is nonsense: they need to be able to make an educated choice before being given a choice – and that means a food education first.

Nor is that an education where you make pronouncements on what’s good or bad for health. It’s a question of educating the taste buds.

Okay, it’s still probably going to be something of a battle, given the amount of high-processed, industrialised junk around the place for children to be tempted by. And Big Food spends an awful lot of money working out precisely how to get children hooked on that junk, so it’s not an evenly-matched battle: this is classic David and Goliath.

But getting home in the evening and asking your pre-primary school child what they want for dinner – and then responding with “you can’t have dippy chips every night” because they regularly have that because you don’t want to cook a fresh meal after a day at work, is not the answer and not the way to a healthy diet.

And why quesadillas? What’s wrong with a salad? It doesn’t have to be limp, tasteless lettuce and cucumber, with flavourless tomatoes.

Take some broad beans (in season at present). Pod and cook for 3-4 minutes, in unsalted water, depending on size. Allow to cool before popping the little green gems out of their skins.

Hull and halve some strawberries (also in season).

Broad beans. In season now. Yummy

Pop on a plate together with some feta – the natural saltiness of the cheese is a fabulous foil for the beans, and works well with the fruit too.

Dress with some Balsamic vinegar.

If it’s a main meal, have some good bread on the side or a few new potatoes (also in season).

Colourful, tasty and healthy – and not complicated.

The media doesn’t help – producing scare stories about health and further confusion about diet.

I freely admit that I find myself wondering if I’ve got it basically right: am I getting enough calcium, for instance, or do I need to start guzzling a pint of skimmed milk every day?

Indeed, am I really getting it all so badly wrong that today’s second matchbox of cheese will ensure that I won’t live long enough to get osteoporosis?

Lighter food for lighter, brighter days

Fresh and light and satisfying

With the improving weather – thank goodness we’re actually having a spring this year! – comes the desire to eat differently; lighter.

And it’s also the perfect time to try a few new things.

There have even been days, with real sun streaming down, when it was the perfect opportunity to pull out the salad spinner and rinse off some organic lettuce and winter purslane, and serve a huge plate of both, drizzled with virgin oil and a thinner balsamico, and topped with cheese.

Blue cheese suits such a dish perfectly, but in La Bouche earlier recently, I’d tried one that was new to me.

Beenliegh is an unpressed, soft blue from Devon, made from organic, unpasturised ewe’s milk. It’s creamy and moist, and beautifully fresh and subtle.

Get the right ingredients sourced and food doesn’t have to be complex to be very good.

A number of evenings recently have seen a dinner that was, if not a direct recreation, then was certainly inspired by a Jamie Oliver salmon dish that I’ve recently discovered.

He takes halved waxy potatoes and quartered fennel bulbs and boils them for six minutes, before draining and drying over the steam.

Salmon with fennel, sweet potato and herbs

Then they go in an oven-proof dish with olive oil, parsley, mint and garlic for something like half an hour, before the salmon – with more of the herby-garlicky mix on it – is placed on top and it goes back in the oven for a further 15 minutes.

It’s a lovely, easy dish, but I think a couple of tweaks help.

Set your oven to 180˚C (fan) and prep the fennel as above, not cutting off the base so that the pieces hold together. Retain the fronds.

Finely chop your mint, flat leaf parsley and garlic, and mix with plenty of olive oil.

Jamie’s version sprinkles the herbs and garlic over everything and then tops with oil, but I think that my way does two things: allows you to coat the ingredients more thoroughly and also reduces the chances of the garlic getting a tad burned.

So, pop in your fennel pieces and mix, and then add some sweet potato that has been peeled and cut into large chunks, instead of potato.

Gently stir around to coat everything. Season with good quality celery salt (my addition) and pop in the oven.

Lovely wild garlic

After 30 minutes, place your salmon fillets on top of the vegetables, scooping some of the oily, herby, garlicky mix on to the top.

And back it all goes for another 15-20 minutes, depending on the thickness of the fish.

Serve with a good squeeze of fresh lemon juice and some black pepper, and topped with the chopped fennel fronds.

