The article below was on Yahoo news last week. It is not the first time I have come across the theory of seaweed being added to foods to aid weight loss. Apart from the fact that seaweed is a highly nutritious natural ingredient to add to your diet anyway.

As this report below has said that scientists have tested the effectiveness of 60 different natural fibres with an ” artificial gut “, I decided to try it on myself.

I sourced a supplier of dried bladderwrack & I have been adding 2 teaspoons of this + 1 teaspoon of lemon pepper to my basic bread mix.

It is thorougly delicious & all friends that have tasted it so far are in total agreement with me regarding how good it tastes.

As from today:-

I will be eating 1-2 slices of this bread every day for 1 month & sharing my results on this blog. I do not own bathroom scales, as I do not think it is healthy to weigh yourself too regularly.

I weighed in at 150 kilo, at my friends house on Sunday evening & I had been eating seaweed bread then for 4 days.

One observation that I have made so far on this, is that if you are constipated. eating seaweed bread may help to wake up the bowels. Nothing extreme you understand. But if you are an irregular person, eating a slice a day may make you function on a daily basis.

Seaweed bread ‘key to obesity’

Seaweed bread could be the answer to the obesity epidemic, scientists have said.Skip related content

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Researchers found seaweed fibre could reduce the body’s fat uptake by more than 75%.

A fibrous material in Sea Kelp called alginate was better at preventing fat absorption than most over-the-counter slimming treatments, laboratory tests showed.

Dr Iain Brownlee, who co-led the University of Newcastle team, said: “This suggests that if we can add the natural fibre to products commonly eaten daily - such as bread, biscuits and yoghurts - up to three quarters of the fat contained in that meal could simply pass through the body.

“We have already added the alginate to bread and initial taste tests have been extremely encouraging. Now the next step is to carry out clinical trials to find out how effective it is when eaten as part of a normal diet.”

The scientists used an “artificial gut” to test the effectiveness of 60 different natural fibres by measuring the extent to which they affected the digestion of fat.

They presented their findings at the American Chemical Society’s spring meeting in San Francisco, US.

Dr Brownlee said the aim was to see if the same effects modelled in the laboratory could be reproduced in living volunteers.

“Our initial findings are that alginates significantly reduce fat digestion,” he said.

The research is part of a three-year project funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC).

Last night, courgettes were in the bargin bucket in the local co-op.  So I took home, 2 very big, & mint condition  courgettes for 20p & stuck one in a juicer, with 3 slighly sad looking kiwi fruits. I was planning on executing a banana into this drink but after tasting just the kiwi & courgette I decided to leave it at that.

Very refreshing, low calorific value & a good fix of folate, Vitamins A, C & E .  And kiwi’s have almost as much potassium as a banana. Nice!

P.S   NO MICE WERE INJURED IN THE MAKING OF THIS SMOOTHIE

I tried making this for the first time tonight. It’s quick, tasty & nutritious plus has the added theraputic benefit of a forrage in the woods to pick the nettles.

Ingredients:-

About 6 oz stigging nettles

2 big cloves of garlic

1/2 cup grated parmesan

1/2 cup pine nuts

approx 100ml olive oil

salt & freshly ground black pepper

Method:-

Rinse the nettles, then blanch in boiling water for about 1 minute.

Strain the nettles, decant ont a chopping board & roughly chop.

Put the nettles, pine nuts, parmesan, olive oil & seasoning into a bowl & blitz with a hand blender or put all the ingredients into a food processor & blitz away.

Simple, tasty dressing for pasta, fish or salad & ready in 2 minutes.

I have never been as disgusted with the food industry as I have been during the last 24 hours.

I saw a DVD.  ASPARTAME  SWEET MISERY and was not overly surprised but I got progressively concerned.

What is Aspartame:

Aspartame is a chemical sweetener which is used massively by the soft drinks companies.

