I see a "Government Committee" has proposed a 20% tax on sugar in food and drink. As part of that debate, they say that "Britain has become used to less salt and sugar over the past decade and now would become used to even less with no problem."
Can't say I have. For those few here that eat any processed food, have you got used to it and don't notice, or like me, do you just constantly think things aren't as nice as they used to be?
|
|
The secret of course, is not to eat processed food. Rather (and I understand the may not be possible) make your own meals from raw ingredients. That way not only do you control Salt and sugar (common who the hell adds sugar to meals you are making) you also avoid all the other trans fat nasties and emulsifiers and e whatevers.
|
Absolutely agree - when I have time that's what I do. And I know you can make time to do stuff on a weekend and freeze it and all that, and I do that too if possible, but every so often there are cracks in the meal plan, as last night for example, and out came a tin of Heinz soup - and it was so horrid that I thought never again, and next week at some point no doubt out will come a packet of beefburgers, and so it goes on.
I must learn to use punctuation as well. Soon.
Last edited by: Crankcase on Mon 30 Nov 15 at 07:55
|
>> the meal plan, as last night for example, and out came a tin of Heinz
>> soup - and it was so horrid that I thought never again,
Ah now there is a case in point. Its (and this is a theory) memory perception. In years gone by we were brought up on tinned or packet soup. Heinz or Cambells condensed mostly, churned out by the billions in exotic places like Kings Lynn. And to our young unchallenged taste buds the sweet salty offering therein tasted good. Now of course we are used to home made or batch chilled soups, with interesting strong adult flavours.
And you wonder why Heinz Tom Soup tastes so awful? Its not even made in Exotic Kings Lynn any more.
|
|
Wasn't it Campbell's in King's Lynn?
|
>> Wasn't it Campbell's in King's Lynn?
>>
Think it all got knocked down to enlarge the tesco there.
|
|
the workforce was canned.
|
|
Soup manufacture , processing beets for sugar and importing Skoda cars and preparing them for the UK market were the mainstay of Lynn's economy in the seventies.
|
|
It was a soup factory anyway. With a big tower.
|
I remember Lynn-can (spelling?) - a large tower visible from the river making dried peas - you could hear millions of them rattling.
|
That was spelt Lin-Can Cliff and I remember it well too.
I remember loading empty cans in Neath to take up to Kings Lynn for the Campbell factory too!
Incidentally the cans are transhipped separately to the lids and a pallet of can lids are packed in rolls and extremely wobbly when you get 26 of them on a trailer.
....and lorry drivers have to wear hairnets and beard nets when loading and unloading them at some of the places.
Pat
|
"Wasn't it Campbell's in King's Lynn?"
It was Campbell's - if you google it, there are photos of the tower being demolished in 2012. They not only produced Campbell's soups, but they did various recipes for other brands - in fact they canned other stuff as well.
It must be some 25 years since I did a tour of the place with the Institute of Biology, and I got to hear at first-hand the incredible racket produced by millions of cans rattling round the production track. We all had to wear ear protection and hair-nets; the branch chairman sported a beard, so had to wear a net nose-bag as well.
Never being one to throw anything away, I've kept my hair-net in the sock drawer ever since. It came in handy once when a playful labrador pup ripped my ear - hell, it bled! At night, I had to cover my ear with a large wad of cotton padding, van Gogh style, held in place by the said hair-net.
|
>>We all had to wear ear protection and hair-nets; the branch chairman sported a beard, so had to wear a net nose-bag as well.
<LOL>
|
>>The secret of course,
Couldn't have put it better myself...
|
The wife has a large pot of home made vegetable soup bubbling away in the kitchen as I write this. It smells delicious and will be our lunch for the next couple of days.
I don't get on well with tinned soup and find some of the vegetable varieties particularly horrible. However, I've recently discovered Baxter's Spicy Tomato & Rice with Sweetcorn, and that really is quite tasty.
|
I am in facour of any sugar tax. We use very little -except for stewed apples and custard.
