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Processed Meat


idun
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A report today has said that many people would live longer if they reduced the amount of processed food they eat. As the list was given, I realised that that meant all charcuterie.

I know a few people in France who were told to cut down on their charcuterie intake, and they did a little, but frankly not much and not to the equivalent of down to one rasher of bacon a day, as suggested on today's news.

Will this be in french headlines???? I hope not, we seem to get a scare a week, don't eat or drink this, eat or drink that and then it's all change.

The other headline was that there has to be a big deer cull, so will we have cheap venison? that is supposed to be a very healthy meat!

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But if it was the report that I read it said that of the 44000 in the survey those who ate the most processed food were 40 or maybe 70% more likely to die eary than those who didnt, but there are lots of other factors involved, weight and fitness being the most obvious.

 

An overweight and unfit vegetarian that has never touched processed food would be more likely to die early than a thin healthy one that eats charcuterie as part of a balanced diet.

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I haven't read the report, so don't know - but surely, processed food is much, much more than processed meat! It is where all the transfats hide - in biscuits, cakes, so-called ice-creams, chocolate, fake cheese for pizza, anything with palm oil like peanut butter, etc...

Charcuterie is a funny one. For instance, "rillettes d'oie" is very fatty. Yet, it appears that just like duck fat, goose fat is actually good for you, cholesterol-wise. (I heard that once, and it is my excuse, as rillettes d'oie is my indulgence[:)]) - so in that sense it is better for you than  most cheese!

Today I finished some Picard meatballs that were in the freezer, and looked carefully at the ingredients, as I was convinced that there was dodgy stuff in there. And maybe there was, but to the 48% beef - from France, apparently, as if this was a garantee of anything! - there was quite an amount of TVP added (textured vegetable protein, i.e. probably soja). So, strangely, this may be a case of a processed food ("meat")which is not too bad i terms of trans fats since TVP is vegetarian/vegan.

I agree with you Chancer, about the weight and fitness too!

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Ah I see, so it is the nitrites and nitrates which are the bad guys this week. Not just the bad fat. [:'(]

So you can choose between heart attack/AVC (with transfats) and cancer (with nitrates). Sausages have got both. Ahem.

I wonder if merguez and chorizo count as "sausages" ? ( sadly, I know the answer)

Thanks Norman for that article.

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[quote user="NormanH"]Here is a second article, concentrating on the 'sausage' side
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2013/mar/07/are-sausages-bad-for-you-processed-meat
[/quote]

I have not seen the original paper but only heard comments about it. As I recall, it was about the greater risk of heart disease (I may have got that wrong) and the Guardian article, concentrating on cancer risks, looks like a bit of journalistic oportunism.

I think I recall someone on Radio 4 this morning talking about curing and high salt content. If that is the case then Idun wan't be happy - she posted not long ago about how much she likes cooking with salt. But I am looking forward to the venison mountain.

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Apologies, as I meant to put Processed Meat and tried to change it afterwards and cannot. If one of the mods could, it would be nice.

So this was specifically about meat, rather than any other product. Again apologies.

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Make mine un AVC avec transfats with cancerous nitrates on the side please [:-))]

The only part of my diet now that isnt very very healthy is my sausages that make up probably 50% of the meat that I eat which in itself is far less than I used to and practically never red meat.

Of the sausages the Toulouse ones I reckon are quite decent but les saucisses fumées have a lot of salt and other K-rap.

I dont touch merguéz and other saucisses these days as if you weigh them before and after cooking whilst you lose a lot of fat (if grilled) and water, often 50% +  its therefore cheaper per kilo to buy chicken breast, a crazy situation and shows you just how much money the industrials make out of us.

As I dont eat any other processed foods I know that the only salt I get is from the sausages and the twist of rock salt I have with my porridge, I dont think it is excessive as I have very very low blood pressure, practically hypotension and still get really painfull cramps from time to time.

speaking of cramps I got a real doohicky double whammy in both iscio janviers (spelling?) free diving at the fosse this week and someone practiced their rescue on me, I dont think I needed it but it was very sympa of them as I was at 12 meters depth at the time [:-))], anyway like many words I know in French I havnt a clue what they are in English so what is the correct term in english for  iscio janvier (the rear thigh muscle) and what is the correct French spelling please?

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I guess it comes down to the usual - a little of what you fancy does you good, rather than a lot of whatever you fancy doesn't.

This news made me think of my father. He died aged 84, after a lifetime of eating cooked breakfasts every day of the week consisting of fried bacon, fried sausage, fried eggs and fried bread, plus several evening meals of fry-ups each week. Work day lunches would have been ham or corned beef sandwiches. Plus he smoked for most of his life - 40 cigarettes each day and he liked a couple of pints of beer at weekends. He enjoyed gardening and grew some vegetables - he was particularly keen on sprouts and tomatoes. He was pretty healthy up to the age of about 78, when an ingrown toenail eventually caused him to have a leg removed. He had a false leg fitted and still carried on gardening, paying someone to dig it over for him each year - the rest he did himself. He had a fall in his garden, and lay there overnight, which caused pneumonia from which he died a couple of days later. It's not known what caused the fall; he did have falls from time to time, due to his false leg, but he was considered healthy up to when he died.

It's not that I disbelieve this and other reports, but my father seems to have avoided death from the causes they mention. I'm a non-smoker, don't eat a lot of red meat or processed foods, enjoy vegetables, salads, lentils etc - plus lots of wine, cheese and chocolate. Who knows what the future holds for me health-wise!

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[quote user="Chancer"]

I dont touch merguéz and other saucisses these days as if you weigh them before and after cooking whilst you lose a lot of fat (if grilled) and water, often 50% +  its therefore cheaper per kilo to buy chicken breast, a crazy situation and shows you just how much money the industrials make out of us.

