It’s all a matter of taste. I don’t doubt your no-salt bread is delicious - to you. I make sourdough, usually 5-10% rye. If I drop the typically 2% salt significantly say below 1.5%, I find it becomes very bland. I don’t have any blood pressure issues so I stick with 2%.
Think I might have a home grown egg poached on home made sourdough toast for brekky…
That resonates with me completely.
I dropped sugar about 6 months ago. It was one of the worst 2 weeks of my life. My mental health was train wreck. The coming off sugar was horrible. Some of the worst withdrawals and anxieties I could ever experience. It was so bad. I actually didn’t think it was the sugar, I just thought I was going through rough patch.
I was talking to a mate of mine who is a mental health and drug&alcohol worker. He said ‘no, it’s definitely the sugar withdrawals’.
The main issue I had my whole life was drinking soft drink. I went to a high school and there was a milk bar across the road, it became a habit after school when I was 13 years old, to grab a bottle of coke on the walk home. So I had a can of soft drink every day.
What helped was dropping soft drink completely, but replacing it with mineral water with a splash of lime juice. It helped with the immediate cravings, as I was seeking the bubbles and fizzie texture. It took a while to adjust to the taste. I don’t even need to drink mineral water now. But i actually enjoy it as a refreshing drink with ice.
I never have sugar cravings now. I honesty don’t feel like it, as it’s too sweet. I only have a coke when I go to the movies now, and it is so sickly sweet. I’ve never wanted more than that.
The difference now, is i can have a glass of soft drink or cake for morning tea at a work meeting, but i stop there. I don’t ‘need’ more. I don’t need sugar to get me through a work day. It feels pretty good tbh.
I cut softdrink, chips, lollies, slices etc.
Use to have softdrink each night with dinner.
Yep- agree. I use wholemeal flour (not bread mix) and I mix grain within the bread. Kneed the bread by hand and generally bake 3 German style loaves which lasts us 2 months. We were only chatting yesterday about none of our friends make their own bread but happily pay between 7-9 bucks for a loaf. Haven’t had much to do with sourdough but it may be a good experiment to try if I can find a starter.
Not hard jo start your own, just takes a bit of patience. Or really I’d be staggered if a SD bakery wouldn’t give you a bit.
Can’t buy better…
on the topic of sugar - seems it’s not just humans being affected by it
Liam Mannix30 September 2018 — 12:05am
Selective breeding has made the fruit we eat so full of sugar, Melbourne Zoo has had to wean its animals off it.
Fruit is vital in human diets, and we all need to eat more. But at the zoo, keepers found fruit-heavy diets were making some animals obese – and rotting their teeth.
Yum yum yum.
Photo: Eddie Jim
"The issue is the cultivated fruits have been genetically modified to be much higher in sugar content than their natural, ancestral fruits,” says Dr Michael Lynch, the zoo’s head vet.
“It’s interesting. After doing a lot with nutrition here, I tend to eat less fruit.”
Monkeys love bananas. But now, says Dr Lynch, the zoo’s primates don’t get any fruit at all.
For humans, eating fruit is associated with a reduced risk of coronary heart disease, stroke, obesity, gastric cancer and lung cancer, an evidence review commissioned by the federal government found.
Despite fruit’s sugar content, increasing your fruit intake does not increase your risk of type 2 diabetes. Fruits contain important nutrients, and fruit’s natural sugars are very different from the harmful '“free sugars” in soft drinks.
But the zoo’s experience is interesting for what it tells us about how agriculture has changed the fruits we eat.
“Pretty much all cultivated varieties at present are sweeter than their wild counterparts,” says Dr Senaka Ranadheera, a food scientist at the University of Melbourne.
“For example, wild apples are smaller and more bitter than modern cultivated varieties.”
Dr Ranadheera said there were reports of some fruits, such as plums, almost doubling in soluble sugar content in the past 20 years (fruit sugar levels are still nowhere near those in soft drinks or fruit juice).
Photo: Eddie Jim
And farmers have bred watermelons to have bright red fleshy interiors when ripe. Wild watermelons have a much smaller edible interior.
Wild bananas are filled with seeds; in the varieties we pick up from Coles or Woolies, the seeds have been shrunk so small they are almost invisible.
This has come about through decades – centuries, in some cases – of selective breeding.
“Throughout the ages, farming has favoured the plants that are pleasurable to eat such as the ones that have less of the bitterness and more of the sweetness,” says Dr Nenad Naumovski, who lectures in food science at the University of Canberra.
Head of veterinary services at the Melbourne Zoo, Dr Michael Lynch, at the red panda enclosure
Photo: Eddie Jim
“This also masks the bitterness of the phytochemicals that the particular fruit has.”
