Britain still permits controversial chemical Bisphenol-A to be used in the manufacture of a range of plastic products

Britain still permits controversial chemical Bisphenol-A to be used in the manufacture of a range of plastic products, including water bottles and the lining of food and beverage cans, like "the lining of 18 out of 20 best-selling canned food items including Heinz baked beans, Napolina tomatoes, and John West and Princes fish, as well as in tuna and sardines cans from major UK retailers Tesco, Sainsbury and Asda."

See report in the Independent and report in Food Safety News.

Some Tesco stores not hygienic enough

The Telegraph reports that many supermarket stores are not reaching a high enough standard of hygiene, and that Tesco has been found to be the least hygienic of the big four supermarkets. Of all the supermarkets, Waitrose and Marks & Spencer were the most hygienic.

A bit more info about the high salt/sodium content of bread.

Warburtons warned over salty loaf
from an article in The Independent

Extract:

Salt in bread: How brands compare

Average salt content per 100g bread. Loaves surveyed October 2008. Recommended daily salt intake is 6g

Warburtons 1.08g

Hovis 1.07g

Asda 1.05g

Kingsmill 1.03g

Tesco 0.96g

Waitrose 0.94g

M&S 0.92g

Sainsbury 0.86g

Lose weight, reduce your risk of most cancers, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, stroke, heart disease, heart attack, vascular dementia, osteopenia, osteoporosis, hypercholesterolaemia, depression, liver and kidney problems, and improve your health in many other ways without drugs or expense by eating less salt! - Try it! - You will feel so much better!

Read my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection

And see Sodium in foods

Tesco has withdrawn a brand of Chinese children's sweets from sale over fears they contain a potentially deadly chemical.

China milk poisoning chemical found in Tesco sweets
Article in the Telegraph

Extract:

"The supermarket recalled White Rabbit Creamy Candies after it was found they contained a substance called melamine that has harmed Chinese babies.

It is the same chemical that has contaminated formula milk in China, causing four babies to die and around 53,000 children to become ill.

Food testers in Hong Kong and Singapore raised the alarm after they found traces of melamine in the product.

The sweets are stocked in branches of Tesco which sell ethnic foods from around the world."

A supermarket designed for older people may open in Britain after a similar model in Germany is proving to be a success.

Supermarket 'for older people' planned for Newcastle
Article in the Telegraph

Extract:

"Tesco, which hopes to open the country's first pensioner-friendly store complete with wider shopping aisles and brighter lights, has sent a group over over-65s to the Kaiser supermarket in Berlin, the first of its kind in Germany.

The group will report back to Tesco before a decision is made on the proposed 60,000sq ft store in Newcastle, next door to Newcastle University's Institute for Ageing and Health.

Professor Jim Edwardson, 67, founder of the Institute and one of those who travelled to Germany, said: "Almost everything about supermarket shopping in the UK is wrong for elderly customers, from shelving that is too high to reach or too low to get to.

"The Kaiser store was the first of its kind in Germany and is so impressive. The trolleys on their own are lighter and easier to move.""

Sounds an excellent idea to me.

Sandwiches often contain more salt and more calories than a Big Mac

Sandwiches with more calories than Big Mac

Extracts from the Telegraph:

"Leading sandwich chains are selling products that frequently contain more calories, salt and fat than a Big Mac – and failing to inform their customers.

The National Consumer Council, the Government's consumer watchdog, called on shops to provide better information to its customers, some of whom are consuming two-thirds of their daily recommended salt and saturated fat intake with just one sandwich.

Greggs, the country's largest chain of sandwich shops, not only fails to provide any information in-store, the company does not give out any details on its website, leaving customers in the dark that a £1.95 chicken sandwich contains 3.6 grams of salt – two-thirds of the 6 grams doctors say is the maximum adults should consume in a day.

Both Eat and Pret a Manger, which pride themselves on selling gourmet lunches full of fresh ingredients, do not give out information in their shops, either on packaging or in a leaflet.

Customers have to go to the company's websites to find details.

In contrast, McDonald's – following a major revamp in recent years – prints full details on every burger box and bag of chips."

"Marks & Spencer's Oakham chicken and pancetta caesar sandwich contains more salt and saturated fat than a portion of chips combined with a Big Mac burger from McDonald's.

Many of Tesco's sandwiches, such as its red cheddar and tomato, contain more than half the recommended daily amount of saturated fat – linked to heart disease and considered by doctors to be the most unhealthy form of fat."

