Sometimes I really admire junk food manufacturers. They are driven by a positive ideology that enables them to see opportunity everywhere, even in the most unlikely of places. Where others might only see obstacles, they see challenges, which they then embrace with gusto. I like that.

Generally speaking, that is; not when it comes to junk food. We don’t need it and it does us more harm than good, yet we are persuaded by these misguided masters of opportunity that something as ludicrous as pancake mix is desirable. Yesterday was pancake day, or Shrove Tuesday if you prefer. Now, I have no problem with festival foods that wouldn’t ordinarily fit the health bill. Pancakes are pretty basic things – quick and cheap and if done well a real treat. Traditionally they are made from flour, eggs, milk and butter, with sugar and lemon to taste. They require minimum preparation time and little in the way of culinary experience. Children enjoy making them, because they can. Pancakes don’t have much to commend them in the health department, but festival food is soul food, as is all shared food which is central to a group celebration.

But these plastic bottles containing dried pancake mix, which only came to my attention yesterday, are a source of despair. I examined the ingredients, and the instructions. The powdered mix contains all things dried – egg white, egg yolk, skimmed milk powder. Even the ubiquitous, odious ‘vegetable fat’ has managed to insinuate itself into the ingredients list. I don’t know why; there is probably a food technology explanation for this, albeit one I can’t summon any interest in. Your task is to take off the lid and fill the bottle with water, up to the line, shake, pour into a frying pan and surrender your soul.

This product of the R&D department of some nondescript factory somewhere in the UK removes all joy from the act of pancake-making and strips us of our last vestige of culinary creativity, of human participation. Unless of course we choose not to.

I recently received a greeting card from a friend which read We’re Not So Old That We Need Bran. Never a truer word was said, in jest or otherwise. Bran is what some experts recommend to other people but probably wouldn’t dream of eating themselves.

Could anything look or taste anything less like a real food than bran? It’s dark brown, hard and brittle. It tastes as bad as it looks. It smells of dried cereal, which is partly what it is. I remember being forced to eat bran flakes for breakfast as a small child – for the good of my health – and I’ve not forgotten it either.

Bran is the hard outer layer of a grain, usually wheat but oats or rye may also be used. It is the by-product of the milling process which creates refined grain and is not to be confused with the whole grain. There’s a lot of profit to be had from breaking down a whole food into its constituent parts and selling them off separately.

Wheat bran is coarse, concentrated insoluble fibre which in my view is too harsh for the digestive system. Oat bran is more gentle but the principle is still the same, although as an ingredient it does lend itself well to some recipes. Bran is touted as a ‘health’ food, especially for those with digestive problems. However it has been found to exacerbate the symptoms of irritable bowel syndrome in some cases, and I know from experience with clients that they almost always report feeling better when they stop eating bran, on my suggestion. They are usually also grateful for the opportunity to halt this punitive dietary measure.

So bad does bran taste that brands such as Kellogg’s lace it with sugar, barley malt flavouring, salt and honey, just to make it palatable. Life really is too short for that sort of thing, no matter how old you are.

Mammerle, C.W. & Surawicz, C.M. (2008) Updates on treatment of irritable bowel syndrome. World Journal of Gastroenterology, 14(7):2639-2649.

There’s something about health food shops I find a bit depressing. I think it is the absence of any fresh foods, and the faint aroma of dried cereals that always makes me feel a bit melancholy. There’s more than a whiff of the Puritanicals about them – just the term ‘health food’ is enough to plunge me into despair.

Even more so when that term is applied to products which are anything but. I’m thinking specifically about that ‘alternative to dairy milk’ known as rice milk – also now available in supermarkets in their (groan) ‘healthy options’ aisles.

Rice milk is made with the sugar from cooked rice and the water it’s cooked in. Usually sunflower oil is also added. The sugar in rice, and therefore its ‘milk’, is maltose and glucose and something called maltotriose, which is mainly glucose. So rice milk is basically sugary water, perhaps with some added calcium to make it in some way comparable to dairy milk. Other flavourings may be added. The brands available in the UK have not been tested for their glycaemic index but I do know that the Australian equivalent has a GI of 92. That is not very healthy – anything with such a high GI will play havoc with your blood sugar levels. Not for nothing is rice milk not recommended for diabetics, or anyone watching their teeth. Sugared water with a high GI can only mean one thing – big spikes in insulin levels. Think insulin, think fat storage, diabetes, obesity, heart disease and cancer. Rice milk producers boast that their product is lactose free, cholesterol free and low in fat – of course it is, it’s sugary water. And they’re right – there is no added sugar. There’s no need! There’s plenty already there. It is also natural, and so is tobacco.

I haven’t even mentioned the sunflower oil yet. Sunflower oil is a polyunsaturated oil and to my mind up there with sugar when it comes to the bad food list. I’ve discussed this before but I’m happy to keep repeating myself. These ubiquitous polyunsaturated oils are highly processed. First, the seeds are heated to a very high temperature to facilitate extraction. Then the oil is extracted, most commonly using a solvent derived from petroleum. The oil is degummed, bleached and then deodorised. The process ensures that the oil is thoroughly de-nutritioned too. Deodorisation is necessary to remove the rancid odours created during all this refinement and is performed at temperatures in excess of 200ºC. Worse still, these oils now contain something that wasn’t there to start with and which you won’t find on the label: trans fatty acids, those heinous fats famous for their harmful effects on health.