The advantage of swapping the potato for sweet potato is that the latter is a vegetable rather than a starchy carb, so it makes the dish a two-portion one rather than having just a single portion.

Mind, if you use lashing of garlic and herbs, those add up too.

Anyway, it’s easy. And tasty – and healthy.

A couple of stalls on Broadway Market also had wild garlic last week, so I grabbed a good handful of that while the opportunity was there.

The English asparagus is here

Later, the leaves were shredded and blitzed together with some spring onions, chives, garlic, pine nuts, a little salt and a teaspoon of sugar, with enough olive oil to give you a good pesto consistency.

You could add parmesan, but I don’t, since The Other Half doesn’t like cheese.

And an ideal way to use some of this lovely stuff – which keeps well in the fridge in a jar – is to cook some pasta, drain and return to the pan, adding some of the pesto with a little double cream and re-warming gently.

You won’t need to use a lot of the pesto – it packs a serious punch.

Serve with fresh asparagus and peas and plenty of freshly-ground black pepper, and if you want, more parmesan.

A perfect, fresh and seasonal dish for a midweek supper.

And on a final note – and a slightly different one: this is worth reading about the cost of asparagus from Peru.

Ignore the slightly puritanical tone of  “lust for this luxury vegetable” etc, but the point remains that there are severe environmental issues created by a global market for a cheap, seasonal vegetable, sent half way around the world to fill – or create – consumer demand outside our own season.

Health stories to make you give up: pt2

A salad of rare quality

The award for the biggest throw-your-hands-up-in-despair moment to come out of last week’s health stories was not membership fees for the NHS or even African sand clogging up our lungs.

It goes instead to University College London for announcing that five a day isn’t enough, and we should all aim for seven a day.

Actually, there’s no scientific evidence that five – or seven – a day is an essential health requirement, although this advice does at least have the benefit of making sense.

The recommendation also says not that the majority of your seven should come from veggies, because fruit contains sugar and even natural sugars should be treated with care.

At which point I find myself musing over whether olives and tomatoes – technically fruits – count as such in this context.

I’m not bad on the old five a day: sometimes I don’t make it and sometimes I get more than that.

Breakfast is the biggest bugbear though.

A helpful – or attempting to be – piece on the BBC website last week was trying to suggest how you could increase your intake of veg, but managed only one practical (sort of) suggestion: adding a handful of spinach to a breakfast omelette.

Now, my understanding on five a day has long been that a portion is something like a whole apple, where it's an obvious whole, or about 80g of a food that doesn’t come as such a convenient handful.

But that’s an awful lot of spinach – or any other leafy food.

The advice also suggests swerving clear of fruit juice and drinks like smoothies, simply because they concentrate a lot of fruit – and therefore sugar – into a single portion.

And also based on my understanding of previous advice, only one portion of any veg counts per day – so no, if you have three portions of mushrooms, you can’t count it as three – and the same goes for pulses.

Variety is part of what makes sense.

To be honest, I ignore the fruit juice one myself – a small glass a day of pure stuff will not be the death of me.

So how else do you get your five – let alone seven?

Weekends are easy. On Sunday, for instance, I had a late but substantial breakfast, with quality bacon and scrambled egg, fried bread – and enough tomato, mushrooms and baked beans to constitute three portions. Plus a glass of fruit juice.

After that, it’s a coast.

Dinner came with carrots and leeks, and there was a little fruit after.

That was seven without any strain.

The difficulty is weekdays.

The most I’m likely to get if I breakfast at home is fruit compote (which means some added sugar) in plain (unsweetened) yogurt and a small glass of juice.

These days, breakfast out usually means eggs on toast – the toast might not be top-quality bread, but at least it's mostly my only bread of the day.

Quality eggs on toast

Lunches are easier – if I take my own, which I manage approximately 2/3 of the time, then it’ll be assorted salad and pickled veg, with some source of protein.

But if lunches are bought out, then most of the time I either end up with soup (vegetarian, so a source of at least one portion) or something between lumps of factory bread, which is never going to give you much on the greens front.

