Sports Nutrition, Hydration and Performance
An athlete’s diet has a significant impact on their performance, especially leading up to and during an important event. Specific nutritional recommendations have been established for athletes for before, during and after an event, in particular for fluid intake.
Water is an essential component of an athlete’s diet. The body is composed of 50-60% of water which equates to between 30 to 50 litres. It is very important to keep the body’s total water content constant, as dehydration can hinder an athlete’s performance. Water is lost from the body through sweat and evaporative losses, which increase dramatically during exercise and can result in more than 2% loss in body weight.
Dehydration causes a fall in plasma volume, which means that less oxygen can be transported around the body. This results in a rise in body temperature which is associated with an increase in muscle glycogen breakdown and can cause premature fatigue. Hypernatremia, low plasma sodium, is associated with loss of electrolytes in sweat. This is dangerous as electrolytes are associated with maintaining fluid balance. The body should be kept hydrated at all times during exercise to ensure cognitive and coordination functions are optimal.
Prior to an event, the goal is to ensure that any fluid and electrolyte deficiency is correct. Hydrating can begin progressively about 4 hours before the event. 5-7 ml of fluid per kg body weight is advised. Studies have shown that hyperhydration provides no clear physiological or performance advantages over euhydration, which means that the body’s water content is stable. Depending on the sport, fluid intake during exercise is also recommended to account for all the water lost from sweating. Rehydration after exercise is of great importance to revitalise the body and to counteract all the water and electrolytes lost during exercise.
There is an on-going debate over whether water or sports beverages are most beneficial for an athlete. Both fluid types work efficiently in maintaining hydration levels, but in terms of supplying energy and maintaining electrolyte balance during exercise a sports drink is the better option . Sports beverages are more beneficial to endurance athletes who train for longer than thirty minutes.
The carbohydrate content of a sports drink is recommended to be 6-8%. It can be used as another source of energy which will delay fatigue. The sodium content in sports drinks act as an electrolyte and helps maintain blood volume which aids in transporting oxygen around the body. Sports beverages are less beneficial to those who exercise for less than thirty minute as water lost through sweat and therefore dehydration is the main concern for them. For exercise routines that are less than thirty minutes, there are insufficient amounts of the glycogen store being used to truly benefit from an intake of a sports drink.
Recent finding have revealed that milk can be regarded as one of the best recovery fluids for resistance exercise due to its high nutrient content. It was found that milk is more effective at replacing sweat losses and maintaining euhydration than plain water or sports drinks ). This is due to the fact that milk contains all of the essential amino acids which are required to stimulate muscle protein synthesis. Carbohydrates within the milk and from other sources stimulate the release of insulin when ingested. Insulin and amino acids work together to increase the net muscle protein balance which is the balance of amino acids in the arteries and veins. This then stimulates net muscle protein synthesis and muscle growth .
In conclusion, what we can say for sure is that regardless of the type of fluid consumed, it is essential that athletes remain hydrated at all times especially in preparation, during and after an event.
Wednesday 21 May 2014
what is diabetes
What is diabetes?
Diabetes is a complex group of diseases with a variety of causes. People with diabetes have high blood glucose, also called high blood sugar or hyperglycemia.
Diabetes is a disorder of metabolism—the way the body uses digested food for energy. The digestive tract breaks down carbohydrates—sugars and starches found in many foods—into glucose, a form of sugar that enters the bloodstream. With the help of the hormone insulin, cells throughout the body absorb glucose and use it for energy. Diabetes develops when the body doesn’t make enough insulin or is not able to use insulin effectively, or both.
Insulin is made in the pancreas, an organ located behind the stomach. The pancreas contains clusters of cells called islets. Beta cells within the islets make insulin and release it into the blood.
Islets within the pancreas contain beta cells,
which make insulin and release it into the blood.
If beta cells don’t produce enough insulin, or the body doesn’t respond to the insulin that is present, glucose builds up in the blood instead of being absorbed by cells in the body, leading to prediabetes or diabetes. Prediabetes is a condition in which blood glucose levels or A1C levels—which reflect average blood glucose levels—are higher than normal but not high enough to be diagnosed as diabetes. In diabetes, the body’s cells are starved of energy despite high blood glucose levels.
Over time, high blood glucose damages nerves and blood vessels, leading to complications such as heart disease, stroke, kidney disease, blindness, dental disease, and amputations. Other complications of diabetes may include increased susceptibility to other diseases, loss of mobility with aging, depression, and pregnancy problems. No one is certain what starts the processes that cause diabetes, but scientists believe genes and environmental factors interact to cause diabetes in most cases.
The two main types of diabetes are type 1 diabetes and type 2 diabetes. A third type, gestational diabetes, develops only during pregnancy. Other types of diabetes are caused by defects in specific genes, diseases of the pancreas, certain drugs or chemicals, infections, and other conditions. Some people show signs of both type 1 and type 2 diabetes.
What causes type 1 diabetes?
Type 1 diabetes is caused by a lack of insulin due to the destruction of insulin-producing beta cells in the pancreas. In type 1 diabetes—an autoimmune disease—the body’s immune system attacks and destroys the beta cells. Normally, the immune system protects the body from infection by identifying and destroying bacteria, viruses, and other potentially harmful foreign substances. But in autoimmune diseases, the immune system attacks the body’s own cells. In type 1 diabetes, beta cell destruction may take place over several years, but symptoms of the disease usually develop over a short period of time.
Type 1 diabetes typically occurs in children and young adults, though it can appear at any age. In the past, type 1 diabetes was called juvenile diabetes or insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus.
Latent autoimmune diabetes in adults (LADA) may be a slowly developing kind of type 1 diabetes. Diagnosis usually occurs after age 30. In LADA, as in type 1 diabetes, the body’s immune system destroys the beta cells. At the time of diagnosis, people with LADA may still produce their own insulin, but eventually most will need insulin shots or an insulin pump to control blood glucose levels.