It is made up by  aspartic acid, phenylalanine & methyl ester. Methyl ester is meth alcohol i.e wood alcohol which is a very serious poison. When the body breaks down methyl ester it turns to formaldahyde ( used as an embalming fluid).

Major rise in brain tumours:

In the US in 1984 6,900,000lb of aspartame was comsumed and this amount doubled by 1985.

Between 1983-1984 brain tumour were up by 10% in the US. Diabetes up by 30% and brain lymphoma up by 60%.

Aspartame also causes MS, & seizures and much much more including ( as shown in a research study ) occular bleeding i.e bleeding from the eyes.

GRAS:

Aspartame is listed as being  a GRAS product. GRAS meaning generally recognised as safe.

When something is classified as “generally recognised as safe” it means that it only kills 1 in 1 million people!

The FDA claim that Aspartame is the most thoroughly tested foodstuff, although there has been an awful lot of testing on this product the test results are very freightening. And bear in mind that a lot of the research on this produt has been funded by Nutrasweet and soft drinks companies.

In one study conducted on monkeys that consumed the aspartame in milk 1 monkey died and 5 had gran mal seizures.

MSG:

MSG, monosodium glutamate was removed from baby food as it was shown that MSG caused holes in the brains of rats that were being tested. It has been shown that Aspartame does the same thing!

A quick trip to the corner shop:

I was telling my dad the other day what I had come accross and told him a little about Aspartame and the dangerous effects it has on the body. He asked if it was on the label so I went to my corner sho & within 5 minutes I found Aspartame in the following:

Diet pespsi, diet coke, pepsi light, robinsons fruit shoots ( this is designed for kids!), edbull, fanta, powerade isotonic drink ( made by coca cola), nestle milk straws,trident splash gum, wrigglys extra, wrigglys airwaves, hubba buba bubble tape and muller light yoghurts. This was in just 5 minutes.

Last night I was even more angered when I saw the official FDA list of what Aspartame can cause and what foodstuffs contained it.

Official FDA list: Coutesy of www.dorway.com

When I saw this list and read at the bottom of the table that Aspartame is used in chewable vitamin tablets I went to look at my bottle of vitamin C and read label. IT DID contain Aspartame. How angry was I.

Methyl Ester in nature:

Methyl Ester in nature is found in larger quantities in fruit but, in nature methyl is bound to pectin. Humans lack the enzyme to break down pectin so the methyl the naturally occuring Methyl can pass through the human body doing no harm whatsoever. Nature is so clever like that but Methyl ester on its own is highly dangerous.

Death by methyl ester:

Diane Fleming got a 50 year jail sentence for murdering her husband by methylanol poisoning. You can see her interviewed in the film Aspartame sweet misery.

Her attorney neglacted to mention that her husband was a big consumer of aspartame products. It does look very likely that consuming these products did cause his death.

Where can I find out more?

There are many sites on aspartame but a good one to chect out is www.dorway.com

Watch the film:

Here is a link to watch the film.  http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-566922170441334340

Bad news:

It is not o.k at all but unfortunately one of the most widely consumed burgers in the world contains many things to preserve it and to make it one of the most dangrous foodstuffs I know of.

This video that I found on you tube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYyDXH1amic

really is scarry stuff.

If you watch this video, please do pay particular attention to the ending.

There is a list at the end of the video listing all pesticides contained within this burger to ” keep it fresh ! ”

This list is taken from The Food And Drug Administrations official report on pesticide residues in American fast food. This particular fast food though is the most globally available so if you ever eat from the “golden arches” watch this.

Good news:

During the last few days I have been helping to promote a show in the Edinburgh Festival and spent a lot of time in Bristo Square. Dotted around are many places to grab fast food and most is perfectly acceptable in my mind to eat on occasion. I did try the Aberdeen Angus burgers first which were ok but if you really do need to satisfy a burger craving ” the smells do lure you at times ” I recomend Wannaburger.

The burgers are made from 95% locally sourced Aberdeen Angus and the the cheese is real!