It’s worth noting here that mass-produced bread may be the reason for the rise in some intolerances: there is plenty of anecdotal evidence of people who cannot eat bread in the UK because it makes them feel bloated, but have no such problem on the other side of the Channel. And that’s without mentioning the taste.

However, back to those bought lunches: most salads struggle to be appetising.

Last week saw an exception that proved the rule. Arriving early in Islington for a job, I had time to while away and a need for lunch, so took the opportunity to enjoy the first al fresco meal of the year on a gorgeous spring day, at a café called The Blue Legume (geddit?).

Scanning the menu, I opted for a goat’s cheese salad.

It came in a large bowl that was filled with a veritable mountain of assorted leaves, plus cherry tomatoes, all topped with garlic ‘crouton’ – actually a thick piece of baguette, sliced on the bias – and a roundel of very slightly melted cheese, and with a dressing that included loads of finely-chopped walnut.

The main thing to point out is that the leaves were worth eating – not bland or lifeless or left in a dressing for hours to become simply depressing, as it so often the case. Even the little tomatoes had actual taste – no mean achievement in this country, particularly at this time of year.

The crouton was seriously garlicky, the cheese as pleasing as it should be and the dressing an ideal compliment without overwhelming everything or soaking the leaves.

I like salad, but there’s a reason I still remember one eaten in a café for local office workers near the railway station in Perpignan in spring 2006.

And the reason that I remember it was because it wasn’t a posh café and yet it was one of the first times I realised how good leaves can be – and it had three sorts of cheese and not just the one, rather bland one that you’d be likely to get in the UK if you ordered a cheese salad.

Dinner, as on Sunday, sorts itself out quite efficiently: it's not difficult or time-consuming to peel and slice a carrot and toss a few peas into boiling water out of the freezer – and frozen peas are one of life’s decent conveniences that don’t destroy the nutrition.

But given UK food culture in general, it’s not difficult to see why anyone would, on reading this new health advice, just feel like giving up entirely.

Ultimately, all this sort of advice seems counterproductive and will leave people feeling that they face impossible challenges – particularly if they read enough to know that it’s not even grounded in concrete scientific proof.

So what do you do? The easiest thing, it seems to me – and I realise that this too has its logistical complexities – is to eat fresh food, freshly prepared; to eat as little heavily processed food as possible and to eat as big a variety of vegetables as possible.

Eat good-quality protein, cut back on the crap bread, eat three meals a day and don’t snack as a matter of routine.

Don’t worry about a couple of sugars in your afternoon cuppa, but avoiding processed foods and loads of fizzy drinks will keep your sugar consumption down – and there seems to be a growing body of evidence that artificial sweeteners aren’t good for health either. But do drink water – something that you can even get free.

Apart from our food culture, though, there is another elephant in the room. And that is falling incomes and the rising cost of living.

It’s easy to tell people to eat better: to eat this or that or the other. But when the majority of people’s incomes have been falling steadily for 30 years – and more rapidly in recent ones – against a rising cost of living, then something has to give.

And for many, one of the few things that they feel they can control to a degree is food. It’s arguably easier to buy cheaper food than it is to cut lighting or heating beyond a certain point.

It’s no surprise that, in the last few years, average household spending on food has declined further, from a point that was already well below that on the Continent.

If we really want to change how people eat, there are a very great many things that need changing. Hectoring them with constant messages about what they should eat and how many minutes of how many days a week they should do whatever amount of exercise really will only start to make them feel it’s all hopeless anyway.

Salt talk II

Lamb chops – and the final English asparagus of the year

After twigging, at the beginning of the week, that salt was such an important factor in continued health in this weather, the days since have seen an upturn in how I’ve been feeling.

Spirits are improved, temper even seems better – and the only differences are the salt but with similar water intake, plus almost no complex carbs.

There may be a lesson there too.

Food continues to be simple. The most complex it’s been this was that Moroccan chicken with the lemon and olives previously mentioned.

Tuesday offered up grilled lamb chops with peas and what will almost certainly prove to be the final asparagus of the season.

