The Food Programme suggests that snacking may lead to high levels of diabetes

The Food Programme (BBC Radio 4) today suggests that snacking/grazing and convenient, bite-sized 'food on the go' may be causing increased weight and obesity, and may lead eventually to unsustainable levels of diabetes.

Don't deride it till you've tried it! - Losing weight by eating less salt, that is.

Don't deride it till you've tried it! - Losing weight by eating less salt, that is. - Very occasionally, foolish people write to me to deride my assertion that the easiest, fastest, safest way to lose excess weight is seriously to cut down on added salt/sodium. For one thing, they are usually naturally slim people who have never had the problem of being overweight/obese and never experienced the difficulties of losing that excess weight while living in a society that relies heavily on processed food products that are high in salt and other sodium compounds. For another, they tend to think of losing weight only as losing excess fat. - There is a strange idea around that to lose excess fluid as a means of losing weight is somehow 'cheating' and doesn't count! - What nonsense! When overweight people lose excess fluid by cutting down on added salt/sodium they not only lose excess weight, reduce their risk of developing type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, cancer, depression, heart disease, arthritis, fragile bones, premature aging, cognitive decline, dementia and many other degenerative conditions, but also lower their likelihood of experiencing a stroke, heart attack, frailty and mobility problems. - What's not to like? - Go on! - Try it! - Lose weight by eating less salt and salty food! - You will feel sooo much better!

Eat less salt to reduce your risk of cancer

Big 'news' this week is that eating less salt lowers your risk of developing cancer, especially cancer of the stomach. See this BBC News report, where you will read: "Cutting back on salty foods such as bacon, bread and breakfast cereals may reduce people's risk of developing stomach cancer, according to the World Cancer Research Fund (WCRF)." I put inverted commas round the word 'news' because my website has been informing people of this fact for many years and so it is hardly news. The usual establishment health message about salt reduction is that reducing salt intake reduces your risk of stroke, heart disease and heart attacks, and that it lowers high blood pressure, and while this health message is undoubtedly correct, it omits a multitude of other health benefits that result from eating less salt, most amazingly omitting the information that cutting salt intake is the fastest, safest way to lose excess weight. - In view of all the publicity about the prevalence and dangers of obesity, it's a real shame (I use the word advisedly) that this weight reduction information is not being promulgated by the public health brigade. Indeed, they almost seem to go out of their way to keep us in the dark about it. (The explanation for the weight loss is that salt reduction reduces the fluid retention which contributes to all overweight. Read about the groups of people that are particularly vulnerable to salt.)

Obesity: New Vulnerable Group

I see that there's a new Vulnerable Group reared its head - or swished its little tails! - There are some genetically modified mice that are very vulnerable to becoming obese because of a mutation in a particular gene, reported here. Well I don't think we need to trouble ourselves about that particular vulnerability, though one feels sympathy for the mice having their genes damaged, apparently in the cause of providing some information for the drug industry to avail itself of in its never-ending trawl for profitable products to unload on innocent citizens. Unless we allow drug researchers or their mates who work in genetic engineering to interfere with our genes we are unlikely to suffer this genetic problem ourselves, or - perish the thought! - any of us is tricked into eating any of these GM mice and something untoward happens... (Memo: best to avoid eating GM foods, whether animal or vegetable, and best to avoid eating animals that have been fed GM crops. Since no one knows what could happen, the precautionary principle should be applied.)

The Vulnerable Groups in whom I am most interested are those who are vulnerable to becoming obese because of salt sensitivity or sodium retention. The groups of people vulnerable to salt are babies and children, people who take or who have taken certain prescribed steroids, including prednisone and prednisolone, or certain other prescribed drugs, women who take or have taken HRT or other oestrogen-containing drugs such as some contraceptive medications, people who take or have taken amitriptyline or other tricyclic antidepressants or some other psychotropic/psychoactive drugs, pregnant mothers, PMT sufferers and people who ate salt as children. These groups need to minimise their salt intake. They will lose weight easily if they eat less salt and salty food.

Should sugar be taxed to reduce health problems like obesity, high blood pressure and diabetes?