Genetic Susceptibility
Heredity plays an important part in determining who is likely to develop type 1 diabetes. Genes are passed down from biological parent to child. Genes carry instructions for making proteins that are needed for the body’s cells to function. Many genes, as well as interactions among genes, are thought to influence susceptibility to and protection from type 1 diabetes. The key genes may vary in different population groups. Variations in genes that affect more than 1 percent of a population group are called gene variants.
Certain gene variants that carry instructions for making proteins called human leukocyte antigens (HLAs) on white blood cells are linked to the risk of developing type 1 diabetes. The proteins produced by HLA genes help determine whether the immune system recognizes a cell as part of the body or as foreign material. Some combinations of HLA gene variants predict that a person will be at higher risk for type 1 diabetes, while other combinations are protective or have no effect on risk.
While HLA genes are the major risk genes for type 1 diabetes, many additional risk genes or gene regions have been found. Not only can these genes help identify people at risk for type 1 diabetes, but they also provide important clues to help scientists better understand how the disease develops and identify potential targets for therapy and prevention.
Genetic testing can show what types of HLA genes a person carries and can reveal other genes linked to diabetes. However, most genetic testing is done in a research setting and is not yet available to individuals. Scientists are studying how the results of genetic testing can be used to improve type 1 diabetes prevention or treatment.
Autoimmune Destruction of Beta Cells
In type 1 diabetes, white blood cells called T cells attack and destroy beta cells. The process begins well before diabetes symptoms appear and continues after diagnosis. Often, type 1 diabetes is not diagnosed until most beta cells have already been destroyed. At this point, a person needs daily insulin treatment to survive. Finding ways to modify or stop this autoimmune process and preserve beta cell function is a major focus of current scientific research.
Recent research suggests insulin itself may be a key trigger of the immune attack on beta cells. The immune systems of people who are susceptible to developing type 1 diabetes respond to insulin as if it were a foreign substance, or antigen. To combat antigens, the body makes proteins called antibodies. Antibodies to insulin and other proteins produced by beta cells are found in people with type 1 diabetes. Researchers test for these antibodies to help identify people at increased risk of developing the disease. Testing the types and levels of antibodies in the blood can help determine whether a person has type 1 diabetes, LADA, or another type of diabetes.
Environmental Factors
Environmental factors, such as foods, viruses, and toxins, may play a role in the development of type 1 diabetes, but the exact nature of their role has not been determined. Some theories suggest that environmental factors trigger the autoimmune destruction of beta cells in people with a genetic susceptibility to diabetes. Other theories suggest that environmental factors play an ongoing role in diabetes, even after diagnosis.
Viruses and infections. A virus cannot cause diabetes on its own, but people are sometimes diagnosed with type 1 diabetes during or after a viral infection, suggesting a link between the two. Also, the onset of type 1 diabetes occurs more frequently during the winter when viral infections are more common. Viruses possibly associated with type 1 diabetes include coxsackievirus B, cytomegalovirus, adenovirus, rubella, and mumps. Scientists have described several ways these viruses may damage or destroy beta cells or possibly trigger an autoimmune response in susceptible people. For example, anti-islet antibodies have been found in patients with congenital rubella syndrome, and cytomegalovirus has been associated with significant beta cell damage and acute pancreatitis––inflammation of the pancreas. Scientists are trying to identify a virus that can cause type 1 diabetes so that a vaccine might be developed to prevent the disease.
Infant feeding practices. Some studies have suggested that dietary factors may raise or lower the risk of developing type 1 diabetes. For example, breastfed infants and infants receiving vitamin D supplements may have a reduced risk of developing type 1 diabetes, while early exposure to cow’s milk and cereal proteins may increase risk. More research is needed to clarify how infant nutrition affects the risk for type 1 diabetes.
Diabetes is a complex group of diseases with a variety of causes. People with diabetes have high blood glucose, also called high blood sugar or hyperglycemia.
Diabetes is a disorder of metabolism—the way the body uses digested food for energy. The digestive tract breaks down carbohydrates—sugars and starches found in many foods—into glucose, a form of sugar that enters the bloodstream. With the help of the hormone insulin, cells throughout the body absorb glucose and use it for energy. Diabetes develops when the body doesn’t make enough insulin or is not able to use insulin effectively, or both.
Insulin is made in the pancreas, an organ located behind the stomach. The pancreas contains clusters of cells called islets. Beta cells within the islets make insulin and release it into the blood.
Islets within the pancreas contain beta cells,
which make insulin and release it into the blood.
If beta cells don’t produce enough insulin, or the body doesn’t respond to the insulin that is present, glucose builds up in the blood instead of being absorbed by cells in the body, leading to prediabetes or diabetes. Prediabetes is a condition in which blood glucose levels or A1C levels—which reflect average blood glucose levels—are higher than normal but not high enough to be diagnosed as diabetes. In diabetes, the body’s cells are starved of energy despite high blood glucose levels.
Over time, high blood glucose damages nerves and blood vessels, leading to complications such as heart disease, stroke, kidney disease, blindness, dental disease, and amputations. Other complications of diabetes may include increased susceptibility to other diseases, loss of mobility with aging, depression, and pregnancy problems. No one is certain what starts the processes that cause diabetes, but scientists believe genes and environmental factors interact to cause diabetes in most cases.
The two main types of diabetes are type 1 diabetes and type 2 diabetes. A third type, gestational diabetes, develops only during pregnancy. Other types of diabetes are caused by defects in specific genes, diseases of the pancreas, certain drugs or chemicals, infections, and other conditions. Some people show signs of both type 1 and type 2 diabetes.
What causes type 1 diabetes?
Type 1 diabetes is caused by a lack of insulin due to the destruction of insulin-producing beta cells in the pancreas. In type 1 diabetes—an autoimmune disease—the body’s immune system attacks and destroys the beta cells. Normally, the immune system protects the body from infection by identifying and destroying bacteria, viruses, and other potentially harmful foreign substances. But in autoimmune diseases, the immune system attacks the body’s own cells. In type 1 diabetes, beta cell destruction may take place over several years, but symptoms of the disease usually develop over a short period of time.
