34th healthiest country in the world - not a great stat!

19^th July 2014

Your body does everything for you – take care of it, feed it well.

My favourite thing to do at this time of year is sit in my garden, I love it, it’s so peaceful and relaxing and the perfect antidote to a very busy week, so that was my afternoon yesterday, I even gave my feet a soak whilst I was out there, I was going to paint my toenails but I’ve not got that skill at all!  The afternoon just disappeared before I knew it and looking outside you wouldn’t think it was that hot yesterday because it’s raining and its forecast thunder storms today.  I’ll use today to catch up on a bit of work then and chill tomorrow, I’m off to see Jane (my member who was on the news) this morning she has the newspaper going round and asked me to be there, so that’s my main priority.

Barely any food in the house as I didn’t get round to doing my online order until yesterday (it’s being delivered later, thankfully) so I stopped at the co-op and got bread rolls and a bit of salad yesterday to have hot dogs for tea.  Now this weather does encourage us to get out in the garden and enjoy BBQ style food or to grab something from a stand when we are out and about, or even if we’re buying furniture at IKEA, and hot dogs can be an easy to buy option.  So I made and weighed two options to show you there’s a difference, all hot dogs aren’t equal and none are every ‘filling & healthy’.   

I’d bought a jar of frankfurters and weighed those, they were 4pp each or 7pp for two or the tinned version came out at 1pp each or 2pp for two and the bread rolls from the Co-op because again remember all bread rolls aren’t equal either, were 3pp each.  I had 2 smaller hot dogs for 8pp whereas one of the larger frankfurter hotdogs worked out at 7pp.  Oh and don’t forget that 1pp for the ketchup, or the cool mustard!  So I’d guess IKEA hotdogs to be 5 or 6pp and some of these hot dog stands where the roll is two the size with the onions and sauce, they’re easily 15pp!   

On a bright note though I’ve finally sussed the onions, I cooked them in the brine water from the hot dog tin and they were delicious, just how they are from the stand ;-) only took me 44 years to master that….

If you want to, you can stay on track wherever you are, whatever the occasion, it can be done – you just have to want to do it! 

We watched a good programme last night called the World’s Best Diet, it’s on demand channel four, http://www.channel4.com/programmes/the-worlds-best-diet/4od very interesting, they were exploring some of the world's most varied diets and examining the dietary habits of countries, tribal people and communities, revealing how eating habits across the planet have changed radically over the last 50 years, and how this has affected our health. They ranked 50 of the world's diets, from the worst to the best.   The overwhelming agreement was that in order to be ‘healthy’ we need to try and eat as naturally as possible, so cut out the ready meals, the processed rubbish, eat and cook from fresh, fish was very much a quality food, I felt good then because I’d got fish on my shopping order, I’d also put NO ready meals on my order either, I may not cook a recipe every day but I do build my own meals so to speak.

Food in my house is my biggest outgoing financially, it’s where the majority of my money goes, I see my body as the most important possession I have so I do my best to take care of it even when I’m overindulging.  Don’t get me wrong I’m far from perfect, erm hot dogs for example but they are occasion meals not regular meals, when I looked at some of those tables and what they were eating on a weekly basis, I felt quite good about my food shopping.  Some of the worst diets were down to finances, which is sad but in this country I think ours is more down to convenience, busy lives and not being bothered!  We could learn a lot from the likes of the French and a few other countries in this programme, slow down, eat more pulses, make our own, less snacking. yeah we could be a lot healthier even on a budget.
Oh in case you wondered we came in 34^th on the healthy diet scale in the world, not the best is it, there are 33 other countries healthier than us.  We spend on average £15 per person per week on food and as an we purchase more ready meals than any other country in Europe.  A lot of our food is made up of the same ingredients, after meat and daily we mainly eat wheat, sugar, potatoes and vegetable oil! We consume twice as much vegetable oil now than we did in the 50s because it’s in so much of our ready produced food!  Scary stuff this all is. 
In the 1960s’ it was estimated just 1% of men and 2% of woman were overweight compared to nearly a quarter of people today – that is scary, that’s a mere 50 years that has passed.  

Anyway, there’s some stuff to think about, maybe the next time you go to grab a ready meal you ask yourself if you could just as easily boil a bit of pasta and stir in some pasata and make your own meal, that’s quick and easy, there are so many different alternatives saving you from the ready meal.  I’m going to challenge myself to eat more grains and pulses as they’re obviously very filling & healthy friendly.

Well I’m off to have a shower and get ready for my day, whatever you have planned enjoy, if it was a BBQ, I think you’ll be indoors.

BeYOUtiful and take care of your BeYOUtiful body xx