It is important for information about salt content to be provided, since so many people are sensitive to salt and need to restrict their salt intake. - In my opinion, information about calories is not important, because excess weight and all its attendant illnesses - hypertension, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, impaired liver and kidney function, premature aging, etc. are caused by fluid retention and not by eating too many calories. Obesity/Overweight is easily reduced by avoiding salt and salty food.

Lose weight, reduce your risk of most cancers, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, stroke, heart disease, vascular dementia, osteopenia, osteoporosis, hypercholesterolaemia, depression, liver and kidney problems, and improve your health in many other ways without drugs or expense by eating less salt! - Try it! - You will feel so much better!

See my website http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/.html (The site does not sell anything and has no banners or sponsors or adverts - just helpful information.)

http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/steroids.html

http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/ami.html

vulnerable groups

How to Lose weight!

Children and Obesity

Read my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection

See Sodium in foods and

Associated health conditions and

http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/story.html - my 'political' page

Wider implications of the flawed theory that excess calorie intake causes obesity

I can be contacted via my website if you need my further help. My help is free.

All hens' eggs are due to be free-range within two years

All eggs to be free-range within two years

Extract from the Telegraph:

"Sainsbury's, the Co-op and Morrisons have all agreed to ban eggs from caged birds while Marks & Spencer and Waitrose already sell only free-range eggs.

All products containing egg will also use free-range varieties.

The chains will phase out battery hen eggs over the next two years, before an EU ban on battery cages due to come into effect in 2012.

Asda and Tesco have not yet followed suit, but have cut back shelf space given to battery hen eggs.

In Britain, "enriched cages", which are larger and have a perch, nest and litter, will still be legal but Germany will also ban these cages.

The move comes as the celebrity chef Jamie Oliver launches a campaign to persuade consumers to demand better welfare for hens.

He examines the poultry industry in a one-off television programme, Jamie's Fowl Dinners, in which he shows a series of films and interviews explaining the brutal living conditions of battery chickens that are killed for meat.

Sainsbury's, which Oliver promotes, said it was the first major supermarket to announce a ban on battery hen eggs and was expected to end the sale of all such eggs by next year.

Morrisons also plans to stop selling eggs from caged hens by 2010. A spokesman said: "We see animal welfare as an extremely important factor when sourcing produce - that's why we have taken action on eggs.""

Premium supermarket food is often unhealthier' than the budget versions. - Plus a warning about high salt content of bread from supermarket bakeries

Premium supermarket food 'often unhealthier'

Extract from the Telegraph:

"Luxury ranges of food in supermarkets are often less healthy than the budget versions, the consumer group, Which? reports today.

Researchers found that one in four shoppers buy these premium lines, such as Tesco Finest or Sainsbury's Taste the Difference, because they think the products are better for their health.

However, they are often the highest in saturated fat - one of the most unhealthy forms of fat commonly associated with strokes, heart disease and obesity. They also often contain more salt and sugar than the standard versions.

Morrisons' beef lasagne from its The Best range has twice the fat per portion of the budget version. Asda's Extra Special lasagne contains 0.9g of salt per 100g, compared with 0.6g in the budget Smart Price version.

Tesco sells Finest European chicken kievs with garlic and parsley, which contains 2.2g of sugar per 100g - almost four times as much sugar as its standard garlic butter chicken -breast kievs.

Meanwhile, at Sainsbury's, a Taste the Difference Cumberland pie, while having less saturated fat than the standard version, is more salty and has almost twice the amount of sugar.

Bread salt warning:

Which?, the consumer watchdog, warns today that bread bought from super­-market bakeries can be twice as salty as other loaves.

Which? says that pre-packaged bread usually labels its sodium content but fresh bakery bread does not. The bakery bread averages at about 0.9g of salt per 100g of bread, about 7.5g in a large 800g loaf. Asda's granary tin loaf has the least salt on average (0.5g per 100g). The four saltiest loaves (1.1g) were the Morrisons white and granary loaves, Sainsbury's white sandwich and Tesco granary."

Lose weight, reduce your risk of most cancers, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, stroke, heart disease, vascular dementia, osteopenia, depression, liver and kidney problems, and improve your health in many other ways without drugs or expense by eating less salt! - Try it! - You will feel so much better!

See my website http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/.html (The site does not sell anything and has no banners or sponsors or adverts - just helpful information.)

http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/steroids.html

http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/ami.html

vulnerable groups

How to Lose weight!

Children and Obesity

Read my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection

See Sodium in foods and

Associated health conditions and

http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/story.html - my 'political' page

Wider implications of the flawed theory that excess calorie intake causes obesity

I can be contacted via my website if you need my further help. My help is free.