For my dinner yesterday I chose a calorie filled bacon cheeseburger with a small vanilla milkshake.

Cost: £5

Rating : 8 out of 10

For a burger of the non veggie type I think these are the best I have ever tasted. Shakes are groovy too.

Although my tastebuds are reacting as I write this today I will be giving my stomach a heathier treat & going to Suzies Wholefood Diner in West Nicolson Street.

Wonderful smells, delicious wholesome food, relaxed friendly atmosphere, and fantastic value for money.

P.S I really should give my friend a plug. Ali Cook A Touch of Vegas. Go to You Tube and type in Ali Cook magic for a sample of what the show will be like.

He is performing every night at the Gilded Balloon in Bristo Square 9.15pm until the 25th of August.

I’m looking forward to dinner time.

You can look up the nutrition food labels on Tesco website before you shop.

I came accross this by accident this morning. I do not do online shopping with any supermarket, thank you very much but a friend forwarded this info to me knowing that I would relish in the fact that Tesco had on thier site a bag of snack products that, to be fair, must have incurred a data imput error when it was uploaded onto Tesco direct shopping site.

As you can clearly see below these, not so tasty looking pieces of what they call ” snack ” contain no salt, no calories, no fat, no saturates and no salt.

What they actually contain is for example:

Salt & vinegar cruchy snacks:-

Salt, Wheat flour, Acidity Regulator ( Sodium Diacetate ), Citric Acid, Milk, Sugar, Whey Powder, Dextrose, Flavour Enhancer ( Monosodium Glutamate ), & Malt Vinegar Powder.

It says on the bag for nutrition for the salt & vinegar crunchy snacks that for each 20g bag:

Fat: 5.3g

Energy: 100 kcal

Carbohydrate: 11.7g of which sugars 0.6g

There is more info on the bag for this product but the light reflecting on the photo of the bag that I took made it hard to read.

Of course I was not going to actually buy this product even if it was for research purposes only!

Say the word ‘hemp’ and most people think of hippies dressed in dungarees. And dope. The plant is a member of the cannabis sativa family, which marijuana also belongs to. What they’re less likely to realise is that while hemp actually contains only trace elements of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the ingredient in dope that makes you stoned, it is packed with an amazing amount of fatty acids, minerals and proteins that are fantastically good for you (so much so, one nutritionist I mentioned it to said a diet of hemp seed and water alone would be fairly healthy) one.

The above text was taken from an article in The Guardian telling the story of how Henry and Glynis Braham produced the “good oil” made from Hemp seeds. Link to full story below.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2004/nov/07/foodanddrink.features9

Hemp seeds contain a whole protein profile, every protein known and many amino acids. I am giving annother link now to a page from tha cannabis userg guide as the author of this page has discribed what I was going to say about hemp seeds so eloquently. eloquently.

http://www.schmoo.co.uk/thclub/hemp.htm

“However harmless a thing is,

If the law forbids it,

most people will think it’s wrong.”

-W. Somerst Maughn

All good Opticians + Optometertrists will be aware that Lutein -Zeaxanthin is the primary anti-oxidant to provide good eyehealth and helps to reduce the risks of cataracts.

Macular degeneration is said to be uncureable BUT it is known that if detected in the early stages the progression can be slowed down by increased levels of Lutein-Zeaxanthin.

This anti-oxidant is primarily sourced from cruciferous vegetables - the dark green leafy vegetables such as Kale, Cabbage, Spinach, and Broccoli.

When parents say “eat your veg, it will put hairs on your chest” they could be better off saying ” you need to eat it to protect your eyes”

For some reason there seems to be a much more widely known saying for what causes blindness and it is not “playing with your food”.

So what is Macular Degeneration and how is it caused.

I am not an optician. I am just interested in food and how different foods can harm or help parts of the body. So put it very simply the macular is part of the eye behind the retina. When the macular degenerates ( common sign of ageing ) your ability to see well degenerates and could eventually lead to complete blindness.

