When I visited a favourite little cafe in Guildford recently, I chose some venison skewers served on 'cos lettuce and with pita bread, a small vegetable sausage cut in two, a small bowl of low fat yoghurt and some spicy no-sugar chutney. I reckon I did well. This was my main meal for the day, and apart from a small breakfast serving, I ate fruit throughout the day, with plenty of water.
With all the publicity about "obesity" and being told we're eating the wrong food and eating too much of the wrong food, it comes as a little bit of a surprise to hear that in a recent survey here in Australia, it's been found that one in five households are eating what everyone tells us we SHOULD be eating. That doesn't sound too different to people's choices of a decade or so ago, when you think about it.
Going further into the survey, meat and three vegetables is still the favourite meal. Well, we're told we should be eating more vegies but doesn't this contradict the theory that none of us are eating the preferred requirements?
Salads or vegetables are served as an accompaniment to meat, fish and chicken dishes. Salads go with lasagna and pasta meals. Stir frys are a regular weekly event and spaghetti bolognaise join stir frys as favourites. Many families eat fish at least three times a week. Chicken at least two.
Am I reading this all wrong or what? Because to me this sounds like what we should be eating.
Across the board however, the survey, carried out by Westinghouse (Australia?), found the following:
Top 10 home-cooked meals
1. Steak or chops with vegetables or salad
2. Roast/baked dinner
3. Spaghetti Bolognaise
4. Stir Fry
5. Seafood with vegetables or salad
6. Chicken pieces pan fried with sauce
7. Casserole
8. Barbeque
9. Schnitzel
10. Ready-made meals.
What the survey doesn't say, is that number 10 - ready-made meals are very often meals prepared by the person doing the cooking in the home (usually Mum) at the weekend in preparation of the week, and frozen in readiness to re-heat.
Quite often too, the ready-made meals are actually the remainders of the other meals, when too much has been cooked, and then frozen.
The re-emergency of home-cooking is taking everyone by storm. And it doesn't take much to see that people, even when pressed for time, and pressed for money (with the economic downturn) will return to their mothers and grand-mothers cooking books and hints and tips.
Another thing that I'm hearing all the time is this. Most people have taken note of the "obesity" obsession with the media and the government and done something positive about their own sizings of meals. The number of women I've spoken to who have willingly reduced the plate size from a "mains" to a side plate, have to be taken seriously. Yet, as they, and I've found, this has no effect on body weight (by this I mean losing weight). In other words people are NOT over-eating, and they're eating what they consider to be good food, and what the experts tell us we should be eating.
I can't remember when I last heard anyone saying they had "sweets" or "desserts" following their main meal of the day. People have cut these out. The sales of fruit confirm this, as almost everyone now has bowls of fruit readily available for both the kids and adults.
I looked at my blog this morning, and was surprised to see that it's so long since I posted. Yet when I try to think back and work out what I've been doing, I can't work it out! I know I've been busy, but doing what?
The subject currently on every body's lips (and hips) is "obesity". What an absolutely horrid word - degrading, disdainful, demeaning. I'm old enough to remember when people used such words as "homely", "natural", "chubby", "generously endowed", "well proportioned" and so on. I can even recall a Doctor back then trying to tell me, without offending me, that I was a "little overweight". And in among hundreds of other doctors and specialists that I've visited during the years in between, I've been called a lot of names, and "obese" is among those words. I do not like the word, in fact I loathe it. And I will not admit to being "obese" - I am a "fully-rounded" woman!
Blame is being piled on parents of beautifully formed and healthy children; they're being told their children are "obese" and they've got to do something about it - immediately! Just look at the media and the government pushing the idea of "food police" to check on children's lunch boxes; just look at parents being threatened with "abuse" if they don't feed their children food that the so-called experts (and the government departments involved) demand they have; putting children onto crash diets and extreme exercise regimes (all costing a lot of money to parents of course), and on it goes. Blame, blame, blame, and parents are taking upon themselves all sorts of guilt trips.
Yet I come back to the same argument I've been promoting for the past twenty years or more. Maybe it's NOT the food or the quantity of food that we're eating - maybe it's what's IN the food that we're eating.
On two separate shows last week, one the "Cook and the Chef" on the ABC which is a very entertaining, and informative and enjoyable show showing cooking tips and hints, with easy-medium-hard recipes, and the second "The Food Investigators" on SBS, this very subject was raised. And it justified what I've been saying (and what others of my kind have been saying) for decades.
For instance. Bread. Bread that is baked today no longer resembles the bread of "yesterday" - and I'm talking about 20-30-40 years ago. The ingredients are different - the quantities of salt and sugar are different - the additives are different; the food colourings and chemicals are different. You're beginning to see where I'm coming from?
