Spanish-Inspired Chickpeas and Chorizo with Sherry and Chili

I apologize for my prolonged absence.  Or rather, I am sorry I had not had time to write, but I am not sorry for the reasons – being busy happens to all of us, and I am no exception.  In consolation, I bring you chickpeas with chorizo sausage and chili in sherry sauce – a meal that is not only pretty to look at and easy to make, but is very rich in fiber, and also happens to be one of my most favorite things to eat.  One of my many favorite things to eat, but still!

Warning to the timid – this is not food for the faint of heart, as it packs not only a good amount of heat from the fresh chili, but a flavor punch that will be there whether you are as chili-happy as I am or not.  But if you love Mediterranean food in general, and garlic and chili in particular, then I urge you to make this – you will not have any regrets!

Recently, due to the impending summer and the need to look great in a swimsuit in Barcelona come July, I have been on a lose-weight track.  Which, for me, translates to tossing sugar and avoiding refined carbohydrates – I guess it is a personally-designed permutation of a LCHF eating style.  Chickpeas (along with other legumes), due to their high fiber and protein content, are an ideal solution when you (me in this case) are tired of the green salad and a piece of random protein, or want a bit of comfort food without the sugar high.

I would even go as far as to say that unless you are one of those people who definitely dislike legumes, this is a meal you need to make because it really compromises on nothing – from flavor, to its nutritional content, to the ease of preparation and the beautiful presentation, it wins on all points – at least it does for me.

I won’t lay any claims to the Spanish authenticity of this dish, nor, indeed to its authenticity in any cuisine, except that it is authentically inspired by the flavors of Spanish tapas, and more than one ingredient in it is Spanish, which to me justifies the Spanish-inspired claim.

Another plus of this is that most of the ingredients are storecupboard staples and can be easily kept on hand – chickpeas keep virtually forever if dried (or canned), and for a week or so in the fridge if cooked, and raw chorizo keeps in the cold meat part of the fridge for weeks.  And I am the sort of person who has onions, garlic and chilies on hand more or less at any time – though should you find yourself lacking garlic or chili, a bit of garlic granules or chili flakes won’t ruin this dish.  However, I’d urge against substituting both and/or onions with dried products – the quick preparation and the simple composition of this means that fresh ingredients really do shine – and removing or substituting more than one of them does take its toll.

Anyway – here’s what you need to make your own if when you decide to make it:

Feeds 2 hungry people

• 2 cups of chickpeas, cooked.  You can use canned (drained and rinsed) chickpeas, but I cook my own from dry which in my view results in much better flavor.  However, if you really can’t be bothered, 2 cans of chickpeas will do.
• 1-2 links raw chorizo sausage, cut into small quarter-circles
• 1 red onion, peeled and chopped
• 1 large red chili, deseeded and chopped
• 3-4 garlic cloves, crushed and chopped finely
• 1/2 teaspoon of sweet or hot paprika powder (go with sweet if you are worried about too much heat, but I use hot)
• 1 tomato, chopped into small bits
• Extra-virgin olive oil, a generous slug
• 1 sprig of rosemary, leaves torn off and chopped
• 75-100ml sherry – dry or medium.  I use Amontillado, which I keep on hand for cooking in general – it’s amazing in cream sauces, and anything to do with mushrooms, too.
• Sea salt (ground or flaked) to taste

What to do:

• Heat up your generous amount of oil in a saute pan to medium-high heat.  Reduce heat a little (5-6/9 for me).
• Toss in the onions and fry them until they are translucent and just begin to color.  Move to the side and add chorizo sausage.  Fry for a few minutes until the oil colors red from the paprika in the sausage, and sausage looks about 2/3 done.
• Move sausage over to the onions and sprinkle the paprika powder on the sausage area.  Add the chili to the pan and fry until it turns bright orange (a minute or so).
• Add garlic and fry just until it goes bright white and aromatic.  Add chopped tomato and cook a further few minutes until it is softened and heated through, then add chickpeas and mix everything thoroughly.
• Add the sherry, stir and cover, allowing the flavors to mingle for a few minutes, and the sauce to reduce.  Season with salt to taste.
• Serve in bowls, sprinkled with some fresh chopped rosemary or thyme.