Should sugar be taxed to reduce health problems like obesity, high blood pressure and diabetes? BBC News reports today that "Sugar is as damaging and addictive as alcohol or tobacco and should be regulated, claim US health experts. According to a University of California team, new policies such as taxes are needed to control soaring consumption of sugar and sweeteners. Prof Robert Lustig argues in the journal Nature for major shifts in public policy." And this is countered by the Industry body the Food and Drink Federation saying that "demonising" any particular foods is unhelpful. - Well that's true inasmuch as it's unhelpful to the Food and Drink Federation and its profits!

The Food and Drink Federation like to sell addictive food and drink to their customers. Addicts return to buy again the products to which they are addicted - to buy them over and over and over again. - I heard the subject of whether sugar should be taxed - because its heavy consumption is causing widespread damage to people's health - being discussed in the last minutes of Radio 4's PM programme today. I think the interviewer was Eddie Mair.

There was Prof Robert Lustig on the phone from America, supplying the voice of reason, and suggesting a heavy tax on sugar stuffs in order to produce a really significant reduction in consumption. And there was a guy from the Food and Drink Federation spouting his ritual rhetoric about sugar not being the baddie - many factors are associated with non-infectious diseases, not just sugar. Think of insufficient exercise, sedentary life-styles, etc. - We need a balanced diet, more exercise, etc etc. - There's no evidence that sugar causes disease... Burble Burble. Burble Burble.

Actually I wondered whether this robotic guy was deaf? - Prof Lustig (Eddie Mair kept calling him Dr Lustig) was explaining that there is actually a great deal of evidence that sugar is definitely being consumed in too high quantities, that it is addictive, that it is actually toxic in that it causes serious metabolic changes to the body - fatty liver, metabolic syndrome, insulin resistance, diabetes, obesity, etc. - Prof Lustig knows his sugary science (listen to his lecture The Bitter Truth) and he knows his sugary statistics, but his unheeding interlocutor continued burbling about no evidence to support the taxation of sugar, and repeating that it's a matter of a balanced diet, no new evidence, burble, burble, burble. - I think I can hazard his idea of a balanced diet - the sort of balanced diet the Food Industry might find profitable to supply the products for: a Sugar-crammed, intensely sweet cereal breakfast with additive-laden fruit drink, balanced by a salt-laden sandwich for lunch and an over-salted processed ready meal for tea, with snacks throughout the day of biscuits (high in sugar and salt), crisps and maybe a token apple (high in pesticides) added to impress the 'healthy food' brigade.

The Ecologist draws attention to the industrial and everyday chemicals that contribute to the growing incidence of obesity

An article in The Ecologist draws attention to the industrial and everyday chemicals that contribute to the growing incidence of obesity. Well worth reading.

'Posh' salt is as harmful to health as ordinary table salt

'Posh' salt is as harmful to health as ordinary table salt. - Apologies: I should have written about this in November when it was in the news. Still, better late than never. - The Guardian reported on a Consensus Action on Salt and Health study, which found that there is widespread misunderstanding in the matter of different sorts of salt sold, and that many people buying the gourmet-type salts like rock salt, sea salt, Maldon Salt, Himalayan Salt and Fleur de Sel, mistakenly thought that the expensive salts were better for health than ordinary Saxa Table Salt. "In the study the sodium chloride and moisture content of seven different salt products available from supermarkets and online were analysed – including "posh" salts such as Maldon and Himalayan (Best Care Products) and Saxa table salt. Sodium and chloride combine to form salt (NaCl), the combination of minerals which puts up our blood pressure leading to strokes, heart failure and heart disease and also linked to osteoporosis, stomach cancer and kidney disease. Cash said the results show they all contain just as much sodium chloride as each other."

I don't know why they stress the sodium chloride (NaCl) content as such; it is the sodium ion content specifically that puts up blood pressure and causes fluid retention/water weight/obesity and heart damage and all the other degenerative disorders that develop in people vulnerable to salt/sodium. The chloride ions are only the associates of the baddie sodium ions; they are not themselves the baddies.