Now we come to the nitty-gritty. Most of the grains that make up breads are genetically modified. OK, we're being told over and over again that there's nothing wrong with genetically modified foods (and in fact they're "good" for us - haaa). No one knows for sure. And no one will know for sure until at least another two generations. Because if we have food such as bread which is made to "look" fresh without being so, then something is happening and we're being drawn into the trap of believing something that is not true nor good for us.
What I mean by this is simple. We used to buy bread that if it became stale, we'd be aware of it. If it became mouldy, we'd be aware of it. If it started to "smell, we'd be aware of it. It usually went out to the chooks in the back yard, long before it even got to the mouldy stage. But today? Because of being genetically modified, it no longer goes stale, it no longer smells, it no longer goes mouldy. And anyone in the health and nutrition profession will tell you that eating bread that is mouldy is putting toxins into the body, which are not only harmful but deadly. Yet because we can't "see" or "smell" that the bread of going "off", we eat it merrily thinking that it is good for us! We're being "conned".
Oh yes another thing. We're told now that we shouldn't "freeze" bread. We should store it in a wooden (for preference) or plastic bread bin. Sounds like by Grandma talking!
The other items which were referred to in the Cook and the Chef were dairy products. Again, it is was pointed out that many of the natural ingredients of milk (and subsequently in cream, cheese and yoghurt) were removed from the milk, only to be replaced by additives, chemicals and colourings. So if the cows are eating grass in fields of genetically modified grasses, then who knows what's actually going into or happening to the milk. Oh, yes, another thing. Years ago, dairy farmers always washed their milking machines in an iodine wash - it acted as an antiseptic and cleanser, and would you believe it, because it then fitted over the cow's teats at milking time, that iodine found itself in the milk. And that was good for us! So what now? The farmers wash the milking machines with flouride, which means no more iodine. Now the government says, the farmer has to add iodine to the milk he's producing from his cows. Take something out, add something else, and then reconstitute food stuffs to suit the current "thought" of the day.
And a simple question. How do insects, birds and wildlife know they're in a genetically modified field, before travelling int into another which the farmer (or his neighbour) has done everything to maintain as genetically free. Do insects and birds and wildlife read little notices telling them - "Beware - this is a genetically modified field (or paddock) - tread carefully! And who translates for them?
This is a serious problem. And I believe it has a bearing on the so-called "obesity" epidemic. Every food that we eat has been tampered with. Even, if we plant seeds ourselves, we don't know what contaminants have been fed into the soil in our backyard, and we don't know whether the seeds have come from genetically modified parents or not.
A lot of serious and intelligent discussion is required, by ordinary everyday people.
Plus-sized clothing has been getting more than its fair share of press lately - and here's another piece of plus-sized news.
UK chain store New Look is under fire for charging £2 more for its range of plus-sized jeans (size 18 and above). The store explained its price rise, saying that while it normally absorbed the extra cost, occasionally it had to pass on the cost to consumers. The price increase echoes that of Marks and Spencer, another UK store, which last month agreed to waive a £2 surcharge for DD bras.
Our comments:
Let’s get things into perspective. Why do these retail/chain stores feel they have the right to charge women who are beyond a certain size range, more for their garments? I’ve heard every sort of excuse for more than a quarter of a century, and I still don’t believe them.
ALL women need clothes - the tiny slim and pert young woman KNOWS she can get all manner of garments to fit at low and reasonable prices, because of the huge turnover (claimed by retailers). The plus size has been persuaded over the years that she should pay extra. And she has paid extra for decade after decade. Yet the quality of her garment, the design and style of her garment, the colours available in her garments, and the workmanship of her garment is NOTHING in comparison to the young, hip, trendy and faddish garment.
Simple question. Why not amortise (the word is freely and loosely used, but you get the idea) the costs of designing and making up and retailing womens clothing across the whole size range? Use the best quality fabric; the best and flattering styles, and then charge the same price for the same/similar garment to all women, of all ages, and all shapes and sizes.
Don’t treat me, a plus sizer, as a person who must and should be discriminated against and charged extra because of who and what I am.
Would the commercial/retail world consider charging small and slim women an extra charge, because they’re too small? Let’s confront the issue, not hide behind all sorts of excuses. The world is made up of all kinds of shapes and sizes, and the sooner we come to terms with the fact that women’s fashion should be for ALL women (just as all women’s magazines should be for ALL women), then the sooner self-acceptance will become a fact of life.
The fashion industry and the media are playing games with us, and with our minds. They should be brought to task.
When I visited a favourite little cafe in Guildford recently, I chose some venison skewers served on 'cos lettuce and with pita bread, a small vegetable sausage cut in two, a small bowl of low fat yoghurt and some spicy no-sugar chutney. I reckon I did well. This was my main meal for the day, and apart from a small breakfast serving, I ate fruit throughout the day, with plenty of water.
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