Type 1 diabetes typically occurs in children and young adults, though it can appear at any age. In the past, type 1 diabetes was called juvenile diabetes or insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus.
Latent autoimmune diabetes in adults (LADA) may be a slowly developing kind of type 1 diabetes. Diagnosis usually occurs after age 30. In LADA, as in type 1 diabetes, the body’s immune system destroys the beta cells. At the time of diagnosis, people with LADA may still produce their own insulin, but eventually most will need insulin shots or an insulin pump to control blood glucose levels.
Genetic Susceptibility
Heredity plays an important part in determining who is likely to develop type 1 diabetes. Genes are passed down from biological parent to child. Genes carry instructions for making proteins that are needed for the body’s cells to function. Many genes, as well as interactions among genes, are thought to influence susceptibility to and protection from type 1 diabetes. The key genes may vary in different population groups. Variations in genes that affect more than 1 percent of a population group are called gene variants.
Certain gene variants that carry instructions for making proteins called human leukocyte antigens (HLAs) on white blood cells are linked to the risk of developing type 1 diabetes. The proteins produced by HLA genes help determine whether the immune system recognizes a cell as part of the body or as foreign material. Some combinations of HLA gene variants predict that a person will be at higher risk for type 1 diabetes, while other combinations are protective or have no effect on risk.
While HLA genes are the major risk genes for type 1 diabetes, many additional risk genes or gene regions have been found. Not only can these genes help identify people at risk for type 1 diabetes, but they also provide important clues to help scientists better understand how the disease develops and identify potential targets for therapy and prevention.
Genetic testing can show what types of HLA genes a person carries and can reveal other genes linked to diabetes. However, most genetic testing is done in a research setting and is not yet available to individuals. Scientists are studying how the results of genetic testing can be used to improve type 1 diabetes prevention or treatment.
Autoimmune Destruction of Beta Cells
In type 1 diabetes, white blood cells called T cells attack and destroy beta cells. The process begins well before diabetes symptoms appear and continues after diagnosis. Often, type 1 diabetes is not diagnosed until most beta cells have already been destroyed. At this point, a person needs daily insulin treatment to survive. Finding ways to modify or stop this autoimmune process and preserve beta cell function is a major focus of current scientific research.
Recent research suggests insulin itself may be a key trigger of the immune attack on beta cells. The immune systems of people who are susceptible to developing type 1 diabetes respond to insulin as if it were a foreign substance, or antigen. To combat antigens, the body makes proteins called antibodies. Antibodies to insulin and other proteins produced by beta cells are found in people with type 1 diabetes. Researchers test for these antibodies to help identify people at increased risk of developing the disease. Testing the types and levels of antibodies in the blood can help determine whether a person has type 1 diabetes, LADA, or another type of diabetes.
Environmental Factors
Environmental factors, such as foods, viruses, and toxins, may play a role in the development of type 1 diabetes, but the exact nature of their role has not been determined. Some theories suggest that environmental factors trigger the autoimmune destruction of beta cells in people with a genetic susceptibility to diabetes. Other theories suggest that environmental factors play an ongoing role in diabetes, even after diagnosis.
Viruses and infections. A virus cannot cause diabetes on its own, but people are sometimes diagnosed with type 1 diabetes during or after a viral infection, suggesting a link between the two. Also, the onset of type 1 diabetes occurs more frequently during the winter when viral infections are more common. Viruses possibly associated with type 1 diabetes include coxsackievirus B, cytomegalovirus, adenovirus, rubella, and mumps. Scientists have described several ways these viruses may damage or destroy beta cells or possibly trigger an autoimmune response in susceptible people. For example, anti-islet antibodies have been found in patients with congenital rubella syndrome, and cytomegalovirus has been associated with significant beta cell damage and acute pancreatitis––inflammation of the pancreas. Scientists are trying to identify a virus that can cause type 1 diabetes so that a vaccine might be developed to prevent the disease.
Infant feeding practices. Some studies have suggested that dietary factors may raise or lower the risk of developing type 1 diabetes. For example, breastfed infants and infants receiving vitamin D supplements may have a reduced risk of developing type 1 diabetes, while early exposure to cow’s milk and cereal proteins may increase risk. More research is needed to clarify how infant nutrition affects the risk for type 1 diabetes.
FOWL PLAY
Fowl play
They are the ultimate 21st-century food - quick, easy and highly processed. But if you knew about the high percentage of skin, the water, and the pulped carcasses that go into some of them, would you be so keen to reach into the freezer for chicken nuggets? In a major investigation
Europe is big on breasts. The Japanese prefer thighs, dark and gamey ones. Feet are a bit of a fetish in China. Gizzards go to Russia. But smooth, damp slabs of white flesh are what we British buy when we want chicken. That leaves the carcasses, and skin, mountains and mountains of it - pale, flaccid, pimply, raw, ripped off by 100,000 shift workers' hands, from Thailand to Brazil, from the Netherlands to Norfolk. The skin goes around the world for chicken nuggets.
I am watching an army of small, perfectly formed nuggets march along a conveyor belt, with manufacturer Gary Stiles, at his factory in Wiltshire. He has spent his life in the meat trade. At one end of the factory line is a pulp of half-frozen meat and skin in a giant stainless-steel hopper. Minced and mixed beyond recognition, it is being extruded through a small tube on to metal plates. These press it into pale pink nugget shapes which then trundle on down the belt. Through a dust bath of flour and seasoning they go, before being lowered under a sheet of constantly pouring batter. Then on in juddering formation through a tray of scattered breadcrumbs and into a vast vat of boiling oil for 30 seconds.
As they emerge, workers in white coats, blue hairnets and white boots catch them, bag them in plastic, and post them back for the last rites. The belt carries them into a nitrogen tunnel to take them down to freezing and finally out into a cardboard box, labelled with his own brand Pure Organics For Georgia's Sake or Tesco organic chicken nuggets, according to the orders of the day.
