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Another probably pointless thought

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Nayshiftin said:
Robin as you seem to be on top. Do we cancel fibre out with fruit and veg towards the carbs. I have been told this by a person but to be honest I kept quiet because I did not comprehend. Can you help me understand more. Thanks for the list of good veg . Pity I do not eat avocado .
Click to expand...
What @Leadinglights said!
In the U.K. the fibre has already been deducted. If you look at a website and it’s spelled 'fiber' you can assume you’re on an American site, and will have to find the fibre content and deduct it from the carbs.
 
Of course one of the reasons I am interested, besides the health benefit, is that I can positively influence the DN in terms of attitude towards my diabetic and health management using real data presented in easily digestible form (pun intended)

It worked a treat with my first appointment based around my weight and general approach. Bascially the progress data shown killed any negative comments instantly and created a much more positive and helpful response.

Mind you, I'm easily fooled... 🙂
 
Leadinglights said:
I didn't think potatoes counted in the 5 fruit and veg number.
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They should do - the potato is one of the veges that will keep a family alive, and you can survive eating them - the Irish did for instance. You do need to eat the whole thing - as the Irish did. My grandmother took in Irish lodgers, railway workers and they expected large dishes of boiled new potatoes served with butter every evening. They happily dug over the big walled garden and planted a row of potatoes on their days off each week, then earthed up the growing crop.
They knew how to mix Bordeaux mixture to ward off potato blight too.
 
The advice to eat x portions of fruit and veges is not based on anything scientific, it was just the number that those in charge thought that people would accept as a possibility.
I think it was more to do with selling the crops grown rather than any health benefits.
 
I am glad to help the economy 🙂
 
Drummer said:
I didn't think potatoes counted in the 5 fruit and veg number.
Click to expand...
They should do - the potato is one of the veges that will keep a family alive, and you can survive eating them - the Irish did for instance.
Click to expand...

Five-a-day has nothing to do with feeding a family, the recommendation is to prevent chronic diseases.

Joint FAO/WHO Workshop on Fruit and Vegetables for Health said:
The recent Joint FAO/WHO Expert Consultation on diet, nutrition and the prevention of chronic diseases, recommended the intake of a minimum of 400g of fruit and vegetables per day (excluding potatoes and other starchy tubers) for the prevention of chronic diseases such as heart disease, cancer, diabetes and obesity, as well as for the prevention and alleviation of several micronutrient deficiencies, especially in less developed countries.
Click to expand...

Joint FAO/WHO Expert Consultation on diet said:
There is now a large, convincing body of evidence that dietary patterns and the level of physical activity can not only influence existing health levels, but also determine whether an individual will develop chronic diseases such as cancer, cardiovascular disease and diabetes. These chronic diseases remain the main causes of premature death and disability in industrialized countries and in most developing countries.

Fruits and vegetables

The benefit of fruits and vegetables cannot be ascribed to a single or mix of nutrients and bioactive substances. Therefore, this food category was included rather than the nutrients themselves. The category of tubers (i.e. potatoes, cassava) should not be included in fruits and vegetables.
Click to expand...

No one is saying do not eat potatoes and other starchy tubers, only that they lack the relevant nutrients to provide the health benefits the recommendations are trying to achieve.

Drummer said:
The advice to eat x portions of fruit and veges is not based on anything scientific, it was just the number that those in charge thought that people would accept as a possibility.
Click to expand...

The choice of five 80g portions was probably chosen as something seen as easier for people to adopt, they are not particularly large and one portion for breakfast, two for dinner, and two for tea is easily understandable. But the 400g it is breaking down was scientific, as detailed in the documents below. It is something that has been widely studied (by people with no vested interest in selling crops) and as already noted it is understated for the purpose of long term health.

Sources:
 
Actually, if the amount of carbohydrate is not a problem, potatoes do have health benefits, if not peeled they contain enough vitamin C to maintain a body, so at a time when fruit was a rarity the potato was a healthfood.
 
But no one said potatoes are not nutritional or do not have any health benefits. They just do not offer the benefits for which fruits and vegetables are being recommended. They do not help prevent heart disease etc.

Five-a-day is not about a balanced diet or food groups, there is separate advice for that. It is only about preventing long-term chronic diseases though diet, so only applies to the foods which have been shown to have that benefit. Which potatoes do not.

It is the same reason why eating 400g of beans and pulses only counts as one portion. Because it does not provide any additional health benefit over one portion, whereas with most fruit or vegetables you could eat two portions of the same and they both count.

Besides, for a standard western diet you will normally be having potato quite often anyway. Five-a-day is saying at least have some beans with your chips, or some peas with your bangers and mash. You do not need to encourage people to have roast potatoes with their Sunday dinner. If you included potatoes it would do nothing to encourage people to eat more and varied fruits and vegetables, and by counting the potato it will be less effective at reducing the risk of disease.
 