Warning that shop-bought sandwiches are high in salt.

Sandwich seven times saltier than crisps - Telegraph

Well it's been in 'all' the newspapers today and on Radio 4 and Radio 5 and on various TV newscasts. - You've got to hand it to CASH - Consensus Action on Salt and Health - they are good at drumming up publicity when they want it... - If only they would tell the full truth about salt and health, instead of the very restricted version they choose to put across. - I'll pick this up following this extract from the article:

"Pre-packed sandwiches can contain as much salt as several bags of crisps, according to research into Britain’s favourite lunchtime food.

A survey of 140 ready-made sandwiches found that some had more than half the recommended daily allowance of salt.

A total of 40 per cent of sandwiches tested by the health lobby group Consensus Action on Salt and Health (Cash) had 2g or more of salt, or a third of an adult’s recommended daily allowance.

The saltiest sandwich in the survey was Asda’s Extra Special Yorkshire Ham and Hawkes Wensleydale, which was found to contain 4g, or 65 per cent of the recommended daily salt intake.

Pret a Manger’s All Day Breakfast, with 3.54g, was next on the list followed by Tesco’s Finest All Day Breakfast, Morrisons’ Chicken and Bacon, Sainsbury’s Taste the Difference Brunch and Waitrose’s Sausage, Egg and Bacon, all with 3.5g of salt.

Cash, which carried out the survey for the BBC, noted that a standard bag of Walkers Ready Salted Crisps contains 0.5g of salt, so the saltiest sandwiches contain the equivalent of seven bags of crisps.

The sandwiches with the least salt were Co-op’s Healthy Living Tuna and Cucumber and Tesco’s Healthy Living Chicken Salad."

Although it is good that CASH draws attention - both the consumers' attention and the retailers' attention - to these high salt/sodium levels, and although Prof MacGregor of CASH always correctly gives the information that lowering salt intake reduces risk of heart disease, high blood pressure and stroke, he does not give the most important information of all - that fluid retention is the cause of salt sensitivity, which in turn is the cause of weight gain/obesity and that lowering salt intake is the best and safest way to lose weight.

What a pity CASH's Professor MacGregor does not give the vital message that reducing the amount of salt eaten by obese/overweight people would be the safest, swiftest and most reliable way to reduce their excess weight! - What a pity he does not mention that high salt intake is the chief cause of child obesity! - What a terrible pity he does not mention that steroid victims - made morbidly obese because of taking certain prescribed steroids or HRT or tricyclic antidepressants or certain other drugs - need to reduce their salt/sodium intake to as low as they possibly can - permanently - in order to lose some of the vast volume of excess fluid they are carrying! - And what a pity he does not warn them that reducing calories is completely inappropriate and ineffective as a means of steroid victims losing weight and that eating less food will exacerbate their health problems, rather than helping them!

What a pity he does not press the food companies to produce some lines of foods specially for steroid victims and other obese victims of negligently prescribed/monitored drugs and people morbidly obese from other causes! - These would be foods containing NO ADDED SODIUM AT ALL. - And for everyone who thinks it's easy to avoid salt by cooking from fresh, I agree. - But it isn't easy cooking from fresh when you are morbidly obese and exhausted at having to carry gallons of excess fluid round with you all the time. - Nothing much is easy for morbidly obese people actually...)o:

And what a pity he doesn't seek to get it across to doctors that when they give their patients prescriptions for these potentially dangerous drugs they should give them a serious warning that eating salt while taking the drugs is likely to result in their becoming salt-sensitive and obese and likely to develop diabetes and dementia and a host of other degenerative diseases!

And what a pity he doesn't press for on-pack labelling of all these drugs to warn people not to eat salt or food containing salt while on the medication!

Lose weight! by eating less salt! Go on! - Try it!

See my website http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/

and see http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/steroids.html

and http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/ami.html

and http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/vulnerable_groups.html
(The site does not sell anything and has no banners or sponsors or adverts - just helpful information.)

Remember: 'slimming' is harmful and unnecessary; all that is normally necessary to lose excess weight is to eat less salt, i.e. to reduce one's sodium intake, and to eat plenty of fresh fruit and vegetables - because their high potassium content helps to remove sodium from the body.

Read my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection

See Sodium in foods

I can be contacted via my website if you need my further help. My help is free...(o:

The Co-op is the greenest supermarket

Co-op named as greenest supermarket - Telegraph

Extract:

"The Co-op has finished top of a survey to find the High Street retailer with the best green credentials.

Ten big-name stores were looked at by the BBC's Money Programme to see how environmentally responsible they are.

