That's interesting Mike. Do you have any data correlating the introduction of GM and the rise in obesity?
I had rather thought it to be a combination of factors - including lack of physical exercise, the fact that most manual work is now done by machine, the constant time pressure meaning that people use cars or public transport rather than walk or cycle,, an over reliance on cheap carbohydrates in the diet and the introduction by food manufacturers of corn syrup into almost every type of processed food in an attempt to make it more palatable - it's proved to be addictive.
Something else that might interest you is the relatively recent discovery that grass-fed beef is much healthier for you than beef that has been produced indoors and grain-fed, as the grass-fed meat contains considerably less of the harmful types of cholesterol and more of the good omega-3 fats, vitamin E, beta-carotene, and CLA (a beneficial fatty acid named conjugated linoleic acid).
Now there is a strong move in the US away from grain-fed intensive beef production to producing beef cattle outside on pasture as it used to be done.
Grass-fed beef has always been considered the best in the UK, but intensive indoor reared beef fed on carbohydrates has also been commonly available and is usually cheaper. Hopefully the health benefits of grass-fed beef will soon be more recognised.
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
Yes Mike I live in the New Forest, in the top left hand corner. Always an ambition of mine and happily achieved. As one of the last large remaining lowland heathland areas it has a very distinctive flora and fauna. By the way, did you know the word Forest means" land set aside for hunting", which of course is what William1 was doing with his chums, kicking the locals off the land so that the deer, boar etc. could roam and he could rush around to his hearts delight. Too many trees would have been in the way so there is a natural balance between the grazing animals ( deer,ponies, cattle, a few sheep, not forgetting the pigs in the autumn) which create and maintain the open landscape. The Victorians, always keen to improve things enclosed some areas, excluded the animals, and planted conifers. There is also some ancient woodland, but recent research, including aerial archeaology, suggest much of it is not as old as originally thought. I will enquire about Brig. Waldron, not a name I am familiar with.
Hi Mike, Dovefromabove has pretty much covered my view on obesity, there is however experimental evidence that GMOs may be a major factor in increasing obesity further still - so take all that processed food, add GMOs to the mix and we get bigger appetites, fatter quicker and have more of a tendency to stay that way
It came up on another thread that my local farmer produces cereal crops only for animal feed. The fact I said he didn't put food on my table was assumed to mean I was vegetarian. Not at all, I just source my meat and milk from farmers who feed their animals on that old-fashioned stuff called grass and produce their own winter feeds on the farm. Eggs come from local smallholders who's chickens are so free range one has to avoid running them over when going to buy the eggs.
I'm not driven by 'green' policy either, it is about the taste of my food and long-term health to me..
I will end up living on a smallholding, I've been edging that way already. I know it can't be the answer for everyone but I just want to be back to a place in life where food tastes like it use to and vegetables don't disintegrate if not eaten within two days of purchase. (hence why I no longer buy any veg from supermarkets). I also don't want to end up with major health problems in later life brought on by obesity and a sedentary lifestyle.
It is interesting if only as a perspective that many people think science will save us all. If one looks back to pre-second world war Britain it was mainly mixed animal and cereal farming. This works, the animals poop on the ground, the crops grow the next year. It was scientists that figured out that it was far more efficient in terms of feeding the nation to drastically reduce the animals and dramatically increase cereal production. The one flaw in this concept is that by removing the animals, one removes the primary source of natural fertiliser. Hence one has to turn to chemicals as a replacement. The fact that we have continued with this policy and use any means possible to increase the yields of the cereal crops right to the present day is somewhat extraordinary. It might all lead to a larger population (in mores ways than one), but I don't see it as sustainable future, or a future I want to be forced to be part of.
What is interesting is that in the 1930s , when the population was around 25m fewer than today, but the land area was the same we still couldn't feed ourselves. At the start of the war, we were importing so much that there was need for serious rationing, dig for victory, wholesale digging up of new land etc. After the war governments adopted policies to achieve as close to self sufficiency as possible. The old methods didn't work I am afraid, and if re-adopted on a significant scale now would be disastrous. We would have to import an even greater proportion of our food needs, have less control over the standards used, prices would be higher, more pollution from transport ......
The good life makes great television, it doesn't feed the masses.