Don't forget the 5 a day came form the Californian Fruit Growers Association to sell more product and isn't actually based on health research. Obviously it's generally good advice but the number 5 is plucked from thin air like a lot of NHS advice so it needs to be put into context.
 
Becka said:
But no one said potatoes are not nutritional or do not have any health benefits. They just do not offer the benefits for which fruits and vegetables are being recommended. They do not help prevent heart disease etc.

Five-a-day is not about a balanced diet or food groups, there is separate advice for that. It is only about preventing long-term chronic diseases though diet, so only applies to the foods which have been shown to have that benefit. Which potatoes do not.

It is the same reason why eating 400g of beans and pulses only counts as one portion. Because it does not provide any additional health benefit over one portion, whereas with most fruit or vegetables you could eat two portions of the same and they both count.

Besides, for a standard western diet you will normally be having potato quite often anyway. Five-a-day is saying at least have some beans with your chips, or some peas with your bangers and mash. You do not need to encourage people to have roast potatoes with their Sunday dinner. If you included potatoes it would do nothing to encourage people to eat more and varied fruits and vegetables, and by counting the potato it will be less effective at reducing the risk of disease.
Click to expand...
The 5 a day advice wasn't based on any sort of research and there is no reason to think that it is going to prevent heart disease or illness, I have not come across anything which shows a benefit in terms of improved health due to eating a more varied selection of fruit and veges.
I'm not saying that there isn't some benefit, just that it has not been shown to be the case, it is another one of those claims which are assumed to be true.
 
Drummer said:
The 5 a day advice wasn't based on any sort of research and there is no reason to think that it is going to prevent heart disease or illness, I have not come across anything which shows a benefit in terms of improved health due to eating a more varied selection of fruit and veges.
I'm not saying that there isn't some benefit, just that it has not been shown to be the case, it is another one of those claims which are assumed to be true.
Click to expand...

I have literally posted the PDFs of the original WHO study and a follow-up on which the recommendation to eat 400g of fruits and vegetables is based.

And here is the U.C.L. study from 2014 which suggested it should be seven portions per day.


And here you can access the Imperial University meta-study from 2017 which says than ten portions is even better.


You are certainly free to argue against all the research findings over the last thirty years, and longer, which have established and repeatedly proven the link between the dietary advice and health outcomes. But to say there was not any sort of research is utterly bizarre.

DaveB said:
Don't forget the 5 a day came form the Californian Fruit Growers Association to sell more product and isn't actually based on health research.
Click to expand...

No, it was not. Why would the Californian Fruit Growers Association want to promote eating vegetables anyway?

The five-a-day concept was started by Kenneth Kizer of California's State Department for Health Services, based on scientific research into the health benefits that had been building up since the 1970s. He launched the campaign in 1988 and sought the help of fruit and vegetable growers, amongst others, as part of the effort to promote the message. Claiming it would be mutually beneficial, it was something they were obviously willing to support.

Unfortunately the write-up on that campaign is behind a paywall.

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

California's "5 a day--for better health!" campaign: an innovative population-based effort to effect large-scale dietary change - PubMed

The annual toll of diet-related diseases in the United States is similar to that taken by tobacco, but less progress has been achieved in reaching the Public Health Service's Healthy People 2000 objectives for improving food consumption than for reducing tobacco use. In 1988, the California...
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
 
Anybody remember the slogan “An Apple a day keeps the doctor away”?

I don’t eat enough to swallow five portions of fruit or Veg. I do eat a Braeburn most days, though. And veg or a salad with the evening meal. I couldn’t be persuaded to eat Avocado. Far, far too fatty. I’d I have to eat it with half a pack of Creon. Humans are the only large animal that can eat the stuff anyway. It’s toxic to most others. Don’t ever let your dog eat any, it can kill in a few hours. Cats won’t touch it because they are obligate carnivores. It would kill them anyway.

It’s a berry that evolved in the time of dinosaurs, the plant eaters used to swallow them whole with a gob full of leaves, and wander off and poop out the stones to spread the plants. It probably gave them the squits.
 
I never expected this topic to become so interesting.

I updated my App yesterday to analyse 'portions' for foods, recipes, meals, days. It took me over 12 hours to do. (Such an exciting life)

Yesterdays portions 9.8 overall, Fruit 6.7 portions. Vedge 3.1 portions.

I thought that it might have been generally very low, but its about 8+ each day with a few blips here and there.
 
mikeyB said:
Anybody remember the slogan “An Apple a day keeps the doctor away”?