The nonsense spouted by the manufacturers of the expensive salts - nonsensical claims that their products are not harmful - should be filed with the claims made long ago by tobacco manufacturers that their products did not cause cancer, etc. and were not addictive. Lies for profits. Dishonesty for gain. Drivel for the gullible.

More about Conflicts of Interest within the Medical Profession

"In 1996, shortly after we began tracking the pharmaceutical industry, we spent time looking at obesity research and the latest diet pills. In doing so, we noticed that a panel that was assembled by the government to develop a guideline for the overweight known as the Body Mass Index. And it was populated by experts, nearly all of whom had a financial tie to a drugmaker selling or developing such pills. The finding, of course, was not all that new, but the practice continues, according to a new study in BMJ, which examined panels responsible for generating clinical practice guidelines on screening and/or treatment for high cholesterol or diabetes in the US and Canada between 2000 and 2010. A good many of the panelists - and panel chairs - had conflicts of interest. But not all were disclosed."
Read article at pharmalot.com
See also Dr Briffa's recent article on conflicts of interest.

If your medication causes sodium retention you will gain weight and may become obese

There are many medications that cause sodium retention/fluid retention/water retention/weight gain/obesity/edema/swelling. Here are some of them: steroids and HRT, most antidepressants, antipsychotics, anti-epileptics, anticonvulsants, and more.

If you have become overweight/obese because of drug-induced sodium retention, you need to reduce your salt intake in order to lose weight. If you do not reduce your salt intake you will continue to gain weight, regardless of how many or how few calories you eat.

Female and got Big Feet?

I heard the item about women's big feet on Woman's Hour a few weeks ago and resolved to write about it, but being so tired, I've only just got round to it. (At the bottom of the webpage you can click on "CHAPTER 4" and listen to the item on big feet.) "New research has found that most women with size 8 or 9 feet are ashamed by their shoe size, and nearly half lie about how big their feet are. So, why all the fuss? Jane chats to Keren Miller a long time sufferer of big feet blues who has taken matters into her own hands, and asks podiatrist Lorraine Jones whether big footed women are fast becoming the norm."

Keren spoke about difficulties in buying shoes for bigger female feet and mentioned particularly the distress caused to her teenage daughter (who has size 11 feet) by the reaction of tactless staff in a shoe shop that did not have shoes big enough for her feet. Ms Miller enterprisingly and laudably decided to do something about the situation and now has this helpful website: http://www.prettybigfeet.co.uk/

My own feet/footwear problems lie not in large size as such, but in the fact that my once size 5½ width AA (i.e. narrow) feet have become much bigger. They are now size 7 and are wide - probably extra wide. Podiatrist Lorraine Jones explained how obesity causes bigger feet because with increased weight to carry, the arch of the foot gets more flattened and splays out, making the foot longer and wider. She also spoke of how insoles are helpful to her patients. I fully agree with her there; properly fitted cushioned insoles can makes shoes much less painful for the overweight wearer.

The women (and men too) whose feet have become longer and wider because of increased weight often have the additional extremely painful problem of their feet being swollen. Specifically, the swelling is swollen veins resulting from sodium and water retention, aka fluid retention. In my case the fluid retention was caused by inappropriately-prescribed prescription drugs. Prescribed medication is a very common cause of fluid retention/swollen feet/obesity. The swelling can be reduced by seriously reducing salt intake: see here. And see Obesity and the Salt Connection. See also prescribed HRT and steroids and prescribed antidepressants.

People whose feet are swollen, rather than just naturally large, do not need shoes with just extra length and width, they need extra depth too, especially in the toes region. Otherwise the already painful swollen veins will be squashed and become even more painful and damaged. There are special shoes, etc for painful, swollen feet. Cosyfeet is one such supplier. And Ecco and Hotter make shoes with very well-cushioned insoles. I'm sure there are many other good makes too. It is very important to get shoes that are big enough. It is better to shop for shoes later on in the day because swollen feet become more swollen as the day wears on and gravity sends more fluid to the feet.

