7 foods you should never eat

Here’s a great post about seven foods you should never eat. Mostly because of high levels of contaminates and chemicals, which can lead to all sorts of health problems.  I won’t go into the studies and reasons why each one is on the list (you can read the original article for that).  I just wanted to give you the list.  So here it is:

1. Canned tomatoes
2. Corn-fed beef
3. Microwave popcorn
4. Non-organic potatoes
5. Farmed salmon
6. Milk produced with artificial hormones
7. Non-organic apples

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drink water

Whether you pay attention to it or not, water affects every aspect of our lives – from sanitation to cooking to, well, you.  About 70% of our bodyweight is water.  We can’t live without it.  But many people aren’t getting enough.  This is the case not just in developing countries where it is difficult to access safe drinking water, but also in developed countries where clean water is plentiful.  In fact, a study shows that up to 27% of people in the US might suffer from chronic dehydration.

So what?

Well, here’s a list of problems you’re more likely to encounter if you’re not drinking enough water:

• Cancers (urinary tract, colon and breast)
• Heart disease (mitral valve prolapse)
• Kidney stones
• Childhood obesity
• Diminished mental and physical performance
• Diminished salivary gland function

But how much water is ‘enough’?  The very helpful answer is: it depends.  It depends on your weight, food consumption, physical activity, environment and diuretic consumption (caffeine and alcohol).   As a guide, you should be drinking 1ml of water per calorie of food.  So, if you’re eating 2,500 calories per day that means you should be drinking 2.5L of water per day.  However, approximately 1L of that will come from food (especially fruits and vegetables) and another 250ml coming from the water of oxidation.  That leaves 1.25L, or 5 cups, that needs to come from drinking water.  Follow?

However, these are the calculations for an inactive individual.  If you/’re doing exercise then you are sweating more and need to drink more.  A rough guide is to consume 1L of water per hour of exercise.  So, want to figure out how much water you should be drinking per day?  Try this calculation:

[Number of calories/1,000] + [hours of exercise x 1] – 1.25 (fluids from food and oxidation) = number of litres per day

So, if I eat 2,800 calories per day and exercise for 45mins, my water intake calculation will be:

[2,800 calories/1,000] + [0.75 x 1] – 1.25
2.8                 +      0.75     – 1.25  =  2.3L

So, I would need to drink 2.3L, or about 9 cups, of water per day to keep my fluid levels constant and avoid dehydration.  This doesn’t account for diuretics like coffee and alcohol, which actually create a negative fluid effect – which is why a late night drinking session can result in headaches and vomiting, which are symptoms of dehydration.  Make sure you drink even more water if you’re drinking caffeine and alcoholic drinks – you’ll be glad the next morning!

Dehydration occurs with as little as 1%-2% loss of bodyweight from fluids.  Even just 1% loss impairs exercise performance.  That means non-diuretic fluid intake (from water, sports drinks, etc) must be enough to keep bodyweight constant for optimal physical performance.  So when you’re at the gym, running, or whatever, make sure you’re drinking something to replenish your lost fluids.  There is plenty more to say about ideal exercise drinks (e.g. protein and carbohydrate combinations), but I will leave that for a future blog.

Always err on the side of too much water if you’re in doubt as to how much you need to drink.  You can use the urine test as a crude method for judging how hydrated you are: dark is dehydrated and pale is adequately hydrated.  Just remember that more exercise, food and diuretics (coffee, alcohol) mean more water is needed.  So drink up.

what are we eating?

I had a rummage through the UK’s National Diet and Nutrition Survey the other day.  It records the eating habits of over 1,000 people in the UK, so it paints a good picture of most people’s nutritional composition.

I thought it would be interesting to compare what the ‘average’ person eats to government guidelines for nutrition.  The chart below is that comparison.  I’ve highlighted the areas were people are not meeting guidelines in red, the areas where they are meeting guidelines in green and left the areas with no min/max guidelines white.  How do you match up?

A lot more red than green in there.  Conclusions about what the average person is eating:
•    Too much saturated fat – mostly from meat and dairy (cheese)
•    Not enough good fats – poly and monounsaturates (e.g. from oily fish and nuts)
•    Too much sugar – especially from processed carbs
•    Not enough fibre – e.g. from wholegrain carbs, beans, etc.

The average person’s current carbohydrates/fat/protein ratio is 47:35:18.  It should be more like 40:30:30.  People are getting too much of their energy from fat and carbohydrates.  Not only that, but they’re getting the wrong type of fat (saturated rather than poly- and monounsaturates) and wrong type of carbs (processed rather than wholegrain).

Interestingly, people are very close to meeting their 5 a day fruit and vegetables.  The average is 4.4.  Still not ideal, but I would have guessed it to be a lot lower.

If you’re curious, there’s lot more interesting information here, including specific foods consumed, smoking habits, alcohol consumption, break-down by age, rates of obesity, number of vegetarians, etc.