In my opinion, this can make a lovely festive dinner if paired with a bit of green salad and a glass of good wine of your liking.  And some crusty bread if you aren’t avoiding it like I am.  Just saying.

Of Food Scares and Fads

I have a pet hate to do with food and media.

Not one, but TWO poisons? (And there isn't any sugar in there!)

Why food?  Because I love food.  Why media?  Because media sells itself by sensationalism, and when they apply this to food, I hate the inevitable result.

The reasoning here is simple and unambiguous:  you can’t make headlines by telling people what they already know – say, that a pile of green veggies is good for your digestion, or that protein or vitamins are good for you.  People will just look at it, shrug and go “so what else is new?”  It is a simple and sad truth of newsmaking, that what doesn’t create a stir, doesn’t sell articles.

Add to this the fact that obesity epidemic is real, and that whatever the times, people always have to eat, and food becomes a field ripe for the plucking for media scaremongering with a sprinkling of political lobbying here and there.

We have all seen it.

• Some of us who are old enough to remember it, remember the “eggs are awful and full of fat and cholesterol and no one should eat them or you die of heart disease!” scare of approximately 20 years ago.  (According to British Heart Foundation some years later – no, not really.  And in actuality, as the site states, eating cholesterol does not raise cholesterol levels in the bloodstream.  In little-known fact, cholesterol molecule is too large to pass the intestinal/blood barrier and is broken down before it reaches the bloodstream.  So where does it come from there?  Well, eating sugar is what creates excess triglycerides in the bloodstream – by stimulating production of insulin which triggers synthesis of fat, including excess cholesterol.)
• I doubt there are many people alive now who remember the campaign to replace all natural saturated fats with hydrogenated shortening (aka trans fats) in the 1930s “because it’s cleaner and healthier than lard and [what they euphemistically called] tropical oils“.  I don’t even need to add a source here because by now (40 years after it was discovered in the 70s and hushed up, by the way!) everyone knows trans-fats are deadly.  Washing the stain off reputations of the very healthful saturated coconut and red palm oils will take longer.
• And a couple of years ago there was a “eating red meat causes cancer!” (2007) headline too.  Actually, the study noted it was a “modest” increase if processed meat was also consumed, and that the relationship between meat intake and mortality is ambiguous, as the increase in cancer risk is associated with increased and excessive consumption of iron.  In layman’s terms, the relationship cannot actually be established, and is only examined in the study due to the fact that red and processed meat are sources of iron.  (By the way, so is spinach.)
• There is a piece of actual legislation (2008) enforcing that a bunch of chemical food colorings when used in food, should carry a warning label (which I do not disagree with in spirit, as I think they don’t belong in the food), that does absolutely nothing for its professed goal – the reduction in children’s ADHD.  Why?  Because they removed the colors from sugary drinks and candies – three guesses whether that also removed the “sugar high” (which, incidentally, has the same symptoms as ADHD – inability to focus and hyperactivity).  Moreover, the actual study which led to this legislation (via media scandal) was, simply put, bad science – there were no control tests performed properly, etc.  But, media picks up on it, and there you go – legislation!

Now, it appears, it’s the dairy’s turn to take a beating.  All around articles have cropped up in newspapers and press releases about how dairy is awful, and causes prostate cancer, and we just should not eat it.  My reaction to this newest craze is the same as to all the previous ones – a healthy dose of scepticism.  So, what gives?  The actual scientific papers (here and here) regarding dairy consumption, calcium and prostate cancer essentially say that in cases of really high (above-recommended) intake of calcium from milk, there may be a possible small increase in prostate cancer risk in older men.

Sounds familiar?  Yes, the same wording as was used on the “red meat causes cancer!” scare, actually.  Scientists postulate a possible link, and then media writers take it and create a headline – because nothing sells better than telling people that something they eat every day and think healthy is actually GIVING THEM CANCER OH MY GOD, OH GOD THROW AWAY THAT MILK, MARIE!!!

*cough*  Excuse me.  I tend to react harshly to such fearmongering.