High salt/sodium intake is a major cause of heart disease, hypertension and stroke

High salt/sodium intake is a major cause of heart disease, hypertension and stroke. It is also a major contributor to obesity, especially in children and other vulnerable groups. You could improve your health and lower your risk of many degenerative health conditions as well as reducing excess weight by cutting down on salt and salty food. - Lose weight by eating less salt and salty food! - Go on! try it! - You will feel so much better!

Thinking of taking amitriptyline or other antidepressants? You may like to think again.

For a start, antidepressants don't work. - See Anti-depressants no better than dummy pills. For another thing, most antidepressants cause weight gain leading to overweight/obesity. And they have many other adverse common side-effects too. Have a read of my webpage about amitriptyline and other antidepressants. So, they don't work and they're harmful. It's a no brainer, isn't it? - A safe, drug-free way to feel less depressed is to cut down on salt and salty food. - Honestly. I'm not kidding. - Just try it! Go on!

Latest Salt Warning: Salty Sausages

Latest Salt Warning: Salty Sausages. - CASH (Consensus Action on Salt and Health) researches the levels of salt in processed foods, and this report today in the Daily Mail focuses on the levels of salt in different brands of sausages. While no one, I suspect, would look to sausages to provide a healthy low salt meal, there is a surprisingly large variation in the salt levels of different brands, and the Daily Mail report carries a helpful chart which is far easier to read than the on-pack labels. Musk's Newmarket Sausages look very well worth avoiding if you want to keep your salt intake down!

Many people are sensitive to salt, and most of them do not know that they are. People who are sensitive to salt get troubled by fluid retention and usually have high blood pressure. These health problems and many more, including obesity, can be easily and safely reduced by cutting down on salt and salty food. You can check out which foods are high in salt and which are not, by visiting my Sodium in Foods webpage. - Lose weight and improve your health by eating less salt! - Go on! - Try it! - You'll feel so much better!

Symptoms of salt sensitivity include:

Symptoms of salt sensitivity include high blood pressure, being overweight/obese, red face, especially after a salty meal, excessive thirst after a salty meal, distended veins, distended abdomen, swollen, aching feet, breathing problems, tiredness, feeling bloated, and many more.

The simple, safe, natural, drug-free way to reduce all of these symptoms is to cut down on salt/sodium and salty food. The lower you can get your intake of added salt the better for your health and comfort. In the main this means avoiding processed, readymade meals as these are usually highly salted. You need to buy fresh food and cook it yourself without adding salt, or at any rate adding very little salt. You can find lots of information about foods with high and low salt/sodium content on this webpage, along with further suggestions as to how to lower your salt intake. Read my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection.

New Year Resolution Suggestion: Give Up Dieting!

You've tried many diets. They didn't work. You know that dieting doesn't work. You know that you end up weighing more than before. To do again what you have done so many times before and expect a different outcome does not make sense. - Give up dieting! - Let the deadly dieting industry make money out of other people, not you, in 2011.

Eating fewer calories than your body needs is likely to cause you health problems like eating disorders and osteoporosis, and will NOT make you slim. - Here is how to lose excess weight without counting calories or going hungry: cut down on salt and salty food. This reduces the fluid retention which is the basic cause of overweight or obesity. You will definitely lose weight - and you will lose it rapidly and safely.

Salt/Sodium in foods

Average man in the year 2000 over a stone heavier than he was in 1986

Scientists from Oxford University’s British Heart Foundation Health Promotion Research Group have analysed data on body weight along with changes in the amount of food people consumed over the 15-year time period. See physorg.com news item. They found that the average man in the year 2000 is over a stone heavier than he was in 1986. But "Dr Peter Scarborough of the Department of Public Health at Oxford University, who led the research, said: ‘We looked at how much food was available over time, accounting for food that’s wasted or thrown away. It’s clear people are eating more, and today we’re seeing a continued increase in the amount of food available.’"

I don't myself find that Dr Scarborough's conclusion follows from the data. For one thing "the actual observed increase in average male weight of 7.7kg was much more than expected from the extra food available to men in 2000." The researchers then use the usual get-out of ascribing this discrepancy to a reduction in physical activity. - But remember, folks, exercise - even a lot of exercise over a long period - produces little or no weight loss, even though researchers constantly claim that it does. - Exercise is not the answer - not even part of the answer - to the increasing problem of obesity and its attendant ill-health.