Wednesday evening brought salad with smoked mackerel – but not the sort of stuff that comes in plastic vacuum packs from the supermarket, frequently looking a rather odd colour.

No, this was from Vicki on Broadway Market and was a lovely fish that had been smoked whole.

The fillets lifted away easily and all that was required was a small amount of attention with the pin-boning pliers.

Smoked fish of that quality is simply the business.

What could it possibly need with it apart from a light, basic dressing – oil, vinegar and salt whisked together – and the odd slice of lemon?

And Thursday saw the griddle pan emerge from the cupboard again, this time to cook steaks, which it did quite beautifully, before they too were served with watercress and lamb’s lettuce, a little vinaigrette, a sprinkle of banyuls-impregnated fleur de sel and, for me, some redcurrant jelly.

None of this was remotely complex. But food doesn’t have to be complex for it to be good. And it doesn’t have to be a fiddle, to take hours and to make you anxious for it to be good either.

Simple smoked mackerel salad

But returning to supermarkets, what is the BBC up to? The central premise of a new series, Britain’s Favourite Supermarket Foods, seems to involve presenter Cherry Healey examining big-selling foodstuffs for their health properties.

Presumably, producers surmised that this challenge could only be undertaken by making supermarkets central to the equation. Perhaps they decided that this should be the case because so many people use them, even though this is largely because they have such a dominant hold over the UK grocery retail market.

If you have to tie it into specific types of shops, why not use small local stores instead? Why not explore local markets? After all, the supermarkets all have massive advertising budgets already. They don’t need added publicity from Auntie.

(Thanks to Dave for letting me know about this piece of programming)

Greg Wallace was also on our TV screens this week, with Eat Well for Less?, which revealed, after taste tests, that the public can tell the difference between properly-cooked fish and chips and the ready-made variety that comes out of the oven.

Most, however, seem unable to spot the difference between fresh and frozen broccoli.

It was an odd programme in some ways. I found myself wondering how fresh the fresh broccoli was: was it supermarket ‘fresh’ – in other words, had it been sent halfway around the country via one of the supermarkets’ hugely centralised transport systems?

If so, it might not taste as good as the frozen, which had been processed into that state very quickly after harvesting.

Steak, lamb's lettuce and watercress – and salt

As an aside, I have no great aversion to frozen vegetables per se, although I’m not sure if or when I’ve eaten frozen broccoli.

Finally, on a TV note, the second episode of Raymond Blanc’s new series, How to Cook Well, was on this week, and the programme will remain a highlight of the TV scheduling for the remainining four weeks.

Unlike other cookery series, this doesn’t show a selection of recipes, but groups dishes together in order to help the viewer understand specific techniques.

So for instance, the first episode was centred on slow cooking – on probably the least likely week of the year when you’d be wanting to slow-cook anything very much!

As usual with Blanc, it wasn’t just entertaining in his inimitable way, but also really informative.

My attempts, in recent years, to really explore slow cooking have not been failures, but I’m not all the way there yet.

There are, as I might have mentioned once or twice, a shortage of recipe books out there that really give serious times and temperatures for cooking something long and slow – for the purposes of this, I’m perhaps most particularly talking about meat cooked in wine or beer.

In the days of microwaves and ready meals, 40 minutes sounds like slow cooking.

I have gone up to around five hours in the last year, usually on 150˚C (fan).

The news from that first episode is that while my timing may not be far off, my oven may not be quite hot enough. Blanc himself was cooking a shin of beef for four and a half hours at 150˚C – not a fan oven – and it was not simply falling off the bone and could be ‘cut’ with a spoon, the connective tissue had also simply melted into edible condition.

Michel Roux has a calculation, that if you don’t have a fan oven, you need to add 15˚C to the temperature, so on that basis, I’ll be trying 160˚C – for the same sort of time or more – come the autumn.

Incidentally, the butcher that he got the meat for suggested six hours for the cook.

The recipes for the series, incidentally, are all available on Blanc’s own website.