Absolutely agree with you about the importance of mixed farming Gemma - I grew up on a mixed farm, then lived for some while on a small-holding - grass-fed beef cattle, dairy goat herd, poultry, pigs, sheep etc. (and an Exmoor pony). A great way of life if your partner has the same priorities.
Now I live on the edge of a city, but we still eat healthily, buying most of our food from the local farm shop where my OH works
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
I don't think you can blame GM food directly for the obesity crisis, except in that it has helped to make food more plentiful and available to all in larger quantities. It's not a quality issue, it's quantity that is the problem. Humans can resist everything except temptation.
And don't get me started on the decline of civilisation following the invention of the microwave.
The Good Life was great television Woodgreen Wonderboy - though I was more influenced by the writings of John Seymour and read his books avidly as a teenager. You could say the 'seed was set' (apologies for the pun) in my mind. To me, planning on owning a small holding is nothing to do with going back, it is living a better life with some of the good things in the past thrown in.
It is very true that we imported most of our food in 1930's. It is also very true that most people were already living in towns and cities by then and did not contribute directly in anyway to their own food production.
Are we producing all our own food here in the UK now with chemicals? No, we now import two-thirds of it. Is there enough suitable land to feed the entire nation within the UK alone? No. Does the cereal we grow in the UK generally go to bread making or does it all go to animal feed?
Pouring tons of chemicals on the land hasn't fixed the problem either, and from an ecological point of view is looking very much like a complete disaster.
I've never actually heard anyone give the argument that the UK should be 100 per cent self-sufficient in food production. (mainly because it isn't hard to do the maths and figure it doesn't work). We are currently seeing a decline in self-sufficient food production from a peak of 75% in 1991 to the current 62%.
So I concede the point that organically grown crops only sourced from the UK will not feed the nation. But chemically and genetically modified ones don't either - hence why we still import.
In fact we should all be aware that we are again living in a country that would starve if it was not for food imports..
Posts
That's interesting Mike. Do you have any data correlating the introduction of GM and the rise in obesity?
I had rather thought it to be a combination of factors - including lack of physical exercise, the fact that most manual work is now done by machine, the constant time pressure meaning that people use cars or public transport rather than walk or cycle,, an over reliance on cheap carbohydrates in the diet and the introduction by food manufacturers of corn syrup into almost every type of processed food in an attempt to make it more palatable - it's proved to be addictive.
Something else that might interest you is the relatively recent discovery that grass-fed beef is much healthier for you than beef that has been produced indoors and grain-fed, as the grass-fed meat contains considerably less of the harmful types of cholesterol and more of the good omega-3 fats, vitamin E, beta-carotene, and CLA (a beneficial fatty acid named conjugated linoleic acid).
Now there is a strong move in the US away from grain-fed intensive beef production to producing beef cattle outside on pasture as it used to be done.
Grass-fed beef has always been considered the best in the UK, but intensive indoor reared beef fed on carbohydrates has also been commonly available and is usually cheaper. Hopefully the health benefits of grass-fed beef will soon be more recognised.
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
Yes Mike I live in the New Forest, in the top left hand corner. Always an ambition of mine and happily achieved. As one of the last large remaining lowland heathland areas it has a very distinctive flora and fauna. By the way, did you know the word Forest means" land set aside for hunting", which of course is what William1 was doing with his chums, kicking the locals off the land so that the deer, boar etc. could roam and he could rush around to his hearts delight. Too many trees would have been in the way so there is a natural balance between the grazing animals ( deer,ponies, cattle, a few sheep, not forgetting the pigs in the autumn) which create and maintain the open landscape. The Victorians, always keen to improve things enclosed some areas, excluded the animals, and planted conifers. There is also some ancient woodland, but recent research, including aerial archeaology, suggest much of it is not as old as originally thought. I will enquire about Brig. Waldron, not a name I am familiar with.
Hi Mike, Dovefromabove has pretty much covered my view on obesity, there is however experimental evidence that GMOs may be a major factor in increasing obesity further still - so take all that processed food, add GMOs to the mix and we get bigger appetites, fatter quicker and have more of a tendency to stay that way
It came up on another thread that my local farmer produces cereal crops only for animal feed. The fact I said he didn't put food on my table was assumed to mean I was vegetarian. Not at all, I just source my meat and milk from farmers who feed their animals on that old-fashioned stuff called grass and produce their own winter feeds on the farm. Eggs come from local smallholders who's chickens are so free range one has to avoid running them over when going to buy the eggs.
