The Food We Eat

The bitter truth about the food industry, Big Pharma and the medical establishment

Quiz question. The photo shows a spiced beef pattie, garnished with goat cheese, sliced Italian tomatoes and fresh Roquette, served on a feather light sesame bun. Of all the ingredients in this delicious hipster burger, which is the worst for your health?

The conventional answer would condemn the red meat as the guilty grub, associated as it is with cholesterol spikes, heart disease, cancer, diabetes and premature death.

Yet, healthy eating advice is an inexact science and there is growing evidence that the sesame bun should be the greater cause for concern, due to its high sugar content.

Experiments reveal sugar to be more addictive than cocaine. Readers of these pages will already be familiar with the role of the ubiquitous high fructose corn syrup in making us all fatter and more fragile.

That fresh fruit juice you love so much in the morning contains as much sugar as Coca Cola and is putting tremendous strain on your liver, raising the possibility that you will end your days as a diabetic.

Ditto, the lunchtime yoghurt, the evening beer etc etc .

Even foods marketed as health products and ‘bio’ foodstuffs are dripping with sugar.

Nothing escapes this bitter truth — not even gluten- free breads and biscuits.

Sugar has been sneaked in everywhere and it is much too late to change our tastes, or the food manufacturing practices that have proved profitable.

So … what to do?

You could reduce your fruit intake. You could replace sugar with alternatives and remove honey from your diet too.

There are lots of publishers happy to take your money in return for their advice on following a low sugar regime, turning avocado and spinach into mainstays of your daily diet.

For many readers, these are steps too far, removing all the pleasure that we have learned to take from eating in this new world of food-abundance.

This may explain why food manufacturers barely lift their eyes from their profit spreadsheets as the latest evidence emerges of their role in our ill-heath pandemic.

They count on our tolerance of intestinal pain and the acceptance that our middle to last years on this planet will be accompanied by daily doses of prescription medicines.

So, how did we get here?

Prosperity, the decline of manual labour, the collapse of the family, laziness and the rise of ‘white goods’ can all be cited in explanation but surely, we are in this place of near permanent discomfort because we have got used to seeing our ailments as a matter of cure rather than prevention.

And for that, doctors and the health establishment must claim much of the responsibility.

The early success of antibiotics followed by the rush to market of Prozac and then Viagra, generated such intense euphoria that humans were encouraged to believe that there was a pill for every ache and niggle.

Doctors — the street dealers of Big Pharma — were happy to see themselves as ‘life-style consultants,’ ministering to our needs and dispensing their miracle cures from behind their large desks, efficiently processing up to 15 ‘clients’ per hour in their ‘clinics.’

All we needed to do was describe the symptoms and the doctor would flourish his/her prescription pad and the world would be right again.

And look where we are now!

The Trump administration has recognised the deadly grip of the country’s opioid crisis.

In France, it is said that more people are hooked on prescription meds than illegal narcotics.

And everywhere, doctors have foregone prevention to focus on cure, or more probably, symptom relief, because it is frankly, less time consuming.

That is why the Internet is teeming with self diagnosis and better health tutorials, alerts on scary food toxins, eat what you want and lose weight snake-oil, myriad and sometimes bonkers fasting plans and alternative food regimes that may or may not work for you.

Amid this clutter, there is truth and it comes from your government — yes, the same government that has been derided as useless and obsolete since the Thatcher-Reagan supremacy of the 1980s.

Governments advise that we should all reduce our sugar content to less than 50g per day, so that we feel better and lose weight.

So, you can eat what you want if you are careful about your sugar intake.

One slice of white bread can contain almost 0.6g of sugar. A yoghurt has between 13 and 17g. Consuming a high-energy drink will ingest some 20g of sugar.

You do the maths!

Take care