What Are You Reading?

[SandwichShortOfAPicnic]

The Short Way Up by Steve Wilson about his ride on an Ariel motorcycle through Africa. It's not bad. He's a journalist so he can string a sentence together without boring you

 

[Yorky]

It must be almost 5 years since I read my last Carl Hiaasen novel. Easy and humourous reading and I am back to it with "Chomp".

 

[SandwichShortOfAPicnic]

It must be almost 5 years since I read my last Carl Hiaasen novel. Easy and humourous reading and I am back to it with "Chomp".

Looks very entertaining!

 

[LissaC]

Starting the year with this

 

[karadekoolaid]

Starting the year with this

An absolute classic.

 

[rascal]

Rick Stein latest book which has a lot of written stuff about each chapter. I didn't know he had open heart surgery last year?? Stuff like that. Really enjoying it.
Called simple suppers

Russ

 

[Herbaceous]

I just finished Pageboy by Elliot Page. Really well written, interesting, and heart-wrenching in places.

 

[badjak]

I read a lot, almost all on kindle as the book selection in Zambia is pretty small and prices are very high.
Currently reading Karen Slaughter's Tryption.
I generally check kindle's daily deals and download whatever sounds interesting.

 

[LissaC]

Just finished reading this book, and what a an amazing book this is. It really sheds a different light on ultra-processed food and the many ways in which it affects our life and our health. Really brilliant and eye opening.

 

[Morning Glory]

Just finished reading this book, and what a an amazing book this is. It really sheds a different light on ultra-processed food and the many ways in which it affects our life and our health. Really brilliant and eye opening.
View attachment 109186

I like the quote from Chris Packham: 'incendiary and infuriating'.

 

[SandwichShortOfAPicnic]

I like the quote from Chris Packham: 'incendiary and infuriating'.

I liked that too!

 

[SandwichShortOfAPicnic]

Just finished reading this book, and what a an amazing book this is. It really sheds a different light on ultra-processed food and the many ways in which it affects our life and our health. Really brilliant and eye opening.
View attachment 109186

What were the takeaways from it?
Stop eating crap, it’s bad for you?

 

[TastyReuben]

I read (among other things over Christmas) “A Versailles Christmas-Tide,” detailing the author’s stay in Versailles in 1900 while her ailing son recuperated from such-and-such fever, too ill to travel home to England - the family parked it in France and that’s the story.

It’s fairly bland, and among the smattering of casual digs at the locals, and an update or two on her kid’s appetite, her main concern seemed to be the awful way in which those horrible peasants treated their royal betters, lobbing off their heads and all that.

 

[LissaC]

SandwichShortOfAPicnic Morning Glory it's all that but worse. To clarify, the term ultra-processed food (UPF) comes from a classification of food in 4 categories, from non-processes to ultra-processed. Most food has some level of processing (fermenting, frying, canning, etc) but the only concern is UPF. And UPF is not just junk food, most foods that claim to be low fat or low sugar are also UPF.

UPF is basically industrially made food that is made to be hyperpalatable and overconsumed. Most of it is full of stabilizers and flavor enhancers and preservatives that you wouldn't find in most other foods.

The classification came from Brazil, when a Brazilian nutritional team spent some years studying what foods people buy in the supermarket, and found that people were buying less sugar but getting heavier, and what had changed was that people were buying more UPF foods.

Once again the "low sugar, low fat" foods were created by big food companies to solve an issue they created themselves, by introducing foods that were high and sugar and fat in the first place...when nature is already full of foods that are low in fat and low in sugar.

There's a ton of shocking things in the book, like that a lot of food companies fund research on healthy eating, how Nestlé managed to bring obesity and diabetes to Amazon villages by creating a "floating" supermarket that basically sold junk food, how Coca-Cola funded most of the studies that say exercise makes you lose weight, how some researchers who did studies about UPF failed to disclose they were affiliated with food companies, how big food companies lobbied that baby formula is better than breastfeeding effectively leading to a rise in infant malnutrition especially in poorer countries where people could barely afford baby formula and didn't have access to clean water...

For me the bottom line is that big food companies need to make money so they make food that is specifically designed to be overconsumed...and that is fundamentally against the principle of sponsoring a healthy, nutritious diet.

 

[SandwichShortOfAPicnic]

SandwichShortOfAPicnic Morning Glory it's all that but worse. To clarify, the term ultra-processed food (UPF) comes from a classification of food in 4 categories, from non-processes to ultra-processed. Most food has some level of processing (fermenting, frying, canning, etc) but the only concern is UPF. And UPF is not just junk food, most foods that claim to be low fat or low sugar are also UPF.

UPF is basically industrially made food that is made to be hyperpalatable and overconsumed. Most of it is full of stabilizers and flavor enhancers and preservatives that you wouldn't find in most other foods.

The classification came from Brazil, when a Brazilian nutritional team spent some years studying what foods people buy in the supermarket, and found that people were buying less sugar but getting heavier, and what had changed was that people were buying more UPF foods.

Once again the "low sugar, low fat" foods were created by big food companies to solve an issue they created themselves, by introducing foods that were high and sugar and fat in the first place...when nature is already full of foods that are low in fat and low in sugar.

There's a ton of shocking things in the book, like that a lot of food companies fund research on healthy eating, how Nestlé managed to bring obesity and diabetes to Amazon villages by creating a "floating" supermarket that basically sold junk food, how Coca-Cola funded most of the studies that say exercise makes you lose weight, how some researchers who did studies about UPF failed to disclose they were affiliated with food companies, how big food companies lobbied that baby formula is better than breastfeeding effectively leading to a rise in infant malnutrition especially in poorer countries where people could barely afford baby formula and didn't have access to clean water...

For me the bottom line is that big food companies need to make money so they make food that is specifically designed to be overconsumed...and that is fundamentally against the principle of sponsoring a healthy, nutritious diet.

Nicely written

Ah yes these things are not widely known or accepted and I’d say most aren’t aware of how powerful or how underhand the food industry is. If you started to try and explain that book to a lot of folk they’d switch off and likely think you were heading down the conspiracy nut route

It is quite horrifying, it must have been overwhelming to read it all in one hit in one book?!!

Have you seen “That Sugar Film” it probably looks a bit out of date now but it‘s worth a watch.

Personally I think all these revelation just reinforce something we all know deep down already, making food yourself and eating a balanced diet is better for you.
But I’d chuck on top of that, read the labels on packets, something that looks like a simple hunk of chicken or ham for example can still be full of cr*p.