And with poaching as this week’s subject, and roasting next Tuesday, even if we don’t feel like eating a great deal at present, Blanc is offering plenty of food for thought.

Green is the colour, veggies are the game

The shallots and garlic were softening in olive oil; the dried mushrooms were soaking in just enough boiling water to cover them, and the remaining selection of mushrooms was forming a mound of trimmed and chopped browns on the beech board.

And suddenly a little thought occurred to me.

Is vegetarianism in cultures where it is not connected to religion linked to the quality of the food available and, in particular, the quality of vegetable cookery?

Some surveys suggests that the best places to be a vegetarian in the West are Canada, the US and the UK. None of which have superlative reputations for food.

In Europe, estimates vary from between 3% of UK people as ‘complete’ vegetarians, while some surveys suggest the figure could be between 7-11% of some degree of classifying oneself a vegetarian.

Interestingly, in the Netherlands it’s around 10% and around 9% in Germany, while the Belgian city of Ghent actually has a weekly vegetarian day. In Switzerland, it’s around 4%.

In France, it’s 2%.

Vegetarianism in Italy is said to be at around 10%, but in Spain and Portugal, it’s very low/below 1% respectively.

A number of things suggest themselves.

First, this is all based on self-definition, since the definition of vegetarianism varies across Europe.

If you live in a country where there is an large amount of vegetable cooking – Italy – what constitutes a vegetarian?

I cannot think, off the top of my head, of any specifically vegetarian eatery in Collioure. And yet it is not difficult to avoid meat. And frankly, I’ve eaten divine salads there that included no fish either.

For a country that is culturally so far from vegetarianism – in 2011, the French government’s Décret 2011-1227 and associated Arrêté effectively outlawed the serving of vegan meals at any public or private school in France, while similar decrees are proposed for kindergartens, hospitals, prisons and retirement homes – it still enjoys a wonderful culinary heritage in terms of vegetable cooking.

Just think of that summer vegetable stew that I was trying the other week or of that iconic vegetable dish, a ratatouille.

Of course, it helps when half the country in question enjoys warmer climes for agricultural purposes – as with Spain and Portugal too – but then there’s the Italian question.

You wouldn’t starve as a veggie in Italy, would you?

Those shallots and garlic and mushrooms were going into a sauce, with stock and a little crème fraîche, to be served with pasta.

Quite often, I do a simple tomato sauce to go over pasta. Easy, nutritious – does it count as a ‘vegetarian meal’ though?

The Italians also use vegetables easily as a single course, served simply with a drizzle of virgin oil. It could hardly be simpler.

Yet look at the cooking of vegetables in the UK and you may despair. Even restaurants often produce side dishes that are less than inspiring and poorly cooked. No, al dente does not mean little more than raw!

We don’t make much of vegetables and often simply expect them as a third component in the traditional ‘meat and two veg’. The other veg being some form of spuds.

Let’s face it, on Christmas Day of all days, people across the UK cook and eat sprouts – not because they know how to or because they like them, but because it’s ‘traditional’.

Given an increasing expectation that we can buy asparagus and strawberries in December, it’s hardly a wonder that we don’t know how to treat vegetables properly, let alone want to make more of them than a sort of cameo on the plate.

Perhaps it is the case that vegetarianism has increased in northern Europe because of limitations of the climate, and even that Italy – which doesn’t seem to feature in lists of top destinations for veggie travelers – is simply such a producer of such quality, that people eat a greater percentage of vegetables in their diet.

Now, I’m off next week. And one of the things I’m looking forward to is some serious lunches – and in some cases, nary a piece of meat or fish will be in sight.

There is little more gorgeous as a combination at this time of year than good feta cheese and fresh broad beans. The latter are beautifully complimented by the salty cheese.

Of course, streaky bacon works well too, for the same reason, but probably won’t feature.

Goat’s cheese and ripe melon, with black olives and a Balsamico drizzle to pack a punch.

And then there’s all the greenery just coming into readiness in the potager.

You don’t have to be a vegetarian to love vegetables – and you don’t have to be a vegetarian to roll you eyes at the way that, in general, we treat our greens.