A conversation I had with someone about this the other day ended (on my side) when I had pointed out that he ought to read the actual scientific papers behind the populist article and make his own conclusions.  His response was (more or less verbatim) that “he does not feel the need to read the scientific papers because the article sounds good and in agreement with what he already knows”.  Sadly, this is the response of many people when faced with an easy-to-read article vs. a head-numbing paper chock-full of biochemical and clinical terminology.  Doubly sadly because said paper usually contains little or NO support for the populist garbage that is being spewed in such headline-producing articles – and yet, no one lets the science get in the way of a good story!

So, have you heard about the cucumbers?  Every human born in 1603 that ate cucumbers – they all died!  100% mortality rate!  Screw the science, cucumbers WILL kill you, people, you hear me?!

*cough again*

So, what should we believe, if not the newspapers and the paid-for articles?

For some of us, the solution is to read and follow the actual science.  Read the papers being published, preferably the ones not funded by someone with some sort of interest – which are few and far between.  However, I am aware that the average consumer would struggle to make heads or tails of the studies.  This is not a put-down, it’s a fact, like with any technical text.  Heck, I’d not make heads or tails of a text in theoretical physics myself nor do I expect to.  So what to do?

To begin with, take all sensationalist articles with a large sack, not a grain, of salt.  The actually dangerous things, such as the finding of carcinogen and poison acrylamide in French fries cooked at too-high temperature caused immediate WHO (World Health Organization) action in response – because the scientists when they find something scary enough, tend to scream pretty loud.

The second thing to do is to take it in moderation.  Even trans-fatty acids are not actually that dangerous (and even beneficial for some things if they are natural, like trans-palmitoleic acid) in small doses.  Eating them as blocks of hydrogenated fats kills you.  Calcium and iron are good for your health – but overdo them, and they aren’t anymore.  It’s a well-known fact that overdose of iron (such as from iron supplement pills) can be lethal, and the bottle will carry that warning.  I am not surprised that overconsumption of calcium beyond daily recommended intake level is not healthy.  For that matter, taking too may vitamins and supplements also carries a health risk – but the key words here are “overconsumption” and “too many”.

So what to do?  Eat your egg.  One egg, or two but not every day.  Not six of them a day, maybe.  Eat your steak.  Eat it once a week or maybe twice, not half a cow daily.  Drink your milk.  Drink a glass of it, not two litres a day.  Think about what you are eating.  Avoid chemically processed foods.  You don’t need me to tell you that those are not healthy.  Use your head, and for the love of gods and little green apples, don’t listen to people who want to make food a political issue, a politically correct issue, or a matter of a fad.

I will leave you in closing with a funny which ought to illustrate the stupidity of the press pretty well.

Here is an article from BBC News about the discovery of the fatty acid in dairy (the aforementioned trans-palmitoleic acid) which supposedly may reduce the risk of metabolic syndrome, diabetes and obesity, sensationalizing it.  So far so good?  It even links to the actual study it refers to.  But, reading through the article, it is sadly and abundantly clear that the journalist is not only not a biologist, he doesn’t even have the common sense he ought to have writing for the public.  It says:  “…Milk and dairy foods can be high in fat, which if eaten in excess can contribute to weight gain. So it’s advisable to choose lower-fat dairy foods instead.”  Way to go Einstein – which part of the fact that it is a fatty acid did you miss?  Or was it the political correctness that stuck in your craw and made you feel the need to negate the point which is being made – that full-fat dairy consumption is associated with lower adiposity and lesser chances of diabetes?  I suppose I will never know.  But here you go people  – this is about how much credit you ought to give those who write for the press where it comes to food and scientific discovery.

The scientific papers tend to take a longer, less sensationalist view of their own findings – and, speaking of the recent issue, dairy, here’s one:  “Children whose family diet in the 1930s was high in calcium were at reduced risk of death from stroke. Furthermore, childhood diets rich in dairy or calcium were associated with lower all-cause mortality in adulthood.  Replication in other study populations is needed to determine whether residual confounding explains part of these findings.“  (65-year-long study by Queensland Institute of Medical Research, Australia)  Yet do you hear screams of mandatory milk which ought to be forced on children?  No.  Because 1. it’d be bad science to, and 2. it doesn’t sell a newspaper.