Melbourne Zoo had traditionally fed its animals a fruit-heavy diet, says Dr Lynch.
That caused a range of health problems, but also made it hard for keepers to ensure everyone was getting a balanced diet.
"Fruit is a highly desired item because of its sugar content. So many animals, especially primates and red pandas, they will selectively eat the fruit but not other elements.”
Like children, red pandas would quite happily eat nothing but bamboo and fruit, Dr Lynch says, missing out on a range of important nutrients.
So the zoo now makes “panda pellets”: all the vitamins and minerals a red panda needs, mixed in with a little bit of pear. The pandas find them delicious.
Since Dr Lynch started at the zoo, they’ve been systematically replacing most of the fruit with green leafy vegetables. Dr Lynch has done the same for his diet, and now tries to get as many leafy greens as possible.
The zoo’s seals have a different problem. If you freeze and then thaw a piece of fish, you can lose some of the fish’s vitamins. So keepers have to make sure plenty of fresh fish is available too.
"A seal in the wild is eating fresh fish. We’re feeding them something that’s been caught, frozen, thawed. Fresh is best for most things,” says Dr Lynch.
That is all sorts of farked up.
I’m mid vacation eating my way across Japan, I sure AF need some kind of diet as soon as I get through customs.
Just so much to eat and drink here. Surprisingly (or not) they do amazing pastries, which have been my downfall.
I always thought they were healthier due to tje fresh ingredients (similar to chinese where we get the heavily Westernised). I want to try the grill joints where they give you the sliver of meats to grill to your liking.
Oh, they have that, but I’ve only tried the one where they cook it for you. I’ve just been eating heaps. Then the kids won’t eat what I order, so end up having a go at that. Then the kids want croissants and bread, so end up getting a few bits to go. Then there’s local beers to try…
By Yasmine Probst and Vivienne Guan
about an hour ago
Opinion
Updated
Many people wonder why they’re not losing weight when they follow a strict diet and exercise routine.
One possible reason is that what look like healthy options aren’t what they seem. Many foods and drinks contain hidden fats, sugars or salt, each of which will curb your weight loss efforts. In addition to the kilojoules, these flavoursome foods leave you wanting more.
Losing weight is largely about tipping the balance of kilojoules in and out. If you’re trying to lose weight or simply seeking a healthier lifestyle, here are five common traps that might be hindering you.
Photo: Muesli bars are often processed and high in kilojoules. (Jennifer King)
Vegetables are good for you, absolutely. But salads often include other ingredients, which will hike up your kilojoule (kJ) count.
A Caesar salad looks green and leafy but is filled with hidden fats from the bacon (8g fat; 360kJ), parmesan cheese (6g fat; 340kJ) and creamy salad dressing lathered over the top (20g fat; 770kJ). Even the croutons are fried for added crunch. So a Caesar salad gives you 70 per cent of your total daily fat intake for an average adult in one meal.
On par with this is a creamy pasta salad, often seen at family barbecues. A side serve of this comes in at almost 920 kilojoules.
Fats provide the highest kilojoules from food (followed closely by alcohol, but more on that later). So be wary of dressings, sauces, gravies and high fat foods that may be adding kilojoules to your meal.
Australians consume more than 30 per cent of their kilojoules from discretionary or “junk” foods, such as biscuits, chips and chocolate. None of these are providing us with any vital nutrients. These are the kilojoules we need to shift to lose weight.
But many people make the mistake of swapping junk food for seemingly “healthy snacks”, such as muesli bars and protein balls. While these can claim to be healthy and organic, they’re often processed and high in kilojoules.
Muesli bars do contain healthy ingredients such as oats, nuts and seeds. But sticking all the parts together to form a bar is usually achieved with a form of sugar. A yoghurt, fruit and nut bar can contain up to 4.6 teaspoons of sugar.
Next time you feel like a snack, why not substitute your muesli bar with a handful of nuts and seeds. This will provide you with useful vitamins and minerals — minus the sugar sticking them together.
Photo: Next time you feel like something sweet, try adding some fruit instead. (Cassie White)
There’s recently been a shift towards more natural forms of added sugar, but they contain no additional nutrients and no fewer kilojoules. Adding honey or agave syrup to your dish does not differ nutritionally from adding sugar to the same dish. It may taste different, but you’re still adding sugar.
Next time you feel like something sweet, try adding some fruit instead. It has a natural sweetness and will give you extra vitamins and minerals.
If you find your downfall is adding sugar to coffee, try using soy milk instead of cow’s milk. It has a sweeter taste (but one that may need some getting used to in the first instance).
Or try reducing the amount of sugar you add by half a teaspoon each week. You’ll find you barely notice the difference after a while.
