Monday, 14 October 2013

Science is fascinating but so is food!

14th October 2013
You were born to be an original – don’t die a copy!
What better way to start the week than a wet grey morning!  So we can’t rely on the weather to cheer us up, we’ll have to find other ways to won’t we - I’m thinking food ;) what do you think, my answer to lots of things is food!  I do love it I can’t deny, I’ve just seen a headline on Facebook from the Daily Mail, a lady who hasn’t eaten hot food for seven years and exists on a Spartan diet of nuts, seeds, fruit and vegetables, she says it keeps her looking young, she’s 29 and regularly mistaken for a 16 year old.  Nah not for me, I’m 43 and would be happy to be mistaken as a 50 year old if it means the food I get to eat tastes as delicious as what I ate yesterday, food satisfaction comes before vanity in my world, healthy and happy yeah, but not dull and young looking, which is what eating in that way would be for me.
Yesterday was a delicious day, I had planned on putting my Indian cookery course into place but I was missing a few ingredients, then a friend posted on Facebook that she was cooking at a roast dinner and suddenly that’s what I fancied, how true is it that we get tempted by the mere mention of certain foods.  So off to the Co-op I went, and a delicious roast beef dinner I made, did it the lazyish way, frozen honey parsnips, ready prepared roasters, microwave in the bag beef, ready made Yorkshires, even my carrots where julienne ready, all I had to peel was my sprouts, a delicious dinner for 13pp though, absolutely scrumptious.  Then for tea we had ½ Co-op caramelised onion flatbread (7pp) with sliced tomatoes that I’d grown myself – delicious with a bit of salt & pepper on.  Yes it has to be said, yesterday was a delicious day as are most days in my eating world and I wouldn’t be prepared to swap them for youthful skin or a longer life, thank you very much!

I read an article online yesterday about the science of appetite – fascinating stuff, it explained that understanding a single biological unit—the heart, the lungs—is hard enough. Understanding a process as complex as appetite—one that involves taste, smell, sight, texture, brain chemistry, gut chemistry, metabolism and, most confounding of all, psychology—is exponentially harder. But science is trying.  
Fascinating when you think about it, staying alive requires our  to run automatically except for eating, that’s the one none voluntary thing we do and nature cleverly made it so that we couldn’t resist food and in the past this wasn’t a problem because food was scarce, we had too little rather than too much.  All that’s changed now though hasn’t it, nature didn’t see that one coming, foods everywhere, it’s easy to get hold of, it’s cheap – that’s part of the worlds weight problem, we’ve become an overfed planet. 
The scientists and researchers are trying to work it all out, they’re looking at the brain to understand where appetite is perceived, they’re studying the neural wiring of the stomach, as well as what drives our appetite, but it’s all very complex which is why weight loss / weight maintenance isn’t easy for anyone who has an appetite for food.  We’re hardwired to eat and eat, particularly fatty food, you can thank your ancestors for that, we’re also apparently not very good at realising when we’ve had enough until we’re past full – we’re stuffed by then.  There’s even a hunger hormone, it’s called ‘ghrelin’ what chance have we got!
So what do we do?  Can we fight nature?  Is there a solution?  There still isn’t a ‘solution’ as such, nutritional science is such a young science and they’re finding things out all the time.  What you can do is help yourself, we know the sight and smell of food triggers us to eat, so don’t have certain foods in your home then you won’t have to try to be strong and resist.  Focus on filling and healthy foods because they’re low glycemic foods, they will give you a constant flow of glucose and insulin, so you won’t need to refuel as much, cutting down on high gylcemic foods like refined breads and sugars push your body to refuel.  These two things will help massively, so next time you go shopping, think Filling & Healthy and also look at the stuff you can’t resist knowing if you take it home, it’s going to get eaten and the length of time the taste pleasure lasts is rarely worth it.
You don’t have to eat tiny portions of food if you eat the right foods, it’s not big portions that make you eat more, it’s big portions of calories, if you eat plenty of fruit and vegetables we both know that helps.
Well mom’s awake and I need to go sort her medication and get her breakfast, so I’ll leave you to process all that info.
You can be healthy & happy whilst eating gorgeous xx
BeYOUtiful. xx
 
 



  
 
 

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