So in the end, all you can do is learn critical thinking, and not believe every populist piece of news garbage you read, even if it sounds like something someone said that you’d like to believe.  Learn to use your own head.

Honey-Ginger Tea (for when you’ve got a cold or just feel under the weather)

Oh, October, how beautiful you are, bringing the harvest, my lovely favorite quinces, beautiful colored trees, and the sniffles to my boyfriend’s nose… oh wait, that part is not so nice.  At all.

It’s also totally true that if you treat a cold, it goes away in a week, and if you don’t, it takes seven days.  However, no one ever said that said week has to be totally miserable.  I’m a big believer in not taking antibiotics for every sniffle you get – and an equally strong believer in yes, taking decongestants orally (so they don’t dry out your already abused nasal membranes).  I also know there’s a lot to be done to make a person with a cold much, much more comfortable than they’d be otherwise.  Like, by offering them a blanket, a book, a box of those (oh miracle invention!!!) tissues with balsam in them, and a cup of something warm to drink.

This incarnation of our kitchen's honey jar comes from Gotland

And this is definitely the cup you want to offer.  Or have offered to you, if you are on the receiving drippy end of the cold situation.  Unless you are allergic to honey, or hate ginger or both, in which case, go suck on a sugared lemon.  I mean it, I do that occasionally myself – but if you don’t hate ginger or honey, then you ought to make this.  In fact, if you’ve got a large teapot and the person who’s dripping is not yourself, make the large teapot and share it.  It’s really, really nice when you aren’t sick, too.  I’m eyeing the remains in my boyfriend’s cup right now and regret using the small teapot.

The recipe is essentially what it says above – a good piled spoonful of best-quality honey (you can really taste it in this!) you’ve got, and a finger of ginger, peeled and sliced thinly across the fibers.  I normally keep ginger root and lemons in my fridge, and we always have at least one type of honey around.  A good local set minimally-processed honey is a staple, and sometimes we also splurge on something like Provencal lavender honey, or Tasmanian leatherwood honey (mmm, now I want to order some of that again!).  So, chances are that I have the ingredients for making it on hand at any point, since ginger root keeps nearly forever in a plastic bag.

This (entire piece sliced) is enough for small teapot

Plunk the honey and the ginger into the pot.  Add a slice of lemon if you are so inclined (today boyfriend wasn’t), pour in freshly-boiled water, stir the honey off the spoon, close pot, cover with towel and let stand about 10-15 minutes.

A cork stand under pot helps keep the heat better, but it's not necessary

Why let it stand?  This isn’t an instant drink, people!  It’s raw root that you are steeping in boiling water to leech some of its juice and essential oil out.  It takes a bit of time, and the hotter you keep the pot, the better.  So stick that cozy on it, put a towel over it, whatever.

After the time (I recommend the full 15 min) is past, stir the contents of the pot and pour into cups.  If your pot is worth the ceramic it’s made of, it’ll still be hot, so don’t go burning tongue on this (ouch!), but you don’t want this to go cold – you want to drink it as hot as possible, because it’s nicer to your sore nose and throat, and also tastes better that way.  At least in my opinion.

Now, I sincerely hope you don’t get a cold.  Or a flu.  Which doesn’t mean you won’t, but hey, best wishes and all – it also shouldn’t deter you from making and drinking this, because it’s just nice as a good-night non-caffeinated drink.  I mean, even a faithful worshipper of caffeine such as myself can appreciate something I can guzzle down at half past midnight with no danger of having trouble sleeping afterwards.  Besides, it tastes good.  Really really good.

So yeap.  Make it.  I suspect it will go really well with some fairly plain shortbread cookies alongside it, too – the flavor is very warm and more than a little spicy, so you don’t actually need anything too strongly-flavored alongside.

