Where's the Veg?

Eating lasagne in a pub is a typical example of this; it comes with chips and garlic bread. Perhaps you might also serve this yourself at home. Now, I'm no advocate of low carb diets, as carbohydrates and in particular wholegrains are an important source of nutrients, but serving three lots with one meal, what's that all about? I would have thought a nice green salad would have been a better side dish. Admittedly there will be some veg lurking in the lasagne - some onions and tomato or at the very least tomato puree and you might get the likes of peppers, courgettes and mushrooms in a veggie version - but in my book, that doesn't mean you can skimp on the side salad or veg.

Not only are salad and vegetables rich in fibre, various vitamins, minerals and other plant components beneficial to health, but they add very few extra calories to a meal. The larger portions of richer food than we tend to eat when we go out mean that we are already consuming more than usual, but add chips and garlic bread and you can easily consume an extra 500 calories. Even if you aren't overweight this is an issue, as over the course of a year have this many calories in excess of your needs only once weekly and you will gain half a stone. Fair enough if you monitor what you eat and your weight regularly, eating a bit extra from time to time doesn’t hurt; but many of us aren’t in such good control as this.

Although you might not like to make a fuss and ask for an alternative side dish with your main course, many pubs and restaurants will gladly swap you something else that they serve with other items on the menu. So if your lasagne, shepherd's pie or curry comes with chips, why not consider switching these for something greener?



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Want to Avoid a Fussy Eater? Eat Up Your Fruit and Veg Early On

It makes perfect sense to eat well during pregnancy, which includes ensuring a good intake of fruit and veg; indeed many expectant mothers take steps to improve their diet if they had not already done so. However, new research from the United States, suggests there is yet another reason to eat healthily while pregnant; eating more fruit and vegetables appears to increase children's acceptance of these on weaning.

In the study conducted at the Monell Center in Philadelphia, which involved 46 babies, those whose mothers drank carrot juice a number of times each week during pregnancy ate almost twice as much when offered carrot-flavoured cereal. Another study carried out there showed that breastfed infants ate more peach when offered this than those who were fed formula milk, which may relate to the fact that the mothers who breastfed also ate more fruit. It has been suggested that flavours from what the mother eats are transmitted through the placenta and via breast milk. In the peach study, green beans were also offered to infants, but both breastfed and bottle fed infants were reluctant to take these, possibly due to the fact that neither sets of mothers ate these frequently in their diet. However, repeated exposure to these over an 8 day period increased their consumption in both groups of babies.

This suggests that it is only those foods that babies are exposed to during their time in the womb or through breastfeeding for which an advantage is conferred, but that when provided with the opportunity to try them frequently during weaning their acceptance to them is increased. Green vegetables are particularly unpopular amongst infants and young children due to their bitter taste, so providing plenty of chances to try these is especially important.
The take home message to prevent fussy eating in your children is to eat a varied diet during pregnancy and breastfeed if you can; whether breastfed or bottle fed, introduce a range of foods early during weaning. However, remember that current guidelines advise weaning should ideally start at 6 months of age and definitely shouldn't begin till 17 weeks; some foods should also be avoided initially due to the risk of allergies or safety issues. Further advice on weaning can be found here.

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A Vegetarian Diet May Lower Lower Heart Disease Risk by as Much as One Third

If you're amongst the 5% of people in the UK who follows a vegetarian diet, there could be a range of reasons why you choose to avoid meat and fish. However, for some people the decision to limit or avoid animal produce is made as they see this as a healthier option. Indeed a recent piece of research suggests they could be right.

Scientists at the University of Oxford recruited just short of 45,000 people to take part in a study to investigate whether a vegetarian diet can help to lower the risk of developing heart disease. They collected information regarding food choices and known risk factors for heart disease from participants, as well as using hospital records and death registrations to determine who had gone on to experience heart disease and die from it as a result. Those taking part in the study were a mix of meat eaters (66%) and vegetarians (34%) and the findings between the two groups were compared.

The results showed that heart disease was 32% less likely to occur or be the cause of death in vegetarians. Even when other risk factors for heart disease were controlled for, the results still showed that following a vegetarian diet made you less susceptible to the disease.

While the study was generally sound, it had one main flaw - the participants were actively recruited. Unlike research where the subjects are randomly assigned, people were invited to take and it is well known that those that usually volunteer for health studies are already conscious of their health and not a good representative of a group as a whole. While you could argue that vegetarians are largely more concerned for their health, this is not necessarily the case owing to the fact that there are many reasons to avoid meat. You could follow a vegetarian diet, yet rely heavily on cheese and vegetarian convenience food, which are high in saturated fat.

Although it was suggested that following a vegetarian diet was likely to benefit heart disease risk by favourably modifying factors such as cholesterol and blood pressure, conclusions could not be drawn in relation to this, as inadequate data had been obtained - participants were merely invited to have these measured rather than it being a requirement of the study. More research is therefore needed to fill in the gaps in this study.

One question though is whether vegetarians have a lower risk of heart disease due to their avoidance of meat or because they have a higher intake of fruit, vegetables and pulses, which are rich in antioxidants, folate and fibre. Certainly meat can be high in saturated fat if you do not choose lean cuts or opt for more processed products, but beef, pork, poultry, game and offal have a fat content typically lower than 5%. If you continued to eat meat, but chose those low in fat and included plenty of other plant-based foods in your diet, would your likelihood of developing heart disease be as low as someone who is vegetarian? It's certainly an interesting thought.

Photo by Paul Goyette via Wikimedia Commons