I don’t eat enough to swallow five portions of fruit or Veg. I do eat a Braeburn most days, though. And veg or a salad with the evening meal. I couldn’t be persuaded to eat Avocado. Far, far too fatty. I’d I have to eat it with half a pack of Creon. Humans are the only large animal that can eat the stuff anyway. It’s toxic to most others. Don’t ever let your dog eat any, it can kill in a few hours. Cats won’t touch it because they are obligate carnivores. It would kill them anyway.

It’s a berry that evolved in the time of dinosaurs, the plant eaters used to swallow them whole with a gob full of leaves, and wander off and poop out the stones to spread the plants. It probably gave them the squits.
Click to expand...
Cats won’t touch it because they are obligate carnivores. Ha, you should have told that to my cats, they used to love melon, cucumber, broccoli and sprouts.
 
We never ate fruit growing up apart from the apple and orange down the bottom of the stocking at Christmas. Mum said there was no point buying it as we'd only eat it. I think the idea was a nice bowl of fruit on the sideboard for show. :D

I could eat spuds till the cows come home, I'm half Irish so maybe that accounts for it.

I do believe in an apple a day etc... there's always something to these old sayings.
 
If the only fruit were an apple, not my favourite, then neither is the avocado why they call it a pear just due to shape it taste nowt like it, Only good in face cream in my opinion but then if you like something you like it. No trouble eating all the others I would live on fruit and veg however potatoes send my sugar high. I am now scared to eat things like potatoes, rice, pasta. I have bread and that is so limited too but I love it so much its been the hardest to give up. Hence I believe I will always have high Blood sugar. I got it to 5.6 but its up and rising again. If I can do a couple of days without bread and maybe not have potatoes etc but I will go back to them I am sure. The five a day is a guideline as the least you should have and well with berries for breakfast and salad for lunch and a host of veg for dinner as meat even if we have I have trouble with it and hubby usually has it Chicken I manage in a sauce but they usually have some carbs in them if eaten out. It is very tricky. I think food at the moment is the worst part of being diabetic, I always want what I cannot have. My old cat loved bananas in fact he'd take it from the bowl so we could not leave them out. as if he got it it would be all over the place and its not something you want to tread in at 3am on the way to the loo. TMI lol. Don't have too much fruit n veg or it can be until 3am yer on the old loo. Have a good day and have fun.
 
Thankfully fruit and veg does not affect me in a bad way.

I have also read on the internet that we should (?) be eating 30g of nuts a day too.

Any thoughts on that?

I mean, 30g nuts = 150 - 200 cals and 4 - 8 g carbs. Is that a lot.? Well, yes if on a weight loss diet. Probably not otherwise.

Does it really matter? Well, yes if the bits from nuts can't be obtained from other foods already in the diet.
 
On the DESMOND course they recommend eating nuts as a snack instead of sweet items. It is about the only think I remember from it (that and for the only time in my life being told how slim I was) because it was not really aimed at me.

I think that is Australian nutritional advice, to eat 30g of nuts as part of a daily diet. They are recommended more generally, though, as being a good source of fibre. And most people do not have enough fibre in their diet.

In the study "Association of Nut Consumption with Total and Cause-Specific Mortality," it says nuts have long-term health benefits in general, and that a specific diet which included 30g of nuts on average showed this. To spoil the final scene:

In addition, nutrients in nuts, such as unsaturated fatty acids, high-
quality protein, fiber, vitamins (e.g., folate, niacin,
and vitamin E), minerals (e.g., potassium, calcium,
and magnesium), and phytochemicals (e.g., carot-
enoids, flavonoids, and phytosterols), may con-
fer cardioprotective, anticarcinogenic, antiinf lam-
matory, and antioxidant properties. Indeed,
clinical trials have shown that nut consumption
has beneficial effects on some intermediate mark-
ers of chronic diseases, such as high cholesterol
levels, oxidation, endothelial dysfunction,
hyperglycemia, and insulin resistance.

Moreover, recent findings from the PREDIMED
trial have shown a protective effect of a Mediter-
ranean diet against cardiovascular disease, and
one component of the diet was the availability of
an average of 30 g of nuts per day.
Click to expand...

I highlighted a bit that may be of interest. However, it does end on a form of "correlation is not causation" just as it fades away. Smartly allowing for a potential sequel.


Meanwhile, the EAT-Lancet Commission is made up of scientists from several countries to find out what the ideal diet should be to promote both health (of the individual) and sustainability (of food supply). The report recommends 50g of nuts per day. Page 10 of the summary report (below) gives the breakdown of sources they think one should eat as part of the recommended daily intake of 2,500 calories.

 
Leadinglights said:
Cats won’t touch it because they are obligate carnivores. Ha, you should have told that to my cats, they used to love melon, cucumber, broccoli and sprouts.
Click to expand...
My dear departed childhood cat Prudence liked jelly babies, and would bite the heads off them :D She lived to a ripe old age.
 
Nuts every day????????????

They only happen at Christmas, don't they? (same as oranges)
 
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