They were assessed for the amount of carbon and waste they produce for every £1m of their turnover.

The Co-op emerged as the best of the bunch releasing £324 of carbon and waste and Somerfield finished bottom with £1,194.

Marks & Spencer came second followed by Tesco in third place and Boots in fourth.

The tests were carried out by the environmental research organisation Trucost which works with companies to help them understand their impact on the environment."


Lose weight and benefit your health in countless other ways by eating less salt! - Go on! - Try it! - You will feel so much better! -

How to Lose weight!

See my website http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/ (The site does not sell anything and has no banners or sponsors or adverts - just helpful information.)

Read my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection

I was horrified to see on TV the poor hygiene and the falsifying of the dates on out-of-date food in two Tesco and Sainsbury's supermarkets...)o:

I watched the BBC TV whistleblower programme last evening. It was about unhygienic practices in a Tesco supermarket and a Sainsbury's supermarket, and also unhygienic practices at a Ready Meals supplier. The bad practice was observed and recorded by undercover reporters working as supermarket staff.

I already do not buy/eat ready meals (because they are high in salt), but if I did, this programme would have put me off forever, 'cos I'm not keen on catching salmonella...)o: - But also, the 'fresh' meat and 'fresh' fish being sold in these particular supermarkets could clearly not be trusted actually to be fresh, because sell by dates were being falsified...

You can read an account by one of the undercover journalists here - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/6676345.stm and you can view the programme online from a link on that webpage for a week following programme transmission, which was Tuesday 22nd May.


Lose weight by eating less salt! Go on! - Try it! - You will feel so much better!
See my website www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk
(The site does not sell anything and has no banners or sponsors or adverts - just helpful information.)

Leading British retailers such as Boots and Tesco will be invited to bid to open GPs' surgeries in their stores.

Fruit, veg and a trip to the GP as stores are asked to open surgeries

Extract:

"Leading retailers such as Boots and Tesco will be invited to bid to open GPs' surgeries in their stores in areas with too few doctors under an initiative to be announced by the health secretary, Patricia Hewitt, today.

Advertisements calling for "experienced healthcare providers" to apply for four contracts initially worth £30m over five years will be placed in the national and local press this month.

Entrepreneurial GPs, social enterprises and companies in the FTSE 100 will be asked to apply. But supermarkets will have to team up with existing GP groups before they can be considered. The expectation is that supermarkets would provide the space for GPs to open surgeries within their stores, an idea in which several have expressed interest.

The initiative, first mooted in the 2006 health white paper, is designed to increase the number of GPs in deprived areas that have the fewest doctors.

The first four primary care trust areas to benefit will be Hartlepool, County Durham, Mansfield and Great Yarmouth, all areas that have significantly fewer GPs than the national average of 57.9 for every 100,000 people. Great Yarmouth and Waveney PCT has 48.5; Hartlepool PCT 47.5; County Durham PCT 46.5; and Nottinghamshire county teaching PCT 43.6.

All four areas will have their centres set up by the end of the coming year, and 26 further areas are expected to join the programme in the coming months.

As services will be offered by private providers, the initiative means GPs will not be covered by the controversial GPs' contract - which allowed GPs to opt out of providing 24-hour cover - and so can offer "breakfast", evening and Saturday morning surgeries. Last week the Commons public accounts committee condemned the government's handling of this contract as "shambolic"."

Lose weight by eating less salt! Go on! - Try it! - You will feel so much better!
See my website www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk
(The site does not sell anything and has no banners or sponsors or adverts - just helpful information.)

Trans fats 'to be eliminated by retailers' (Tesco, Marks & Spencer, Asda, Sainsbury, Iceland, Co-Op, Boots and Waitrose)

Trans fats 'to be eliminated by retailers'

Extracts:

"Companies such as Tesco, Marks & Spencer and Asda have volunteered to stop adding trans fats to foods in order to prolong their shelf life."

"Andrew Opie, the British Retail Consortium's (BRC) food policy director, said: "This is the latest in a string of healthy food initiatives and shows BRC members, responding to customer concerns, are willingly delivering a scale and pace of change way beyond anything retailers or manufacturers are doing anywhere else in Europe.

"Sainsbury, Iceland, Co-Op, Boots and Waitrose are also among the companies that made the step."

"Unlike other fats, trans fats are in no way beneficial and can cause heart disease."

A pity transfats were ever added to foods! - and a pity they were not removed from foods long ago! - They have LONG been known to be harmful to health...)o: - See Ban Transfats and http://www.tfx.org.uk/