Of Sense And Sensibility, And Of Chocolate

My friends are often puzzled by, and admire at the same time, what they call my “restraint”.  Those who visit me, know that my apartment is routinely full of good chocolate, and often (depending on how recently I’ve made it, and who’s visited since then) also full of really good chocolate, cream or white chocoalte fudge (fudge deserves its own post eventually!).  I generously wave at it all and offer people tea with it, but I do not normally eat much of it myself.  If you assume that it is because I do not like it, or because I force myself to not touch it, you’d be wrong on either count.  I love chocolate.  I adore fudge.  And I certainly do not deprive myself of it, or anything else I want to eat.

A conversation I have had with friend of mine, Hanne, while wrapping a bunch of homemade chocolate marzipans in foil for this holiday season, has reminded me of something I had planned to write about for a long time.  One day some months ago, she and I were talking about weight management and all the new programs out there which promise to teach you how to do it (for a load of money), and she has told me of a guy that summarized the French way of thinking about food to her.  He’d said, “a small portion of something yummy every day, that makes you happy every day, instead of keeping something away from yourself and then overeat when you finally allow yourself to eat it.”

This comment fits in very well with my personal philosophy about weight maintenance and eating.  What a lot of people forget (or never find out in the first place – to quote another friend of mine “I used to not even like food…”), is that food should be a pleasure.  It is one of the simplest and most rewarding (and potentially health-giving) things one can engage in – though, of course, like with anything, done to excess or wrongly, it is also potentially harmful.  But this is neither here nor there.

So how does one balance a slow metabolism with a desire for an attractive figure and good health?  It can’t really be fully covered in a single post, nor in a few (but I plan to try).  However, there is good guideline advice which has always and will always be true, and a lot of which I have, amusingly enough, read on the back of a box that contained a (very nice crayfish and rocket) salad purchased at a Pret A Manger at some point during my travels throughout the UK.

The advice consisted of a series of answers given by women around France, Italy and Spain regarding how they stayed beautiful.  The general gist of the answers was as per the statement above – that they ate fresh food, avoided starving themselves or over-eating, and made sure to make time to enjoy the food.  Sounds easy?  Well, perhaps it is, but to put this in action requires a re-adjustment of thinking about what “food” is (and what isn’t actually “food”).

There are two things which must happen in order to eat right without feeling miserably deprived.  One, education is a good thing.  If you know exactly where the dividing line between “this is healthy food and won’t make me gain weight” and “this is something which is not good for me, but I love eating it” lies (and it does not always lie where the glam magazines may tell you, by the way – but this deserves another post or many), then you can eat “food” daily, and treat yourself to whatever it is you love (chocolate, in my case) when you want it.  Two, the attitude must be adjusted so that those things that you want to eat but know you shouldn’t indulge in, are no longer something you consider sustenance, though not so that you would deny something you really like to yourself forever. 

The solution, for me, has been to make sure I always have a lot of good chocolate on hand at home.   Yes, you’ve read that right.  When push comes to shove, (very) good quality milk chocolate is my favourite sweet, and there are days when I just want some.  But what I realised, is that having it at home for the day when I want some works a miracle – suddenly, the days when I crave chocolate are less.  I have a little foil-wrapped bar of it on my nightstand.  It’s been there for weeks.  It’s mine.  It’s for me.  I can have it any day I want, and that knowledge in itself is like… chocolate.  So some days I look at it, even pick it up and look at it, and then decide that I’ll just have it another day, and put it back on its little saucer.  And so it stays there – and well, chocolate, notoriously, does not go bad for a very long time.

The moral of the story is simple.  To maintain a healthy weight, good skin and a good figure (and by that I don’t mean something like the starved footballers wives’ people see in tabloids – I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to look like that!), one should, of course, eat sensibly (and that does not mean consuming large amounts of tasteless cellulose with a fat-free dressing, gods and little green apples forbid!).  A nice 40 minute-to-an-hour-long walk a few days a week won’t hurt either – or it has not hurt my very lazy self any so far.  But it does not mean you should exclude things you love from your life, or spend it in the gym (that’s no life!).