Above the roar of machinery, Stiles explains that you need some skin to keep the nuggets succulent; 15% is about right, he reckons. Mixed in that proportion with breast and dark meat, it matches what you would get if you were eating a whole bird, and he knows exactly where his comes from. Like the rest of his meat, his skin is bought from two organic farms that he knows personally, one in England, one in Wales. Unlike some manufacturers, he won't use more skin than that, and he won't use mechanically recovered meat (MRM), which is obtained by pushing the carcass through a giant teabag-like screen to produce a slurry of protein, then bound back together with polyphosphates and gums. Nor does he use other additives.
Stiles likes to think that his nuggets, at £1.99 for 250g, are, like the beer, "reassuringly expensive". But the trouble is, once you've minced bits of a chicken to a pulp, that pulp could be anything from anywhere. With other manufacturers, sometimes it is. Recycled pet food, breasts injected with pig and cattle proteins, banned carcinogenic antibiotics - they've all been found by the authorities recently in chicken destined for processing.
Denatured and deracinated, the chicken nugget is a symbol of the way we eat now. It is the epitome of our 21st-century system of globalised, industrial food production.
Like much of our diet today, the nugget is processed so highly that its taste and texture depend as much on engineering and additives as on any raw ingredients, making it an easy way to disguise cheap or adulterated food. And just as the nugget's form is far removed from its contents, so we have become completely divorced from the source of those contents, from the animals that provide them and from the people who transform them. The nugget is, in fact, the product of a transnational chain so fragmented and complex that even those in the business do not fully understand how some parts of it work.
It depends on the industrialisation of livestock, on an endless supply of uniform factory birds to fit standardised factory machines. It depends, too, on the mass migration of workers, both legal and illegal, since adding the value to it requires an equally endless supply of low-value labour.
The rise of the nugget has been dizzying. We bought 42 million packs of them - that's £79m worth, or 21,000 tonnes - in the UK last year, just to eat at home, according to analysts Taylor Nelson Sofres. British adults also ate 73 million meals of them away from home in the same period. Children probably ate more. Served in school dining halls, fast-food outlets, at hospital bedsides, and on the tables of harassed parents, nuggets have become ubiquitous. Mass production has created a homogeneity in our diets at a time when the origins of our food are more varied than ever. If you want to know what goes into your nuggets, you need to look to the commodity markets, exchange rates and tariffs. The label is not the place to find out.
One story earlier this year highlighted just how little we know about what lies inside the golden breadcrumb coating. When Leicestershire trading standards received a complaint from a member of the public about the quality of some nuggets, they decided to test 21 samples from 17 different shops, including the major supermarkets. In one-third of the samples, the label was misleading about the nugget's meat content. One pack of nuggets contained only 16% meat, 30% less than it claimed. (And skin, of course, counts as "meat"). The trading standards officials are unable to identify the brands involved for legal reasons. Instead, they gave a warning to the worst offender. Subsequent tests recently have shown that the manufacturer has not changed its ways. Look further back down the chain, and it becomes clear that doctoring has become routine.
Even if the percentage of meat in a nugget looks reassuringly high, you may be surprised by what exactly counts as meat. Nugget manufacturers source their meat in various ways. Some use British chicken. Some buy high-quality meat direct from Thailand or Brazil. Some buy whatever is cheapest on the market, which is often frozen Thai and Brazilian chicken imported into the EU through Holland's ports.
The Netherlands is the centre of the "tumbling" industry, a process in which chicken is bulked up with water and other additives. Dutch processors defrost the meat and then inject it with dozens of needles, or tumble it in giant cement-mixer-like machines, until the water is absorbed. Salted meat attracts only a fraction of the EU tariff applied to fresh meat. The tumbling helps dilute the salt to make the chicken palatable, so as well as making huge profits selling water, the processors can avoid substantial duties. Once it has been tumbled, the meat is refrozen and shipped on for further processing.
The story gets less appetising still. One of the things that has puzzled observers of the poultry industry is how some processors manage to get so much water to stay in the chicken. Why doesn't it just flood out when it is turned into a takeaway or a ready meal or a chicken nugget? Hull trading standards officer John Sandford has spent over five years investigating. The answer he discovered was profoundly shocking.
DNA tests specially developed by Sandford with the public analyst laboratory in Manchester enabled the English food standards agency to identify lots of water (in one case 43%) and traces of pork proteins in samples of Dutch chicken breasts labelled "halal". Six months later, Irish authorities made an even more unsettling discovery in chicken: undeclared bovine proteins. Seventeen samples from Dutch processors contained them. Some manufacturers were using a new technique - injecting so-called hydrolysed proteins. These are proteins extracted at high temperatures or by chemical hydrolysis from old animals or parts of animals which are no use for food, such as skin, feathers, hide, bone and ligaments, and rather like cosmetic collagen implants, they make the flesh swell up and retain liquid.
These discoveries raised as many questions as they answered. What kind of cow products had been used to produce bovine proteins? If the processors were not declaring the presence of bovine proteins on the labels, could they be trusted to follow the regulations on removing certain high-risk cattle materials from the food chain? The possibility of BSE in chicken meat had raised its ugly head.
Chicken from the Dutch processors named by the Irish authorities remains widely available in the UK. Industry sources say that some nugget manufacturers at the bottom end of the market buy tumbled Dutch chicken, although they would be unaware that some processors' meat contains bovine proteins.
Others nuggets will be made from various bits of British chicken. Some are made from chunks of chicken breast and skin. Some are mostly skin, or skin and MRM. If tumbled meat is being used, the chicken is defrosted in microwaves before being minced into nuggets. Manufacturers can neutralise the salty taste by adding sugar in various forms, often as dextrose or lactose, and put flavour back in with chicken flavourings in the meat pulp, in the batter or in the breadcrumbs. Other additives can help restore the texture. Soya proteins are the commonest used, with gums as emulsifiers, to stop the whole mix separating out again. Phosphates also help glue up the proteins. Some nuggets are made in Britain, but increasingly nuggets are also imported ready-made from developing countries. If a manufacturer does anything to the chicken in this country, it can be legally labelled "produced in England". To get to the beginning of the nugget story, though, we must head east, to a land of chicken and cheap labour.
The Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise near CP Towers in Bangkok is chilly, its automatic doors and air conditioning sealing it off from the blast of 40C heat outside - and the choking smog of east Asia's fastest-developing city. There is one family group sharing a tray of chicken nuggets - a Thai mother and father with a fat little boy bursting from a designer leather jacket, but the other patrons are all alone, disconnected, eating their fast food with silent efficiency. The nuggets slip down. Hot and crisp on the outside, soft and moist inside, they have that textureless, easy-on-the-jaw, flavoured "mouth feel" that children like.
A McDonald's supplier claims the invention of the nugget in 1979. McDonald's, worried by the trend away from red meat towards "healthier" white meat, asked Keystone Foods if it could produce a boneless chicken finger food which would be in keeping with its other fast food. Keystone laboratories came up with McNuggets, little gobbets of minced, reconstituted chicken, battered and breaded.
As a nugget manufacturer, Gary Stiles thinks that we have become too disconnected from our food and disconnection has bred fear and mistrust. He was forced to remake the connection between what he made and what he fed his children when his daughter, Georgia, the Georgia of his brand name, turned out to be autistic. He and his wife started to research the link between diet and illness. He now feels that "if you put junk in, you get junk out", and he's not prepared to do that any more.
They are the ultimate 21st-century food - quick, easy and highly processed. But if you knew about the high percentage of skin, the water, and the pulped carcasses that go into some of them, would you be so keen to reach into the freezer for chicken nuggets? In a major investigation
Europe is big on breasts. The Japanese prefer thighs, dark and gamey ones. Feet are a bit of a fetish in China. Gizzards go to Russia. But smooth, damp slabs of white flesh are what we British buy when we want chicken. That leaves the carcasses, and skin, mountains and mountains of it - pale, flaccid, pimply, raw, ripped off by 100,000 shift workers' hands, from Thailand to Brazil, from the Netherlands to Norfolk. The skin goes around the world for chicken nuggets.
I am watching an army of small, perfectly formed nuggets march along a conveyor belt, with manufacturer Gary Stiles, at his factory in Wiltshire. He has spent his life in the meat trade. At one end of the factory line is a pulp of half-frozen meat and skin in a giant stainless-steel hopper. Minced and mixed beyond recognition, it is being extruded through a small tube on to metal plates. These press it into pale pink nugget shapes which then trundle on down the belt. Through a dust bath of flour and seasoning they go, before being lowered under a sheet of constantly pouring batter. Then on in juddering formation through a tray of scattered breadcrumbs and into a vast vat of boiling oil for 30 seconds.
As they emerge, workers in white coats, blue hairnets and white boots catch them, bag them in plastic, and post them back for the last rites. The belt carries them into a nitrogen tunnel to take them down to freezing and finally out into a cardboard box, labelled with his own brand Pure Organics For Georgia's Sake or Tesco organic chicken nuggets, according to the orders of the day.
Above the roar of machinery, Stiles explains that you need some skin to keep the nuggets succulent; 15% is about right, he reckons. Mixed in that proportion with breast and dark meat, it matches what you would get if you were eating a whole bird, and he knows exactly where his comes from. Like the rest of his meat, his skin is bought from two organic farms that he knows personally, one in England, one in Wales. Unlike some manufacturers, he won't use more skin than that, and he won't use mechanically recovered meat (MRM), which is obtained by pushing the carcass through a giant teabag-like screen to produce a slurry of protein, then bound back together with polyphosphates and gums. Nor does he use other additives.
Stiles likes to think that his nuggets, at £1.99 for 250g, are, like the beer, "reassuringly expensive". But the trouble is, once you've minced bits of a chicken to a pulp, that pulp could be anything from anywhere. With other manufacturers, sometimes it is. Recycled pet food, breasts injected with pig and cattle proteins, banned carcinogenic antibiotics - they've all been found by the authorities recently in chicken destined for processing.
Denatured and deracinated, the chicken nugget is a symbol of the way we eat now. It is the epitome of our 21st-century system of globalised, industrial food production.
Like much of our diet today, the nugget is processed so highly that its taste and texture depend as much on engineering and additives as on any raw ingredients, making it an easy way to disguise cheap or adulterated food. And just as the nugget's form is far removed from its contents, so we have become completely divorced from the source of those contents, from the animals that provide them and from the people who transform them. The nugget is, in fact, the product of a transnational chain so fragmented and complex that even those in the business do not fully understand how some parts of it work.
It depends on the industrialisation of livestock, on an endless supply of uniform factory birds to fit standardised factory machines. It depends, too, on the mass migration of workers, both legal and illegal, since adding the value to it requires an equally endless supply of low-value labour.
The rise of the nugget has been dizzying. We bought 42 million packs of them - that's £79m worth, or 21,000 tonnes - in the UK last year, just to eat at home, according to analysts Taylor Nelson Sofres. British adults also ate 73 million meals of them away from home in the same period. Children probably ate more. Served in school dining halls, fast-food outlets, at hospital bedsides, and on the tables of harassed parents, nuggets have become ubiquitous. Mass production has created a homogeneity in our diets at a time when the origins of our food are more varied than ever. If you want to know what goes into your nuggets, you need to look to the commodity markets, exchange rates and tariffs. The label is not the place to find out.
One story earlier this year highlighted just how little we know about what lies inside the golden breadcrumb coating. When Leicestershire trading standards received a complaint from a member of the public about the quality of some nuggets, they decided to test 21 samples from 17 different shops, including the major supermarkets. In one-third of the samples, the label was misleading about the nugget's meat content. One pack of nuggets contained only 16% meat, 30% less than it claimed. (And skin, of course, counts as "meat"). The trading standards officials are unable to identify the brands involved for legal reasons. Instead, they gave a warning to the worst offender. Subsequent tests recently have shown that the manufacturer has not changed its ways. Look further back down the chain, and it becomes clear that doctoring has become routine.