For another thing, there is no mention of salt in the article, and yet the fastest, safest and most reliable way to lose excess weight is to reduce salt/sodium intake.

Thirdly, there is no mention of the constantly increasing number of pharmaceutical drugs being prescribed by GPs and other healthcare workers, when weight gain is a very common side-effect of many, or even most, prescribed drugs. These drugs include steroids, HRT, tricyclic antidepressants, antipsychotics, anti-epileptics and many more that are frequently over-prescribed and frequently unmonitored. (The weight gain is because of fluid retention resulting from weakened blood vessel walls/ salt sensitivity.)

Fourthly, the research is funded by the BHF, who have as their constant refrain the need for calorie reduction and taking more exercise to lose weight, and yet that is not at all a good, or even a likely, way to lose excess weight. The BHF would be unlikely to publish or give prominence to research findings at variance with their reiterated advice. As likely as politicians on the make being heard telling the truth, I reckon. I am not an admirer of the BHF and its iffy advice and constant plugging of statins, a drug that does more harm than good to most of the people who take it.

So I would favour other factors as more likely reasons for the heavier weight of men. These would include as major causes:
1) taking more prescription drugs and not being told of the need to avoid salt and salty food when taking the ones that cause sodium retention/ fluid retention
2) the irresponsibly high concentrations of salt that food companies add to their processed foods and to their bread
3) dieting - by which I mean eating fewer calories than the individual's body requires and/or expending more energy by way of taking more exercise.
A lesser cause would be the increasing amounts of oestrogen in the drinking water supply because it and other sodium retention-causing compounds are excreted in the urine of women on 'the pill' or on HRT and so enter the water table.

And of course the heavier you are the more calories you need, both to carry your heavier body around and service its organs, and to keep the heavier body warm, since heat lost from a body is proportional to the surface area of the body, and the heavier person tends to have a bigger surface area than the lighter person.

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Improve your health by eating more like the hunter-gatherers and by avoiding added salt, and by avoiding pharmaceutical drugs

For millions of years our species ate what we might call for the sake of brevity a Stone Age diet. These 'hunter-gatherers' lived in the Paleolithic Age. We are separated in time from them by a 'mere' 10-12 thousand years. Our genes are our inheritance from those ancestors of ours, modified by natural selection over that geneological 'blink of a eye' since Neolithic, the New Stone Age, succeeded the old. This brought farming to the service of our kind. It was a mixed blessing: more food to feed more people, but a radical change of diet that caused some harm to the people who ate it.

The Paleolithic diet had mainly comprised meat, fish, nuts, non-starchy vegetables and fruit. The new foods of the Neolithic diet included cereals, i.e. grains. Grains make up such a large part of the modern day diet that it bears little resemblance to the hunter-gatherers' food of long ago and cannot logically be considered best suited to our species, the genes of which have not altered to suit it.

What 'food substance' have I not specifically mentioned? - SALT! - Salt is an even more recent newcomer to the modern diet. Humans started to eat added salt, it has been estimated, between 5,000 and 2,500 years ago, and in recent decades the food industry has, by adding copious amounts of salt to its processed foods, ensured that there wasn't a snowball's chance in Hell that our bodies could possibly adapt to so massive a change from the low sodium intake of our ancestors to the very high sodium intake of our societies today.

The outcome is that modern food is unsuitable for the health and nutrition of most people today and this partly explains the growing incidence of what we have come to think of as the new diseases of civilisation - diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, cancer, arthritis, stroke, dementia, etc. And of obesity.

The even more recent scourge that is afflicting our species is the rapidly increasing ingestion of pharmaceutical drugs recklessly prescribed by an over-powerful medical profession, under-informed about the harm their prescriptions do to their unfortunate patients.

You could improve your health, rapidly and immediately, by seriously cutting down on your intake of salt and salty food, by cutting down on sugar and cereals/grains, and by avoiding prescription drugs unless they really are necessary. - Why not start in this way to improve your health this very day? - You have nothing to lose but excess weight, some avoidable pain, and the unnecessary risk of degenerative illnesses. - I wish you Good Health!