Buy fresh vegetables.  Buy legumes and grains.  Eat meat.  Eat good dairy and fish and eggs.  Eat gorgeously and enjoy the food that is good for you in smug self-satisfaction that you are doing your body a favour.  And if, after a large meal of lentil salad with grilled chicken, or a steak with butter and greens, or a slab of honey-ginger glazed salmon with a pile of stir-fried vegetables, you still want that slice of cake, or a bite of chocolate – have it.  But trust me, if you eat well enough, you are likely to be pretty full after your meal, and not crave the sweets nearly as much – and if you have those at home, right there in front of your nose (or in your cookie jar or your freezer, whatever your poison), you may just decide that you are full and don’t really want to eat it (whatever it is) right this moment.  Or don’t want all of it, and just eat half.

And that for today, yet again, it – or half of it – can really stay where it is.

Supermarket Offer Email Outrage

Normally, I have a reasonably good attitude and relationship with my local supermarket.  Yes, I dislike it for edging out my favourite tiny greengrocer on Bold Street which I loved, and with the general dislike of a food professional towards the multiple retailers, but on the other hand, it is a decent supermarket most of the time, the fresh produce is fresh, they often have things I like on offer (nice tomatoes, fruit, nuts, butter, cheese, etc.), and it is close and has good opening hours.  So, it sort of balances out.  I have one of those advantage cards for it, and I have signed up for their weekly emails with offers with the thought that it never hurts to see what they put up on sale… or does it?

I have received one such email last night, and being on a tighter budget this month, trustingly and curiously went to click through it.  “Stock your cupboard for half price!”  Great, that sounds fantastic – and I click the link to be taken to a page which details which products are actually included in this great pantry-stocking offer.  I scroll through the page, and as I do so, a sense of dread slowly overtakes me: all the products on this “cupboard-stocking” offer are, in fact, cookies, biscuits and cheap chocolates in large packs!

What the hell?!  Leaving aside the obesity and diabetes epidemic sweeping the Western world, and the governments’ attempts to do something about it (ineffectual as they are, knocking on the wrong food groups), since when it is the practice to stock one’s pantry with chuffing sweets?!

What is worse, is the insidiousness of this:  what it does, is teach people (because let’s face it, even when we do not mean to, we do tend to internalise what we read, hear or see in the media – that is what most advertising is based on, after all) that “storecupboard favourites” should, in fact, be boxes and bags of chips (what the locals call “crisps”), cookies, chocolate biscuits and candies.  And it is doing it in the times when what we really ought to try to teach the general public is that these things do not, DO NOT! belong in your everyday food consumption, and should be only purchased occasionally and in small quantity as a treat.  (Unless you are striving for obesity and related diseases, of course.  Then by all means, do stock your storecupboard with all this, and eat it daily.  It’s your funeral!)  This goes against any attempts (including the token “diet club” run by the same supermarket!) of teaching people better and healthier lifestyle in terms of food quality and consumption.

After said email, my supermarket has, again, made it to the list of my less-favourite people.  And I hate feeling disappointed in businesses I had, against all odds, actually learned to respect and like.

So, in short, after resisting a strong urge to throw the nearest shoe into the nearest wall, I resort to this:  the electronic equivalent of public screaming and shoe-throwing – in the hopes that perhaps writing this and making people aware of the insidious dangers of the supermarket and advertisement jungle, I might undo at least a little bit of the harm emails like the one I’ve received (sent out to millions of consumers, I am sure!) are doing day in and day out.

Bar and Shake Diets : Opinion

In a recent post I have discussed what amounts to a diet-specific chocolate bar, and mentioned in the same breath that I do not approve of bar and shake (meal replacement) diets as a long-term solution to weight loss.

Allow me to first say, that I neither think that everyone should be size 0 and starved like catwalk models, nor advocate weight loss beyond what is reasonable.  I won’t go into a debate on what is reasonable – for that, if you are unsure yourself, ask your physician.  While those overweight know it, some people who aren’t actually in need of weight loss quite frequently still think they are, and this is a topic for an altogether different discussion.