Even if the percentage of meat in a nugget looks reassuringly high, you may be surprised by what exactly counts as meat. Nugget manufacturers source their meat in various ways. Some use British chicken. Some buy high-quality meat direct from Thailand or Brazil. Some buy whatever is cheapest on the market, which is often frozen Thai and Brazilian chicken imported into the EU through Holland's ports.
The Netherlands is the centre of the "tumbling" industry, a process in which chicken is bulked up with water and other additives. Dutch processors defrost the meat and then inject it with dozens of needles, or tumble it in giant cement-mixer-like machines, until the water is absorbed. Salted meat attracts only a fraction of the EU tariff applied to fresh meat. The tumbling helps dilute the salt to make the chicken palatable, so as well as making huge profits selling water, the processors can avoid substantial duties. Once it has been tumbled, the meat is refrozen and shipped on for further processing.
The story gets less appetising still. One of the things that has puzzled observers of the poultry industry is how some processors manage to get so much water to stay in the chicken. Why doesn't it just flood out when it is turned into a takeaway or a ready meal or a chicken nugget? Hull trading standards officer John Sandford has spent over five years investigating. The answer he discovered was profoundly shocking.
DNA tests specially developed by Sandford with the public analyst laboratory in Manchester enabled the English food standards agency to identify lots of water (in one case 43%) and traces of pork proteins in samples of Dutch chicken breasts labelled "halal". Six months later, Irish authorities made an even more unsettling discovery in chicken: undeclared bovine proteins. Seventeen samples from Dutch processors contained them. Some manufacturers were using a new technique - injecting so-called hydrolysed proteins. These are proteins extracted at high temperatures or by chemical hydrolysis from old animals or parts of animals which are no use for food, such as skin, feathers, hide, bone and ligaments, and rather like cosmetic collagen implants, they make the flesh swell up and retain liquid.
These discoveries raised as many questions as they answered. What kind of cow products had been used to produce bovine proteins? If the processors were not declaring the presence of bovine proteins on the labels, could they be trusted to follow the regulations on removing certain high-risk cattle materials from the food chain? The possibility of BSE in chicken meat had raised its ugly head.
Chicken from the Dutch processors named by the Irish authorities remains widely available in the UK. Industry sources say that some nugget manufacturers at the bottom end of the market buy tumbled Dutch chicken, although they would be unaware that some processors' meat contains bovine proteins.
Others nuggets will be made from various bits of British chicken. Some are made from chunks of chicken breast and skin. Some are mostly skin, or skin and MRM. If tumbled meat is being used, the chicken is defrosted in microwaves before being minced into nuggets. Manufacturers can neutralise the salty taste by adding sugar in various forms, often as dextrose or lactose, and put flavour back in with chicken flavourings in the meat pulp, in the batter or in the breadcrumbs. Other additives can help restore the texture. Soya proteins are the commonest used, with gums as emulsifiers, to stop the whole mix separating out again. Phosphates also help glue up the proteins. Some nuggets are made in Britain, but increasingly nuggets are also imported ready-made from developing countries. If a manufacturer does anything to the chicken in this country, it can be legally labelled "produced in England". To get to the beginning of the nugget story, though, we must head east, to a land of chicken and cheap labour.
The Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise near CP Towers in Bangkok is chilly, its automatic doors and air conditioning sealing it off from the blast of 40C heat outside - and the choking smog of east Asia's fastest-developing city. There is one family group sharing a tray of chicken nuggets - a Thai mother and father with a fat little boy bursting from a designer leather jacket, but the other patrons are all alone, disconnected, eating their fast food with silent efficiency. The nuggets slip down. Hot and crisp on the outside, soft and moist inside, they have that textureless, easy-on-the-jaw, flavoured "mouth feel" that children like.
A McDonald's supplier claims the invention of the nugget in 1979. McDonald's, worried by the trend away from red meat towards "healthier" white meat, asked Keystone Foods if it could produce a boneless chicken finger food which would be in keeping with its other fast food. Keystone laboratories came up with McNuggets, little gobbets of minced, reconstituted chicken, battered and breaded.
As a nugget manufacturer, Gary Stiles thinks that we have become too disconnected from our food and disconnection has bred fear and mistrust. He was forced to remake the connection between what he made and what he fed his children when his daughter, Georgia, the Georgia of his brand name, turned out to be autistic. He and his wife started to research the link between diet and illness. He now feels that "if you put junk in, you get junk out", and he's not prepared to do that any more.
Wednesday 14 May 2014
se my nominee page here:http://dannythechef52-9-member-nominee.htm
Espresso machilada and a cappuchino. Wonderful full flavoured Italian coffee to start the day of.(when in roam). Today we go to visit the excavated ruins of the city of Pompeii which was covered completely in 79 a.d after the eruption of mount Vesuvius. The after effects of the earthquake didn't destroy the city it engulfed, it preserved it. This means heading off from Casa Del Poppolo to Pompeii via Naples. Italy is only 150 yrs approx. united. So when you leave one area and cross into another you could get the feeling that you are in a different country. It is unmistakable to avoid pizza while in Rome. Rome pizza is traditionally thin and crispy, while in Napoli there is three strict criteria to be adhered to qualify as Neapolitan pizza
. (1) Tomato Sauce.(wonderfully baby like plum tomatoes called San Marzano are the only tomatoes used for tomato sauce in Napoli. A wonderfully sweet sun ripened tomato simply seasoned and pulped into a sauce. A definite must for any food lover. (unfortunately the food in Italy was not always as rich as today. For years the diet consisted of vegetables, fish sauces (fish fermented for four days crushed and mixed with white sauces) and pulses and beans. It was not until Christopher Columbus discovered the new world and brought things like potatoes etc. to Europe did the Italian diet improve. For years the tomato was considered a poisonous fruit, because they didn't know how to use them.It grew every where. Not Until one day someone decided to eat one and like nowadays the tomato became an important ingredient in the Italian diet)
(2). Unlike pizza in Rome, Neapolitan pizza has a thick outer crust narrowing to a thin crisp centre.