I'm not driven by 'green' policy either, it is about the taste of my food and long-term health to me..
I will end up living on a smallholding, I've been edging that way already. I know it can't be the answer for everyone but I just want to be back to a place in life where food tastes like it use to and vegetables don't disintegrate if not eaten within two days of purchase. (hence why I no longer buy any veg from supermarkets). I also don't want to end up with major health problems in later life brought on by obesity and a sedentary lifestyle.
It is interesting if only as a perspective that many people think science will save us all. If one looks back to pre-second world war Britain it was mainly mixed animal and cereal farming. This works, the animals poop on the ground, the crops grow the next year. It was scientists that figured out that it was far more efficient in terms of feeding the nation to drastically reduce the animals and dramatically increase cereal production. The one flaw in this concept is that by removing the animals, one removes the primary source of natural fertiliser. Hence one has to turn to chemicals as a replacement. The fact that we have continued with this policy and use any means possible to increase the yields of the cereal crops right to the present day is somewhat extraordinary. It might all lead to a larger population (in mores ways than one
), but I don't see it as sustainable future, or a future I want to be forced to be part of.
What is interesting is that in the 1930s , when the population was around 25m fewer than today, but the land area was the same we still couldn't feed ourselves. At the start of the war, we were importing so much that there was need for serious rationing, dig for victory, wholesale digging up of new land etc. After the war governments adopted policies to achieve as close to self sufficiency as possible. The old methods didn't work I am afraid, and if re-adopted on a significant scale now would be disastrous. We would have to import an even greater proportion of our food needs, have less control over the standards used, prices would be higher, more pollution from transport ......
The good life makes great television, it doesn't feed the masses.
Absolutely agree with you about the importance of mixed farming Gemma - I grew up on a mixed farm, then lived for some while on a small-holding - grass-fed beef cattle, dairy goat herd, poultry, pigs, sheep etc. (and an Exmoor pony). A great way of life if your partner has the same priorities.
Now I live on the edge of a city, but we still eat healthily, buying most of our food from the local farm shop where my OH works
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
Some really interesting comments , never really thought about how cattle are fed before
Half the world over weight and the other under Strange oldworldwelive in
I don't think you can blame GM food directly for the obesity crisis, except in that it has helped to make food more plentiful and available to all in larger quantities. It's not a quality issue, it's quantity that is the problem. Humans can resist everything except temptation.
And don't get me started on the decline of civilisation following the invention of the microwave.
The Good Life was great television Woodgreen Wonderboy
- though I was more influenced by the writings of John Seymour and read his books avidly as a teenager. You could say the 'seed was set' (apologies for the pun) in my mind. To me, planning on owning a small holding is nothing to do with going back, it is living a better life with some of the good things in the past thrown in.
It is very true that we imported most of our food in 1930's. It is also very true that most people were already living in towns and cities by then and did not contribute directly in anyway to their own food production.
Are we producing all our own food here in the UK now with chemicals? No, we now import two-thirds of it. Is there enough suitable land to feed the entire nation within the UK alone? No. Does the cereal we grow in the UK generally go to bread making or does it all go to animal feed?
Pouring tons of chemicals on the land hasn't fixed the problem either, and from an ecological point of view is looking very much like a complete disaster.
I've never actually heard anyone give the argument that the UK should be 100 per cent self-sufficient in food production. (mainly because it isn't hard to do the maths and figure it doesn't work). We are currently seeing a decline in self-sufficient food production from a peak of 75% in 1991 to the current 62%.
So I concede the point that organically grown crops only sourced from the UK will not feed the nation. But chemically and genetically modified ones don't either - hence why we still import.
In fact we should all be aware that we are again living in a country that would starve if it was not for food imports..
Woodgreen Wonderboy, you can blame it directly on GMOs when rats get fatter when fed the same quantities of GMOs, than those rats that are not.
Just noticed I put we import 2/3rds of our food in my previous post, it should have read that we import more than a 3rd.