Think of the humble banana, mashed up into banana bread. This is not a bread at all, but a cake.
If you’ve ever made banana bread you’ll realise just how much butter and extra sugar gets added to something nature has already made to be sweet and in its own convenient package.
Meanwhile, fruit drinks generally contain only 25 per cent fruit juice and are very high in sugar. But even when drinking 100 per cent fruit juice, you’re missing out on the important fibre that comes naturally from fruit and helps your body recognise it feels full. So whole fruit is best.
Fruit smoothies, although slightly better than fruit juices, are another one you can easily be caught out on. Smoothies are generally prepared in large servings and may have syrups or ice creams added to them, reducing their nutritional value by comparison.
If you’re trying to lose weight, you’ll know sugary soft drinks are a no-go. But some of the easiest mistakes to make are those in liquid form.
Many people aren’t aware how many kilojoules are in alcoholic drinks. An average restaurant serving of red wine is equivalent to 1.5 standard drinks and contains 480 kilojoules.
So after two glasses of wine, not only have you exceeded the recommended two standard drinks, but you’ve also consumed the equivalent kilojoules to eating two full cups of corn chips. The same applies for beer, where just one schooner equates to 1.6 standard drinks which is the same as 615 kilojoules.
Of course, many of us don’t stop at one.
Probably the most common food mistake when trying to lose weight is eating too much. We need to choose the right foods but the amount is also important.
We need to listen to the signals our bodies send when we’re getting full to stop eating. The best way to do this is to eat slowly, chewing carefully.
By slowing our eating we are more likely to be sent the sign of fullness before feeling it at our waistband.
Yasmine Probst is a senior lecturer in the School of Medicine a the University of Wollongong; Vivienne Guan is a PhD Candidate at the University of Wollongong. This article first appeared on The Conversation.
Topics: diet-and-nutrition, food-and-beverage, lifestyle-and-leisure, health,australia
First posted about 3 hours ago
All very true, although there’s nothing in it that half a second of thinking wouldn’t tell you anyway.
Agree. I think the whole process of eating has been made too complicated. People are looking for a magic food to fix everything. When all you should do is at well for good health and things like weight should take care of itself.
And most importantly, the last thing in that article you posted. Don’t eat too much of anything. And if you’re already overweight, EAT LESS.
Know a guy, has gone the whole only eat between 1pm and 8pm diet…
Has lost 13 kilos in three months and does it easy. Looks trim as…
But really the big tips to dropping weight.
Eat dinner early. (as in before 7). Always. Do not eat late.
Only drink water, herbal tea(no sugar). Eg don’t drink calories.
Consume fibre. (veggies, proteins).
Cut back on fat and sugar.
sound like basic caloric deficit, regardless of what time he eats.
Olivia WillisPosted about 2 hours ago
Processed foods have long been blamed for the obesity epidemic.
(Getty Images: Science Photo Library)
It seems like research that should surprise no-one: when people eat lots of highly-processed food, they’re more likely to gain weight.
And yet nutrition scientists, who have long suspected such foods are behind the ballooning obesity epidemic, were recently surprised to make such a finding.
Why? Well, it turns out the usual suspects — sugar, salt and fat — aren’t solely to blame.
In a small study published today in the scientific journal Cell Metabolism, 20 people spent two weeks eating either a highly-processed or unprocessed diet, before they swapped to spend two weeks eating the opposite diet.
Despite the two groups’ meals and servings being carefully matched, calorie for calorie, participants consumed more food and gained weight while on the ultra-processed diet, said lead author Kevin Hall.
“I thought that if we matched the two diets for components like sugars, fat, carbohydrates, protein and sodium, there wouldn’t be anything magical about the ultra-processed food that would cause people to eat more,” said Dr Hall, senior investigator at the US National Institute of Diabetes, Digestive and Kidney Diseases.
“We found that, in fact, people ate many more calories on the ultra-processed diet, and this caused them to gain weight and body fat.”
Studying dietary habits is complicated and often limited by self-reporting, so it’s been difficult for researchers to establish a direct connection between highly-processed foods and obesity.
Although the study was relatively small, as well as short, Dr Hall said it was the first to establish a clear cause-and-effect relationship between processed foods, increased calorie consumption and weight gain.
“Even more importantly, that causal relationship didn’t necessarily have to do with the nutrients that we always suspected might be driving that relationship: salt, sugar and fat,” he said.
“It suggests there is something that we still don’t understand about ultra-processed food … that is driving a very large effect on why people tend to overeat [it].”
The researchers enrolled 20 healthy volunteers who were given three meals a day and had access to either ultra-processed or unprocessed snacks, as well as water.
