Pigs and Myths

Pigs do not eat anything and everything. Pigs are not dirty. Pigs do not smell. Pigs are not stupid.

Humans are stupid.

Having watched a programme on television last night on BBC1, I would have believed the opening statements. Countryfile stated that pigs eat everything. Well Countryfile, unless you starve your pigs they do not eat everything. They are exactly the same as humans. They have preferences. In fact, there is an awful lot like humans about pigs. But, they do not make inane pronouncements about humans. In this respect they are a lot more intelligent.

I rear pigs. I am the small holder the pig farmer on your programme spoke disparagingly about. I am the pig farmer that he assumed would feed pig slops. Actually, I would not feed my pigs the crap most humans eat. The processed, full of salt, full of hydrogenated fat, full of colourings, full of stabilisers, full of preservatives that you probably eat whilst you feed your pigs a combination of genetically modifed soy and maize.

My pigs enjoy a mixed diet of barley, organic pig nuts and fruit and vegetables from my local vegetable shop. They gallop around an acre, rooting and grazing on grass and weeds. They are curious, nosy, interested and moody.

They are unbelievably clean. When they are not confined in a concrete factory, they do not smell. They make a point of going to the furthest part of the field "to do their business".

They all like different foods. I have had pigs that adored strawberries and melons and wouldn't touch broccoli. I have had pigs that loved broccoli and cauliflower and turned their snouts up at pears, apples and kiwi.

They are sociable and they make distinct noises. I am able to distinguish some of them but I am not fluent in "pig speak" yet. I'm getting there.

I respect my pigs. I love my pigs.

I kill and eat my pigs knowing that they have had the best life pigs can have and I know what they have eaten.

Feed pigs slops by all means but make sure the slops are what you would be prepared to eat.

The Pig Idea is a good one but not all slops are good.

Another glaring inaccuracy Countryfile came up with was that feeding pig slops was the cause of the BSE crises. It was not. BSE was caused by feeding cattle with meat and bone meal. Cattle are vegetarian, they do not eat meat!

Boil your Cloth

I have just been reading about an outbreak of Novovirus in Heston Blumenthal's restaurant "Dinner" (again?). At some point in their life almost everyone will suffer from some form of food poisoning either by their own fair hand or by someone else.

The most common way "germs" are spread in a kitchen is by your cloth. I have been in so many pristine kitchens where it almost appears as if you could eat your food off the floor. No doggy footprints ever cross their threshold, no cats trip lightly across their counter tops seeking the milk jug. But; look in their sink area or better still lift up and smell the cloth or sponge they use to wash up with or clean down the work surfaces.  You can be almost certain it will be rank.

I always boil my cloth (with a small amount of washing powder) or at very least wash it and leave it soaking overnight in a weak bleach solution. I am obsessive about this. It is by far the cleanest thing in my house and it needs to be. I am very relaxed about everything else. But cloths and wooden chopping boards are rigourously cleaned every day or after every use.

The upside of this is that the Le Creuset pans I use to boil the cloth get lovely and clean as it is also a great way to remove stains.

So boil your cloth and allow it to dry out overnight.

Sugar - the New Demon

http://nutribulletblog.com/blasting-for-blood-sugar-control

Two years ago I had a conversation with a medical member of my family about fat. We argued about what was the real cause of obesity in this country. He was still of the opinion that all fat should be avoided, particularly saturated fat. I told him there was new thinking on fat and that there was a very large study published which disproved the link between the amount of fat in the diet and heart disease. This study actually showed that countries such as Switzerland and France who had the largest intake of saturated fat and had the highest cholesterol levels had the lowest level of heart disease. The USA which had the lowest saturated fat intake and the lowest cholesterol levels actually had the highest amount of heart disease.

So what was going on? Why, when fat had been demonised for so long had heart disease, obesity and diabetes been steadily on the increase since the 1970s? It all began with Nixon. Rather than regurgitate the story, I have provided a link here which explains it better.

When fat is removed from a food it becomes tasteless and so sugar, salt and other enhancers need to be added to improve the flavour. Fat was so demonised that consumers developed an abhorrence of it. Sales of low fat, reduced fat and even zero fat products soared. Manufacturers realised they were onto a winner and could increase sales by stating even a naturally low fat food was low fat. Stating the bleedin' obvious so to speak.

Now consumers were consuming all this "hidden sugar" and were getting fatter and fatter and diabetic (interesting link here showing "The International Diabetes Federation, for example, which aims to combat diabetes, is a commercial partner of Novo Nordisk, the world’s biggest producer of insulin, and the food-processing giant, Nestle.") Consumers were cooking less and buying more and more processed foods. It was no coincidence that the mega food manufacturers were also getting richer and richer.

But now having demonised fat to the extent that the average person actually shudders at the mere mention of it, we are now in danger of demonising sugar.  While, who we should be demonising are the food manufacturers.

When you cook at home with sugar, you are in control. You know exactly how many grammes you have added. With processed food you have no idea and manufacturers have got very cute as to how they label sugar including, rice syrup, or even “organic dehydrated cane juice", invert sugar, high fructose corn syrup, maltodextrin. The list goes on and on so much so that I as a food scientist am sometimes conned! So what hope does the average consumer have?

Intrinsically there is nothing wrong with sugar. It is the energy building block of life. All food nutrients are ultimately broken down to a basic sugar to provide fuel for every cell in the body. The less refined the sugar is the better it is for you. Your body has evolved to recognise and be able to digest and use sugar in it's natural forms. It tends to get a bit confused by modern laboratory refined equivalents.

The secret is to stop making cynical food processing manufacturers richer and as much as is practical and possible to avoid including processed foods in the diet. Moderation is the key.

We really are in danger of throwing the baby out with the bath water yet again. Instead let the dregs of tens of thousand baths drain down on cynical food manufacturers and may the fleas of a thousand camels infest their shareholders and may their arms be too short to scratch them.