(3) The oven for cooking Neapolitan pizzas must be domed shape.
The fare on offer today in the Tiberius restaurant was exquisite tasting Neapolitan pizza.
Bianca - cheese and ham (no tomato sauce)
Margheritta - Cheese , tomato and , Basil,
Neapolitan - Pastry base with San Marzano tomato sauce.
Also associated with pizza is Mozzarella cheese. But not mozzarella as we know it. To Italians mozzarella does not come in a block. Traditionally mozzarella is made by separating curd and whey. Then the curd is warmed in a vat and stretched by hand . The cheese is pinched of into balls and then stored in the whey. You can see finger marks on the balls where the cheese was pinched away and formed into a ball. The small town of Cassino , between Rome and Napoli is rich in fertile lands and green pastures. People seem to mispronounce the Buffala part. Most people outside of Italy refer to it as buffalo Mozzarella. An O at the end of the word in certain Italian words is masculine. But as we know bulls don't have milk. So therefore the pronunciation is "buffala Mozzarella" (feminine). And another important interesting fact to note is that you will never find fruit (pineapple /orange etc ) on a pizza in Italy or will you find any more than three ingredients on a pizza for the simple reason they don't like to complicate or overpower flavours with other flavours.
Because of the lush green pastures it is an area that is flush of olive trees (which are planted this time of the year and should be just beginning to blossom. The olive is pressed in November to create extra virgin olive oil "often described as liquid Gold" The tour guide informed us to buy a good quality olive oil at wholesale price in Italy is €6. They don't sell cheaper at a loss to anyone. Considering the yield of any olive press is between 10-17%.
This year is predicted to be a good year for harvesting unlike the last few years.
But that's not the reason for telling you that, the reason is next time your in the shop and you buy olive oil at €6 euro bottle or less you need to question the quality of the oil.
Lardo Muffato.
IN Ireland we have one or two remaining Cafollas left. One is close to us, in Ccastlebar town. A must when we go to Castlebar shopping etc. There chips are famous and the reason being is they cook them at low temperature, in lard, and use Maris piper chipping potatoes. The cooking in lard is a tradition associated with the Campian Region of Italy. There they have specially moulded lard and they serve it at meal times.
Lemons are a tradition to the Campian region also. They are bigger than normal lemons . As you will see in the slide show at the end. The lemons are used to make "Lemon cello" a traditional Lemon liqueur meant to be sipped rathered than knocked back. Lemoncello is associared with Campian, Roman and Napoli regions. After a long day at work or on holidays, the Italians recommend ice cooled (lemoncello) cold to revitalise you, but be careful one or two is plenty or you may be looking for the short way home.
Raphael Esposito
I feel i must mention this guy,he has nothing to do with the Vatican,Colosseum or any archaeological sites in Rome.he was commissioned to create a pizza for the visit of queen marghareita as mentioned earlier in the blog there are three types of pizza associated with Naples.
Bianca
Napoleon
Margherita
We are all well aware of what margherita pizza is but where did it come from?having made the first two pizzas Raphael decided on a third one it was to consist of tomato sauce mozzarella cheese and basil,on the day of the royal visit queen margherita sampled all three pizzas and liked them all but liked the third one the most,because of her visit Raphael named the pizza margherita after the queen and that's how the margherita pizza came about and it is the pizza used as a base for all other pizzas and is most popular in the western world outside of Italy.
And finally we get to the most important part the day excursion to Pompeii,Pompeii was engulfed by lava from the eruption of mt Vesuvius(79A.D),thankfully the lava helped preserve the city of Pompeii and with over two hundred years work excavating the site we are beginning to get a better insight to how they lived in 79AD as you will see in the following photographs of the streets , ruins, houses,shops and theatres the town was quiet self sufficient and also there were remains of public swinning pools and steam baths as well as bars and Brothels(10).Also the remains of 25 bakeries,46 drinking wells.the city of Pompeii had running water connected 20yrs B.C The water was distributed through lead pipes,which are still visible.unaware of the lead poisoning aspect people were known to have gone mad(not just peasants but royalty also(Nero) also suffered
from the amount of lead in there digestive system. There are also remains and evidence pointing to the belief restaurants existed as far back as 79 A.d in Italy. You will clearly see the 4 well terracotta style hot food storage. You will see that there were four pots and as described earlier the diet consisted of bread , grains, pulses and fish sauces. This is where the food was kept warm for hours. Stone ovens, wheel grooves,functioning water, mosaic floors ceilings.
Being a port town, Pompeii was a thriving business town. The land was some of the most fertile in Italy and Europe. The excavated site is now about 9 kl from the port.This shows how far back the lava forced the sea. AS said earlier the last explosion was 1944. The volcano Vesuvius is still active today and takes 30 - 70 yrs roughly to erupt.Experts say it will explode again and the most notice anyone will be given is 3days max. They had a trial evacuation last year in Napoli . There are 600,000 people living in the area and the army said it will take 4-5 weeks to evacuate them.So its just another catastrophe waiting to happen.
So getting away from pizza etc, here is a wonderful idea for an afternoon snack with crisp croistini.
1 Camembert cheese (250 gramme)
2 Basil leaves
2-3 sun dried tomatoes
white wine
2 teaspoon pesto.
1 roisti pan
2 tsp Calvados
Cut Camembert in half length ways. Place one half in roisti pan. Finely shred basil leaves and sun dried tomatoes . Place in centre of cheese. Brush with basil pesto and pour some white wine onto cheese also. Place other Camembert on top. Lightly press down, and bake in the oven at 180 c for ten minutes. Remove from the oven and flambé with calvados. Eat with crisp croistini
So my next destination on my food travels was to be france , keen fan of molecular cooking ,
and Brillant Savarins "physiology of taste". So the opportunity has arisen to be representative for Ireland and the U.k, in the Paris food trip 2014 . So I said to my self why not give it a go . What motivation do you need to enter a competition of this calibre to go to Paris the home of cooking, the Eifle Tower and the Louvre. The chance to meet fellow food enthusiasts and taste the delicacies that Paris has to offer, and also the chance of meeting esteemed chefs and also the idea of a michelin star meal is appetizing also.