Every meal was carefully matched to a counterpart meal (in the opposite diet) to ensure carbohydrate, fat, protein, sugar, fibre, and sodium levels were equal, and the total calorie count was the same in both meals.
A typical breakfast in the ultra-processed diet consisted of Honey Nut Cheerios, whole milk with added fibre, a packaged blueberry muffin, and margarine.
In the unprocessed diet, breakfast included a parfait made with plain Greek yogurt, strawberries, bananas, walnuts, salt, and olive oil, and apple slices with freshly-squeezed lemon.
The participants were told they could eat as much (or as little) as they wanted, and the researchers measured how much they consumed.
During two weeks on the ultra-processed diet, participants ate an average of 508 more calories per day (that’s about a quarter of recommend daily consumption). They also gained, on average, almost one kilogram.
In contrast, they lost the same amount of weight, on average, during their two weeks on the unprocessed diet.
Importantly, participants reported that both diets tasted good — so they weren’t just eating less on the unprocessed diet because they didn’t like the food.
Tracy Burrows, an associate professor of nutrition and dietetics at the University of Newcastle, said although the study was “very novel”, the weight differences observed were minimal.
“There’s so many influences on somebody’s weight status, that 0.9kg is not very much,” said Dr Burrows, who was not involved in the research.
“Whilst it’s reported as significant … the actual amount is insignificant.”
But Dr Hall disagreed, and said the duration of the study was the reason more considerable weight change wasn’t observed.
“The point is, when we look at the calorie differences between what people are eating, those are persistently different over the course of the month-long experiment, and they’re substantial,” he said.
“You would expect if we were to run this study out for three or four months, these weight differences would have continued to accumulate.”
Similarly, because the participants were healthy and the testing period lasted only a month, the researchers didn’t observe any significant differences in other measures of health.
As for why the study participants consumed more food and ultimately gained weight while on the ultra-processed diet, Dr Hall and his colleagues had several ideas.
They found that when people were on the ultra-processed diet, they tended to eat faster — potentially not allowing enough time for their body to signal to their brain that they were full.
“There may be something about the textural or sensory properties of the food that made them eat more quickly,” Dr Hall said.
This, in turn, he said, could easily lead to overeating.
Another factor that appeared to play a role in higher calorie consumption was the higher calorie density of processed food.
“The solid foods were 85 per cent more calorie dense in the ultra-processed diet compared to the unprocessed diet,” Dr Hall said.
“Given that they’re smaller portions, if you eat anywhere near the same number of grams of those foods, you will receive naturally more calories.”
Less clear, Dr Hall said, was the biological changes they observed that might also contribute to changes in calorie consumption.
“When people consumed the unprocessed diet, for reasons that we don’t fully understand, the levels of an appetite suppressing hormone that’s produced by the gut went up,” he said.
“Similarly, a hormone that increases hunger … went down during the unprocessed diet.”
Dr Burrows said more research was needed to support the findings of the trial and make them generalisable to the wider population.
“It’s a really exciting study that provides preliminary investigation … but because it’s a small study in an inpatient setting, it has its limitations,” she said.
Since the food was prepared for the participants, it didn’t take into account convenience and cost — two significant factors when it comes to peoples’ diets.
“We know there are a lot of factors that contribute to why someone might choose an ultra-processed meal over and unprocessed on,” Dr Hall said.
“For people in lower socio-economic brackets especially, we need to be mindful of the skills, equipment, knowledge, and expense needed to create unprocessed meals.”
Even while preparing the food for the study, the researchers found the weekly cost of the ingredients for the unprocessed diet was nearly 50 per cent higher: $US151 vs $US106.
Dr Burrows agreed, and said it was important not to dismiss processed food altogether.
“This study is focused on ultra-processed foods … but processed food can also mean raw foods that have just been processed to make them more edible and consumable,” she said, offering Weet-Bix as an example of a processed food that could still be a healthy choice.
“You can’t eat wheat straight from the field. They’ve just processed it so it’s in a more edible format.”
Dr Hall added that the study’s findings raised interesting questions about the role of ultra-processed foods in other diets.
“People seemed to have vehement arguments about what diet is best for weight loss, whether it be low carb, keto, low fat, or vegan.”
Despite the differences between these diets, he said, they all have one recommendation in common: to decrease consumption of ultra-processed food.
“When you have a success story of somebody on a low carb or low-fat diet, were they successful because they cut the carbs or the fat, or was it because they reduced the ultra-processed food?”
Breaking news at 11: if given the choice, people eat more of the food they prefer (but not necessarily more volume of food).
I’ve noticed this with nuts. Give me nuts that I have to shell and I eat a small amount and they have a nice fresh taste. Give me a bag of roasted salted any-nut and I will eat 10 times as many.
