Eat This Not That

Image from www.menshealth.co.uk

A discussion on processed diet food recently where a manufacturer stated that theirs contain no additives, got me thinking. 

The definition of an additive is: something added to food to preserve it or enhance it's flavour or appearance. This could be for example, salt (a preservative or a flavour enhancer) and classed as a "natural" additive. In fact if you want to be pedantic about it, anything you add to a food is an additive.

So saying a food particularly a processed food, is additive free, is complete and utter nonsense.

Read an ingredient list for a simple dish which is processed. If they contain guar gum (a thickener), maltodextrin (a highly refined sweetener usually derived from corn starch and incidentally, increasingly attributed to the rise in obesity), acidifier (gives a sour taste and acts as an antioxidant to stop fats going rancid) or colourings; I am at a loss how they can claim they are additive free. But they do.

I'm not saying any of the above additives are bad for you per se. However, they should not form more than a small part of any balanced diet.With diet meals the likelihood is you will give up with boredom long before they do you any harm.

Why ready meal manufacturers have to add all this stuff is quite simply to give shelf life and freeze-thaw stability (for frozen products). At home if you freeze a meal and it goes a bit liquidy when you defrost it, you don't get distressed but manufacturers do because customers will complain. Often times additives act as flavour enhancers purely because low grade ingredients are used.

I have yet to come across a processed food proclaiming that it is "all natural" or "additive free" to actually be. If something is all natural it needs minimal processing to begin with anyway. If you use high quality ingredients you don't need to enhance flavour. Milk, yoghurt and most cheese would undergo minimal processing which only really involves pasteurisation and the addition of salt and/or sugar. Processors often reduce fat or add vitamins (when you reduce fat you remove a lot of the fat soluble vitamins) but the original product is still pretty much intact.

The thing to bear in mind for a processed €3 ready meal is, that even giving benefits of scale you are not getting high quality ingredients. But what you are getting is fleeced. Calculate the price per kilo and wait for your eyes to water.

Expert? Advice.

Every day of the week I read expert advice. And usually that expert advice has changed from the last time I read it. You know the drill. Fat is bad/ fat is not bad - sugar is bad. In a few years sugar will not be bad (you read it here first). Running is good. Well running a certain amount is good. Running too much is bad. Cholesterol is bad. Well good cholesterol is good, bad cholesterol is bad. Dietary cholesterol is good/bad. To be honest I've lost track now.

My head does be in a spin.

Latest article I read is organic veg is better than conventional. I could have sworn I read a few weeks ago that the top boffins concluded there was no difference in nutritional value.

Can you believe anything they tell you? I'm beginning to think not. Actually I'm kind of glad I have never done what I was told.

I think the answer is to trust your own innate instinct. I trust mine. If I die in the next few years of a heart attack/stroke/cancer, then maybe you can say I should have listened.

I have never believed butter was worse than margarine.

I have never believed any rubbish about cholesterol from the time I read (years ago) that if you eat a low cholesterol diet your body makes it.

I learned the hard way that too much running was bad when I wasn't able to get out of the bath in my thirties, my knees were so f*cked.

I know it makes sense that vegetables and fruit that have not been doused in pesticides are better for you than those that are not. I don't need any boffin or any of their studies to prove otherwise.

I know that if something smells okay and looks okay despite a use by/sell by, it is.

I know that pink meat won't kill you if you are used to eating it that way (and this includes children).

The human race survived long before boffins had their heads stuck down microscopes so long they couldn't see the bigger picture. 

The question has to be - who do we believe?

Pork Loin with Fresh Apricot and Walnut Stuffing

Until I started rearing my own pigs I had only ever experienced dry and tough pork fillet no matter how I cooked it. Pork fillet from an outdoor reared pig is a different animal. It is tender, moist and so tasty.

I had found this one in the depths of my freezer unlabelled and slightly freezer burned. Initially I thought it was a tongue. I defrosted it and shaved off the "burnt" bits. I rooted in the cupboards and made this stuffing from what I had to hand. My measurements are not exact but this doesn't matter.

Stuffing Recipe
2 heels of a granary style loaf crumbed
1 onion softened in a big knob of butter
A handful of raisins
2 fresh apricots stoned and chopped
A good big handful of walnuts roughly chopped
a few fresh sage leaves chopped
salt and pepper

This quantity made enough for two fillets but it's really handy to have one frozen for when you don't have time to faff around making stuffing. I rolled half up in cling film and froze. Soften the onions in the butter, add all the other ingredients. Cool. Slit pork fillet and stuff. Line a roasting tin with tin foil. Lay slices of prosciutto on base. Place the fillet on the slices and wrap the prosciutto over. Secure with cocktail sticks. Wrap the foil over and pop in a preheated oven at 180 fan for 45 minutes. Open foil and brown for the last ten minutes. Check with a meat thermometer. If it has reached 70 deg in centre it is safe. I cook mine to 68 but I know the source and so feel safe with it being slightly pink.

Allow it to rest for about 15 minutes. Use the meat juices that run out to drizzle back over the joint.