Department of Health favours Big Business over Public Health for its policy on Obesity, Alcohol and diet-related disease

Read Guardian article. "The Department of Health is putting the fast food companies McDonald's and KFC and processed food and drink manufacturers such as PepsiCo, Kellogg's, Unilever, Mars and Diageo at the heart of writing government policy on obesity, alcohol and diet-related disease, the Guardian has learned."

I haven't read all of the hundreds of readers' comments published beneath the article, but I've read a lot, and not one of those I've read was other than deeply cynical about this catastrophic decision by the DoH. Even the catering company guilty of providing innocent school-children with salt-laden, additive-rich, nutrient-free crap called Turkey Twizzlers, instead of with proper food for their school dinners years ago, is to play a part in the advice given to the asinine DoH.

Lose weight by eating less salt! - Go on! - Try it! - You will feel so much better.

Zoe has some good ideas about reducing obesity

This Daily Mail article informs us that Zoe Harcombe has written a book which attributes the increasing incidence of obesity on a radical change in government dietary advice a few decades ago, and the promulgation of myths about what is healthy food and how to reduce obesity. I tend to agree with her and I believe that people who follow her advice are likely to be successful in losing some of their excess weight and in improving their health. I especially agree with her in her criticism of the involvement of the food and drink industry in public health advice.

The article does not, however, mention salt intake or salt sensitivity, or that people who are sensitive or vulnerable to salt gain weight because of salt intake, which for them results in fluid retention leading to obesity. Salt and salty food is indeed the main cause of child obesity. Protecting toddlers and small children from high salt intake protects them from many health problems in addition to protecting them from the main factor in children becoming obese.

The other very important omission from the article is the role of pharmaceutical drugs in causing obesity. Prescribed drugs are a major cause of obesity, since many, possibly most, prescription drugs cause fluid retention/obesity when they are taken for an extended period of time. Drugs that routinely tend to cause overweight/obesity include many steroids, HRT, most anti-depressants, anti-epileptics, anti-psychotics, etc. See steroids and HRT and amitriptyline and other anti-depressants.

See Sodium in Foods and my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection. You may also like to read my political page about salt, pharmaceuticals and medical misinformation leading to obesity and a host of avoidable ill-health and suffering.

Lose weight by eating less salt! - Go on! - Try it! - You will feel so much better!

Watch out, South Africa! - GSK has you in its sights!

In this Guardian report, we read: "The rainbow nation is "eating itself slowly to death", according to the drug and healthcare company GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), which says 61% of South Africans are overweight, obese or morbidly obese."

Let's see now: that'll be GlaxoSmithKline, Britain's biggest pharmaceutical company, whose top drug product is the asthma steroid medication Advair, which is well-known for causing weight gain...

Another of GSK's drugs is epilepsy treatment Lamictal, which causes weight gain.

And another is antidepressant Paxil, which also causes weight gain.

I think we can see a common side-effect of these GSK drugs here, can't we? - Weight gain.

You'll probably be aware of the Avandia scandal, revivified in recent weeks. Among the host of harmful side-effects of this very dangerous diabetes drug is weight gain/fluid retention.

So GSK's products are themselves directly causing weight gain - i.e. that's pharmaceuticals that are causing weight gain, yet the pharmaceutical company itself blames overeating for the obesity of South Africa's citizens and doesn't mention drug-induced weight gain at all.

If you have gained excess weight from taking prescription drugs, you can lose some of that excess weight by avoiding salt and salty food. This is the safe, sure, fast way to lose excess weight. - Go on! - Try it! - You will feel so much better! See my website here and how to lose excess weight safely and vulnerable groups.

Pharmaceutical drugs are a major cause of obesity - especially of morbid obesity - and all the Pandora's box of ill-health and distress that accompanies obesity. I fear from this report that Glaxo may be setting off on a campaign of further damage to South Africa's unfortunate citizens by conning them into taking weight loss drugs - i.e. further harmful pharmaceutical junk.