The reasons for my disapproval of bar-and-shake (meal replacement) diets are several, but first let me point out that I don’t think those bars and shakes are bad or unhealthy.  Most of them aren’t, actually – and do make a good meal on the go, especially the vitamin-enriched ones.  I would also say that if it is a case of short-term weight loss with a close goal (such as losing half a dress size to look better in that bikini for a holiday or in that formal gown at a special event), they would do all right as well.  I may question people’s thinking when they go for programs that result in quick short-term weight loss, as the results of those usually revert quite quickly, sometimes with said people gaining more weight back than was originally lost, but – for what they are, i. e. short-term weight loss, they do work.

What they, in my opinion, do not do, is promote long-term weight loss, the thing that most people going into weight-loss regimes really want – losing the weight and keeping it off.  And that, in itself, is not the bars or shakes’ fault, either.  It is the failures of the human factor that lead to the weight gain originally (some with or without extenuating circumstances), and it is the same failures that cause it to revert after losing it short-term with meal replacements.

Let’s face it – leaving aside the few medical cases where weight gain is caused by medication, thyroid disorders, and the like, most people who are overweight, are overweight, frankly, because of what and how much they put in their mouths (and somewhat less but also affected by their level of physical activity).   Note that I put “what” before “how much” – I will elaborate. This is not a politically correct thing to say, but – using one’s common sense – it is what it is.  I will not go deep into discussion of the food industry, the advertisement industry, the Western food culture’s failings in terms of obesity and related disease epidemic sweeping the Westernised countries – another time about that.  However, the common denominator between all of that is still the people who eat it.  And while I do not pass judgement on why they eat what they eat or how much they eat, it is hopefully clear that the fact that they do is the root of the problem.

Which brings me back to meal-replacement plans and the reason why, despite thinking they aren’t bad for your health, and certainly do work in short-term, I do not want to recommend them to anybody planning to lose weight for good.  You see, we have to allow for the human factor in the equation, that is – people’s poor eating habit and lifestyle: bowl of sugary cereal for breakfast, quick bag of crisps with a can of coke at lunch, candy bar during afternoon slump, dessert (“pudding” as the locals call it) every evening.  If we swap a lot of that for lower-calorie/sugar and likely nutritionally denser weight loss meal replacements, it certainly will improve the food quality intake for a lot of people, which is why weight would be lost in short term.  But… and there is, sadly, more than one “but” here (not to be punny!) – there are several problems with keeping this up.

• Meal replacements tend to be rather costly compared to normal food, especially raw food ingredients.  As a result, it is difficult (unless you make rather excessive food budgeting even compared to myself – and I do spend a lot of money on food, due to refusal to save money on my health) to afford comfortably in the long run.
• Meal replacements, for all there is a small variety of flavours available, tend to bore people after a while.  Precisely because there are only so many things you can flavour them with, and most people do like variety.  That, and they never really taste as good as the “real” thing – and this is where the real problem lies.
• Meal replacement bars and shakes simulate “treats”, things which, unless they are specifically made low-calorie as part of a meal replacement plan, tend to be highly calorific:  sugar-filled cereal bars (I am not a fan of those!), chocolate candy bars, and milkshakes.  Therefore, while effecting some weight loss, these do not actually teach the human factor to eat differently from their bad lifestyle which had contributed to the gain of weight in the first place.

It is the last factor which is obviously the most important one.  Short of (invasive and painful) surgery, true and lasting weight loss and healthy weight maintenance can only be achieved by changing lifestyle and eating habits, which is precisely what this approach does not do.  It does not teach one to not snack between meals.  It does not teach one what to eat (in terms of fresh, real food) in order to not gain weight.  It does not teach one about the amazing variety of really delicious healhty foods available out there, and it does not teach anything about portion control of actual food, either.

And, as a result it allows people to drop dress sizes (at times quickly), but only briefly, as the moment they revert to their previous habits, not having acquired any new healthier ones, so does the weight.   Without proper weight maintenance habits (such as learning that sweets for dessert are not a part of normal daily routine for anyone who does not want to be blimpy), and awareness of one’s body and the importance of what you put into it, neither weight management, nor health improvement is achievable.

To quote a line off a fresh salad carton I once saw, “Crisps and sweets are not treats.  Eat them at your own peril.“