Whats what in food????

[blackkitty]

I've noticed something else about bought foods lately. The ingredients often have several types of sugar listed and a lot of these are forms of glucose syrup. Your body can get energy from these almost instantly which explains why children react must faster and much more extremely to fizzy drinks and also to bought cakes, biscuits etc. if you make your own cakes the chemical structure of the sugar is slightly different and your body has to break it down a bit first before it can use it. A good case I think for make your own as well as grow your own.
I also don't know how many other people know that the biggest beneficiaries of the CAP are sugar producers and maize producers (used to make glucose and corn syrups as well as modified starch - not always on the lists of things to avoid but I would) if they were really serious about improving people's diets they would pull the plug on this. People would eat very differently if they had to pay the full price of many foods at the till instead of through their taxes. The same goes for organic foods, if we all paid the bill for removing fertilisers etc from our water at the checkout organic would suddenly become a cheap option.
Okay off the soapbox and of to school to teach teenagers who've had two chocolates and a fizzy drink for breakfast

[Birdie Wife]

[QUOTE=Earthbabe;44001] I remember reading also that the use of MSG (E621) or the related E635 indicates poor quality ingredients.
QUOTE]

As I understand it, MSG (monosodium glutamate) is very similar to salt, in fact the Chinese use it extensively and not just in takeaways. We would use salt in the same way to improve the flavour of dishes. It may indicate poor quality ingredients because it's a flavour enhancer but so is salt!

[Alison]

The advantage we can all have from making / growing our own is that we have control over what is in our food whereas there are far too many things lurking unknown in packaged food. Most of us aren't educated enough on the subject to be able to remember what is "good" or "bad" but it must be sensible to simplfy what we eat which then reduceds the chances of something causing a problem. Was surprised the other night when I caught OH reading the ingredients on a packet as always thought he just went along with my ideals as I do the shopping and don't mind messing about in the kitchen.

[Earthbabe]

I've noticed something else about bought foods lately. The ingredients often have several types of sugar listed and a lot of these are forms of glucose syrup. Your body can get energy from these almost instantly which explains why children react must faster and much more extremely to fizzy drinks and also to bought cakes, biscuits etc. if you make your own cakes the chemical structure of the sugar is slightly different and your body has to break it down a bit first before it can use it. A good case I think for make your own as well as grow your own.

And all these are simple sugars hence their quick absorption. The body has no work to do. Starch digestion begins in the mouth as saliva mixed with the food the macro-structure of which is broken down by chewing. Another reason why granny always tells us to chew properly.

If you make your own you generally only use one form of simple sugar (sucrose) in granulated or caster sugar. Even if you put dried fruit in the body needs to do a certain amount of work before that energy is available. The same is true of white flour. However these are still high glycaemic index foods hence we are now being urged to eat low glycaemic index foods which release energy slower. So less of a sudden sugar rush and collapse as the insulin kicks in.

[lost the plot]

Wow! this thread REALLY took off! It is really interesting! By the way i havea 8yr old with ADHD and he is not at all affected by e-numbers?????

[OverWyreGrower]

I remember hearing (possibly on a tv cooking program) that you shouldn't eat black pitted olives, as they were just dyed black and not ripe. Get ones with stones in apparantly...

Not that I eat olives as they're horrible!