BUT as a beekeeper I would hope to be exempt.. -50-60kg in a bad year (2015), none in a good year (2014).. The fall in the price of sugar from c £1 to c £0.33 has been beneficial..
|
One or other of us Ambos makes our staple chunky curried vegetable soup, a gallon at a time. The result is like dahl but with stock and very popular with Ambo outliers as well. It freezes well.
She makes a Malaysian take on dahl too, very thick and spicy and with the texture of Dutch green pea soup, in which the spoon literally does stand up unassisted. It is good cold or hot.
|
>> One or other of us Ambos makes our staple chunky curried vegetable soup ...
>>
I like the sound of that Ambo. Any chance of a recipe or a link to one?
|
|
We usually have what we call LO soup over the weekend. Left Overs. The food bin is taken away on a Thursday morning and It only contains what wont fit in the dog or wont go in soup. This weekend was Broccoli, Stilton, & Chili soup.
|
>> We usually have what we call LO soup over the weekend. Left Overs. The food
>> bin is taken away on a Thursday morning and It only contains what wont fit
>> in the dog or wont go in soup.
I do not have a dog. Despite that, virtually the only food that heads to my food bin is bones. Cook less, or eat it for breakfast. I hate food waste more than you can imagine. I do have a compost heap for peelings etc.
Last edited by: Mapmaker on Mon 30 Nov 15 at 15:20
|
>> I see a "Government Committee" has proposed a 20% tax on sugar in food and drink.
I thought food and drink was already taxed?
Anyway, even if they did double tax food and drink, people will still buy it in the same way they still buy cigarettes no matter how much they cost.
|
I didn't chuck in a link, did I? All over the place as the report has just been published. Here's the Guardian one. Doesn't look like it's certain at this moment that it's actually going to happen, just a recommendation.
www.theguardian.com/society/2015/nov/30/sugary-drinks-tax-childhood-obesity-david-cameron
|
It's a recommendation from the Health Select Committee. Although chaired by a Conservative, the admirably independent thinking Dr Sarah Wollaston, it has Members from all the parties. Government doesn't have to follow select committee recommendations (if they did I might still be a Civil Servant) and I suspect this one will sit on the shelf for a while. The food industry is playing hell over it and I doubt Cameron wants a battle now, particularly since the issue is one libertarian/laissez faire back benchers might rebel on.
If it delivers a health gain it might appeal to a future govt though. There's also a lot of arm twisting of the industry already and 'threat' of this will be more power to DEFRA's elbow.
|
>> >> I see a "Government Committee" has proposed a 20% tax on sugar in food
>> and drink.
>>
>> I thought food and drink was already taxed?
>>
>> Anyway, even if they did double tax food and drink, people will still buy it
>> in the same way they still buy cigarettes no matter how much they cost.
>>
Precisely. Sugar in food is habit forming.. I know how difficult it was to stop using it in drinks 46 years ago.. You need 2 months of retuning your tastebuds and iron will.
See also alcohol.. (we should leaialse cannabis and tax it - and subject supply to medical tests. Budget deficit solved)..
|
Sugar isn't exactly habit forming. We are born with an inbuilt predilection for sweet foods Sweetness is an indicator of ripeness and edibility. The problem is that in nature sugar, a useful and indeed essential food, is hard to come by in quantity. You have to eat a lot of berries and fruit ,eat a lot of root vegetables and find a lot of bees' nests to get an appreciable quantity of the stuff.
Because its so desirable and so difficult to come by in large quantities there was no evolutionary need to provide an indicator that we have had enough of the sweet stuff. Now we have virtually unlimited access to sugar we find it difficult to stop eating it.
Fat is similar. Vey hard to come by in nature. Good idea to eat as much as possible when you do.
It has been said that Cheese cake, a mixture of fat and sugar is more addictive than crack cocaine.
|
It has been said that Cheese cake, a mixture of fat and sugar is more addictive than crack cocaine
I like cheese cake but am not addicted.
Does this mean if I used crack cocaine I would not become addicted?
I will wait for advice before spending money on an experiment:-)
|
"I like cheese cake but am not addicted."
Same here, probably because it's so difficult to squeeze through a hypodermic needle.
|
...it's a good smoke, though.
|
|
Ah, but can you resist a second slice?
|
There's a kind of logic to taxing sugary stuff. Food generally doesn't have VAT on it but sweets do.