Rice milk drink is suitable for the dairy intolerant and vegans. Drink it if you like sweetly flavoured water, but don’t drink it because you believe it to be good for you in any way.

Reference

Kemény, K., Recseg, G, Hénon, K. et al (2001) Deodorization of vegetable oils: Prediction of trans polyunsaturated fatty acid content. Journal of the American Oil Chemists’ Society, 78(9).

I’m all for frozen vegetables as a stand-by for those times when there’s nothing fresh to be had in the kitchen. They are also great for those of us who work from home and like to eat a proper meal at lunch-time rather than a bought sandwich, but can’t be bothered with peeling and chopping. So imagine my delight when I happened upon frozen broad beans. These beauties cook up easily, like frozen peas, and unlike other produce which do not lend themselves so well to the freezing process, manage to retain their flavour and texture. They are also quite dense and satisfying. As well as being a good source of protein and fibre, broad beans are exceptionally high in potassium and also boast good levels of calcium. I think a little squirt of lemon juice, a sprinkle of mint, a grind of black pepper and perhaps a knob of butter make this a delicious vegetable too.

Nothing could be more heinous than the concept of a breakfast ‘on the go’, so I have to admit that I’d got it in for breakfast bars before I even examined the ingredients list. However, having done so, I can confirm that they are an abomination on two counts. Firstly, they suggest that you should be doing something more useful with your life than taking the time to eat properly. Secondly, they are full of ingredients that are not going to get your day off to a good start.

 A breakfast bar is a compressed bowl of sugary cereal, minus the bowl, and the milk, but with the addition of vegetable oil to glue the cereal and sugar together. Ok, some might contain some dried fruit, but that is all I can find to commend them. They also frequently contain various forms of sugar, including glucose-fructose syrup (see a previous rant, below), which in terms of damage to health I put on a par with hydrogenated fat. Then there is the refined vegetable oil. I mentioned these in my earlier discussion of margarines and spreads, but just to recap: these refined oils have been heated to very high temperatures, de-gummed, bleached and deodorised to such an extent that they have virtually no nutritional value but plenty of potential harmful effects – heating these polyunsaturated oils to a very high temperature generates free radicals, those damaging chemicals linked to cancer, heart disease and premature ageing.

So-called spreads, masquerading as healthy alternatives to butter. Olive oil spreads, in particular, get my goat. We associate olive oil with good health, and the adverts portray elderly Italians, frolicking and flirting al fresco (as a result of consuming olive oil, presumably) which leads us to conclude that the margarine must be better than butter. A spread is a low-fat margarine bulked out with water. The oils (including the olive oil) used in these spreads are highly refined –  heated to high temperatures, de-gummed, bleached and deodorised (because by now the rancid smell is a bit nauseating). The process also leaves the oil nutritionally bereft – I would definitely give these ’healthy’ spreads a wide berth.

High-fructose corn syrup (HFCS). This is corn syrup which has undergone a process to convert some of its glucose into fructose. The result is an exceptionally and intensely sweet product. In the US, HFCS has come to replace ordinary sugar in processed food, mainly because it is much cheaper. It is everywhere: in drinks, bread, cereals, breakfast bars, soft drinks and just about anything where ordinary table sugar might once have been incorporated. A high fructose-intense diet has been found amongst other things, to increase blood fat levels and is linked to high blood pressure and obesity. In the UK and Ireland, HFCS goes by the name of glucose-fructose syrup. Watch out for it – it is now commonly used as a sweetener is a huge array of foods, especially biscuits and cakes. I thought ordinary sugar was bad enough until I read about the harmful effect of HFCS/glucose-fructose syrup. I’d really give this one a wide berth.

Stainless steel portable water bottles. Most people now drink bottled mineral or spring water when on the go. There are two issues with this, relating to the environment and to human health. With regard to the environment, the unhealthy fact is that in the UK we purchase 18 billion plastic bottles each year, three quarters of which end up in landfill. Plastic does not readily biodegrade so is a massive pollutant. When it comes to human health, your body would also be better off without bottled water. Mineral water may be pure, unadulterated and bottled at source, but the plastic packaging it comes in puts the kibosh on any health claims. The plastic used for water bottles contains polyethylene terephthalate (PET), which is known to leach into water, and is a notorious hormone disrupter. Other chemicals such as bisphenol-A also leach from plastic into water. So invest in one of those super-light stainless steel water bottles that cost in the region of £5-10 and can be bought in supermarkets, departments stores, camping shops and so on. Fill with filtered tap water – filter jugs are definitely worthwhile as they remove pesticide residues, chlorine and heavy metals such as aluminium from tap water.

Tinned herring roe. I don’t normally like to overdo tinned foods for obvious reasons, but here’s something which befits the occasional exception to the rule. Available in supermarkets, tinned herring roe in brine makes a great lunch, whether you’re at home or in the workplace. Just add black pepper and a squirt of lemon juice and voilà – you’ve got the protein component of lunch sorted. OK, brine contains salt but if like me you don’t add salt to your cooking or your plate, I wouldn’t worry too much about it.Herring roe is probably something of an acquired taste, like caviar (much nicer than caviar in my view, and a great deal cheaper). In addition to that lovely, fish-egg taste and texture, with herring roe you also get that perfect combo of protein and generous amounts of omega-3 fats. Of course you can get fresh herring roe, which is even better, but it is not always easy to find. Recommended served on a large handful of rocket.