[/quote]

Ah but that is for industrial merguez sold in supermarkets. My butcher makes his merguez, and they give practically no fat at all, or water, when grilled. No comparison with the grande surface ones.

Chancer, it is ischio-jambiers (from "jambe")... I do love your phonetic French, it is so colourful and made me smile.

They are the muscles on the back of the thigh, opposite to the quadriceps in the front. Don't know what they are in English.

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Idun wrote :     The other headline was that there has to be a big deer cull, so will we have cheap venison? that is supposed to be a very healthy meat!

Very healthy but I am yet to eat roasted a tender bit .... Any animal that can run like hell and leap a five bar gate  has to be tough unless  done in a slow cooker  I think . Roasting has never worked for me even after marinated  in red wine overnight !

I read years ago that the large numbers of deer breeding out of control in the UK was down to the Berlin wall  being dismantled . Before that the  West Germans bought a lot of venison from the UK and herds were regularly culled  to supply them ..After the wall came down it was available  cheaper from East Europe and the UK trade dropped off .    

 


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I suspect it has more to do with genes than anything else for most people. A TV progamme featured this a couple of years back and concluded that life expectancy was largely predetermined from birth.

Like Gardengirls's Dad, my great uncle ignored medical advice, ate a large fried breakfast every day, smoked and visited the pub at least once a day. He told his tut-tutting (and much younger) doctor that he would outlive him (which I believe he did) and that, in any event, he enjoyed his lifestyle too much and intended to carry on enjoying it regardless. He died suddenly at 88 and from my knowledge of him and from comments made by his daughter and others, he had had the happiest life imaginable. Perhaps he would have lived to 98 had he changed his ways, but I doubt he would have wanted to. He was full of harmless mischief and it brings a smile to my face just thinking about him.

Maybe similar behaviour by another person would precipitate death but Uncle Jim came from a line of long-livers. I am sure just being cheerful - and never really wanting to "grow up" - helped to keep him going, too.
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Thanks for the replies re "hamstring", it just shows how much I am losing my English even in subjects that I knew very well, I could not recall beech (hêtre) in English the other day yet I have worked with it for decades.

Iscio janvier [:D]

I must sound like Hilda Baker to the French [:D].

Still I am progressing, at first they said I spoke like un petit négre, then une vache Espagnole, now I'm not sure, do they have an equivalent to Hilda Baker?

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[quote user="Frecossais"]Chancer, maybe you aren't having enough salt in your diet, that can give you cramp.

[/quote]

Yes I realise that for me at least its one of the warning signs and also of dehydration, I am definitely not dehydrated so its good to know that I am just on the line re salt intake, I would be more worried if I didnt ever get cramps.

The really painfull ones that crippled me in bed at night have gone since I started taking salt with a banana at breakfast, it only happens now when I really force the muscles using fins and rarely at that.

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[quote user="Chancer"]

[quote user="Frecossais"]Chancer, maybe you aren't having enough salt in your diet, that can give you cramp.

[/quote]

Yes I realise that for me at least its one of the warning signs and also of dehydration, I am definitely not dehydrated so its good to know that I am just on the line re salt intake, I would be more worried if I didnt ever get cramps.

The really painfull ones that crippled me in bed at night have gone since I started taking salt with a banana at breakfast, it only happens now when I really force the muscles using fins and rarely at that.

[/quote]

Salted banana?Yuk!

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I cannot imagine having porridge without salt in it, beurk, it'd have no taste. So yes, in my porridge I'd have grapes and banana or pear, but there is always some salt in the porridge. 

 I like salt and I find it reassuring that the chefs on tv always pull junior chefs us if they have have under seasoned. I use less salt in my cooking than I used to as my husband has high blood pressure, so it is a compromise as far as I am concerned. And it is never the same putting more onto a cooked meal.

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[quote user="Chancer"]

Iscio janvier [:D]

I must sound like Hilda Baker to the French [:D].

[/quote]

[quote user="5-element"]

Chancer, it is ischio-jambiers (from "jambe")... I do love your phonetic French, it is so colourful and made me smile.

[/quote]

She knows, you know.....[:D]

I've never been wholly convinced by the cramps/salt argument. I eat lots of salt (my blood pressure, BTW, is as low as that of a dead person) And I still sometimes get bad cramps in my very own iscio janvier. I don't eat sausages, though. Even before this new information came to light, I didn't like them.

Living as we do in close proximity to many, many deer, there's a period during the year when we're ankle-deep in venison and it suddenly appears everywhere on the "specials" menu at local restaurants, as they do a cull in Windsor Great park. I've usually found it quite tender, so must have been lucky, or they know how to hang it round here.

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Cramps are also thought to be due to magnesium deficiency, or a calcium/magnesium imbalance.

I, too, eat quite a lot of salt and my BP is usually through the floor.

Venison, miam miam!

I'd better go and remind myself who Hilda Baker is - without looking, I'd say "Coronation Street" but I might be wrong, as I mix up those soaps.

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I couldn't stand Hilda Baker in general but she did have a few gems like the thing where she would look at her watch and say

'look at 'time, it's 10 past......Ooo I must get a little  'and for this watch!'

Apologies for thread drift

and I am unanimous in this [6]

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[quote user="Frederick"]I read years ago that the large numbers of deer breeding out of control in the UK was down to the Berlin wall  being dismantled . Before that the  West Germans bought a lot of venison from the UK and herds were regularly culled  to supply them ..After the wall came down it was available  cheaper from East Europe and the UK trade dropped off .    
 

[/quote]

 

Sounds like a good story except that all the venison I found while in Germany came from New Zealand

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