Oddly, biscuits do but cakes don't (remember famous jaffa cake VAT case).
Soft drinks etc. already have VAT on them but that includes the diet versions. (Mineral water has VAT too, making it an even poorer bargain).
If the tax was directed at sugar content rather than food category, it would presumably result in a lot of artificial sweeteners and fillers being substituted. As with any policy, thought will need to be given to unintended consequences.
|
|
So in theory then, the diet versions of fizzy drinks will be cheaper than the normal ones.
|
I went cold turkey on sugar 28 yrs ago when my diabetes was diagnosed. Since then, having a sweet tooth, I've relied on sweeteners in tea and coffee.
A couple of months ago I was becoming a little concerned about aspartame. I'm open-minded about it but it seems the antis are far more than the pros. Apart from hot drinks, I used to drink diet coke when eating out and driving and I have a regular nip of cheap whisky with diet lemon last thing at night. I've stopped that now and have the scotch with fizzy water. We usually have a Mullet light yoghurt after dinner but I see even that contains aspartame. I've changed to a less strongly tasting filter coffee so the unsweetened taste doesn't linger as long.
I had a word with my pharmacist when I collected my drugs earlier and she also recommended getting off the stuff if possible. Any thoughts from the team here ?
|
"Any thoughts from the team here ?"
Our view (Mrs Madf and I ) is simple.:=
40 years ago eating butter and fat was healthy.
Then it was deadly.
Now it's not.
Ditto taking aspirin.
Ditto lots of other things.
Have the scientists conducted proper experiments over a llfetime using proper samples?
Of course not.
So eat /drink as few artificial foods as possible. Safe or not..
Remember, it is often prolonged exposure to a drug that causes issues. I would not take artificial sweeteners for years. Period.
Last edited by: madf on Mon 30 Nov 15 at 16:18
|
Have you tried Stevia, Ted? We're both diabetic and have to avoid the sugary stuff as a rule, so have been through various options. Stevia tastes foul to Mrs C, but after about a week it now tastes sweet and pleasant to me. I've even made a cake with it and it was fine.
It's not an artificial sweetener, it's plant based, but the body doesn't treat it like sugar. Not cheap but lasts more or less forever as you don't need much.
|
Watched a programme about sugar consumption in the states.
Apparently some guy wrote a white paper stating how bad sugar was for everybody. Think it was in the 70's.
Anyway, the sugar industry got wind before publication, lobbied and threatened to withdrawal a lot of political party funding, so it was switched to show fat as the bad boy right at the 11th hour.
|
>> A couple of months ago I was becoming a little concerned about aspartame.
I've long been sceptical of aspartame and preferred my kids to have (rationed) full sugar cordials and fizzy drinks rather than the 'no added sugar' versions. At least the risks of sugar, whether weight gain or dental caries, are known.
Remember the fuss and clearance offers when cylamate was banned in UK c1970, though it seems to be 'OK' again now in EU.
|
The human body is surprisingly resilient to the ingestion of all sorts of things in moderation. Excessive amounts of just about anything though can kill, even pure water (google dilutional hyponatremia).
Not an attitude that wins me prizes, but I reckon worrying about units of alcohol drunk is more likely to kill you than a slight excess over what is an invented limit anyway.
|
Unless the boss has chucked it out, I have John Yudkin's book somewhere, bought it when the children were small. I knew he had been "suppressed" and suffered for it but I hadn't realised the book is now a rarity.
www.telegraph.co.uk/lifestyle/wellbeing/diet/10634081/John-Yudkin-the-man-who-tried-to-warn-us-about-sugar.html
|
I like a bit of chocolate,favorite used to be Nestle the big bars.Fresh cream cake sometimes for a treat with a nice cup of herbal tea.
To much of anything is bad little and often if that is the right answer.Of course for children to much sweet rubbish can't do them any good.Jamie does his best you've got to admire him for his effort.It is up to the parents if they want to take any notice innit.
|
>>To much of anything is bad little and often if that is the right answer
Too much sex makes your eyes go funny. I like 70% stuff [chocolate]
;-)
|
Sugar tax - Zero