So come on vote for me to be your Irish and English representative in the Gourmandize food trip 2014.
You wont be dissapointed.
. (1) Tomato Sauce.(wonderfully baby like plum tomatoes called San Marzano are the only tomatoes used for tomato sauce in Napoli. A wonderfully sweet sun ripened tomato simply seasoned and pulped into a sauce. A definite must for any food lover. (unfortunately the food in Italy was not always as rich as today. For years the diet consisted of vegetables, fish sauces (fish fermented for four days crushed and mixed with white sauces) and pulses and beans. It was not until Christopher Columbus discovered the new world and brought things like potatoes etc. to Europe did the Italian diet improve. For years the tomato was considered a poisonous fruit, because they didn't know how to use them.It grew every where. Not Until one day someone decided to eat one and like nowadays the tomato became an important ingredient in the Italian diet)
(2). Unlike pizza in Rome, Neapolitan pizza has a thick outer crust narrowing to a thin crisp centre.
(3) The oven for cooking Neapolitan pizzas must be domed shape.
The fare on offer today in the Tiberius restaurant was exquisite tasting Neapolitan pizza.
Bianca - cheese and ham (no tomato sauce)
Margheritta - Cheese , tomato and , Basil,
Neapolitan - Pastry base with San Marzano tomato sauce.
Also associated with pizza is Mozzarella cheese. But not mozzarella as we know it. To Italians mozzarella does not come in a block. Traditionally mozzarella is made by separating curd and whey. Then the curd is warmed in a vat and stretched by hand . The cheese is pinched of into balls and then stored in the whey. You can see finger marks on the balls where the cheese was pinched away and formed into a ball. The small town of Cassino , between Rome and Napoli is rich in fertile lands and green pastures. People seem to mispronounce the Buffala part. Most people outside of Italy refer to it as buffalo Mozzarella. An O at the end of the word in certain Italian words is masculine. But as we know bulls don't have milk. So therefore the pronunciation is "buffala Mozzarella" (feminine). And another important interesting fact to note is that you will never find fruit (pineapple /orange etc ) on a pizza in Italy or will you find any more than three ingredients on a pizza for the simple reason they don't like to complicate or overpower flavours with other flavours.This year is predicted to be a good year for harvesting unlike the last few years.
But that's not the reason for telling you that, the reason is next time your in the shop and you buy olive oil at €6 euro bottle or less you need to question the quality of the oil.
Lardo Muffato.
IN Ireland we have one or two remaining Cafollas left. One is close to us, in Ccastlebar town. A must when we go to Castlebar shopping etc. There chips are famous and the reason being is they cook them at low temperature, in lard, and use Maris piper chipping potatoes. The cooking in lard is a tradition associated with the Campian Region of Italy. There they have specially moulded lard and they serve it at meal times.Lemons are a tradition to the Campian region also. They are bigger than normal lemons . As you will see in the slide show at the end. The lemons are used to make "Lemon cello" a traditional Lemon liqueur meant to be sipped rathered than knocked back. Lemoncello is associared with Campian, Roman and Napoli regions. After a long day at work or on holidays, the Italians recommend ice cooled (lemoncello) cold to revitalise you, but be careful one or two is plenty or you may be looking for the short way home.
Raphael Esposito
I feel i must mention this guy,he has nothing to do with the Vatican,Colosseum or any archaeological sites in Rome.he was commissioned to create a pizza for the visit of queen marghareita as mentioned earlier in the blog there are three types of pizza associated with Naples.
Bianca
Napoleon
Margherita
We are all well aware of what margherita pizza is but where did it come from?having made the first two pizzas Raphael decided on a third one it was to consist of tomato sauce mozzarella cheese and basil,on the day of the royal visit queen margherita sampled all three pizzas and liked them all but liked the third one the most,because of her visit Raphael named the pizza margherita after the queen and that's how the margherita pizza came about and it is the pizza used as a base for all other pizzas and is most popular in the western world outside of Italy.
And finally we get to the most important part the day excursion to Pompeii,Pompeii was engulfed by lava from the eruption of mt Vesuvius(79A.D),thankfully the lava helped preserve the city of Pompeii and with over two hundred years work excavating the site we are beginning to get a better insight to how they lived in 79AD as you will see in the following photographs of the streets , ruins, houses,shops and theatres the town was quiet self sufficient and also there were remains of public swinning pools and steam baths as well as bars and Brothels(10).Also the remains of 25 bakeries,46 drinking wells.the city of Pompeii had running water connected 20yrs B.C The water was distributed through lead pipes,which are still visible.unaware of the lead poisoning aspect people were known to have gone mad(not just peasants but royalty also(Nero) also suffered So getting away from pizza etc, here is a wonderful idea for an afternoon snack with crisp croistini.
1 Camembert cheese (250 gramme)
2 Basil leaves
2-3 sun dried tomatoes
white wine
2 teaspoon pesto.
1 roisti pan
2 tsp Calvados
Cut Camembert in half length ways. Place one half in roisti pan. Finely shred basil leaves and sun dried tomatoes . Place in centre of cheese. Brush with basil pesto and pour some white wine onto cheese also. Place other Camembert on top. Lightly press down, and bake in the oven at 180 c for ten minutes. Remove from the oven and flambé with calvados. Eat with crisp croistini
So my next destination on my food travels was to be france , keen fan of molecular cooking ,
and Brillant Savarins "physiology of taste". So the opportunity has arisen to be representative for Ireland and the U.k, in the Paris food trip 2014 . So I said to my self why not give it a go . What motivation do you need to enter a competition of this calibre to go to Paris the home of cooking, the Eifle Tower and the Louvre. The chance to meet fellow food enthusiasts and taste the delicacies that Paris has to offer, and also the chance of meeting esteemed chefs and also the idea of a michelin star meal is appetizing also.
So come on vote for me to be your Irish and English representative in the Gourmandize food trip 2014.
You wont be dissapointed.
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