This condition is usually labeled Adult Macular Degeneration ( AMD )

Genetic influences can be a factor of the onset of ( AMD )

Smoking can double the risks of Adult Macular Degeneration.

But on the good side, we can do something about preventing it in the first place. I have copied the Nutritional text below from http://www.bbc.co.uk/health/conditions/amd.shtml

Nutrition - the role of vitamins and minerals and antioxidants in helping to prevent AMD isn’t clear. Some scientific evidence suggests a diet rich in antioxidant vitamins and minerals may help reduce the risk of a person developing AMD, although other studies suggest the scientific evidence isn’t strong enough to recommend this.

However, a diet rich in antioxidant vitamins and minerals is unlikely to cause any harm. It makes sense to eat plenty of fruit and vegetables each day, particularly kale and leafy green vegetables.

I was prescribed prescription glasses about 10 years ago when I was a croupier, dealing cards for up to 3 hours at a time was making my sight blurry & giving me headaches so I needed them for my job.

My last visit to the opticians was about 3 years ago. I was 35 then and was surprised when I was bluntly told ” your sight is good at the moment but you will be struggling to see without strong glasses by the time you are 40″.

I’m glad I love my fruit & veg because now 38 i’m stil not needing spec’s and can see perfectly well.

Also now a reformed smoker so even more chance that I can dodge this and prove my optician wrong.

Last night I mentioned the Welsh laver bread, so here I am listing a few types of seaweeds and giving some information on how they can be eaten and what ways the body can benefit from adding some marine vegetation to your diet.

LAVER: Eating:

Appart from the aforementioned laver bread in Wales the Welsh also marinate laver in oil & lemon juice & serve it on toast with a fair pinch of black pepper. The clever thing about cooking laver on toast is that the water that the Laver is cooked in becomes thick and turns into a jelly which vegetables, meat or fish can be added to making a very nutritious soup.

In Scotland laver is diped in oatmeal & fried.

KELP:

Dashi which is a rick stock, is made from kelp as kelp has a high concentration of the flavour-enhancing glutamic acid.

GIANT KELP:

Giant kelp which contains fluoride, calcium, and iron amongst other minerals and is extremely rich in iodine. The healthy components in giant kelp helps with bone mineralization & bone density, it will alkalize the blood, treat swollen lymph glands, lower blood cholesterol, is very benificial to thyroid function and removes radioactive tissues from the body. Kelp is a mega superfood!

IRISH MOSS:

Is named misleadingly as it is in fact a seaweed. In Ireland is both steamed and served with potatoes or cabbage and the Irish are strong believers in a cup of tea made from Irish moss to cure colds and coughs.

DULSE:

Dulse is used in salads and sandwiches, rich in iodine, calcium and also phosphorus. The funky thing about dulse is that it is possible that it contains more potassium than any other foodstuffs. Go to this page http://www.umm.edu/altmed/articles/potassium-000320.htm from The University Of Maryland Medical Center to read just what can be effected in the body if your potassium levels are wrong. But don’t panic as a diet which contains enough fruit and vegetables will supply your daily potassium needs.

SPIRULINA:

Spirulina floats on water like green scum and is collected and dried.

As it contains so many minerals, calcium, manganese, phosphorus, zinc, & selenium, is rich in B vitamins, chlorophyll, beta carotene and Vitamin E and also an amino acid phenylalanine which surpresses the appetite. Due to the vitamin and mineral content it can cleanse the blood and detox both liver and kidneys.

Spirulina can be used to treat hypoglycemia, hepatitis, malnutrition, and anemia and strenghtens the immune system.

Spirulina also contains a pigment called phycocyanin. which has been studied with positive effects as a cancer inhibitor.

Whilst some people find celery to be a boring vegetable I love it. Mind you I have not always liked the taste and texture of this particular vegetable. I have liked celery for about the past 5 years, much like mushrooms and prawns that I used to despise when I was younger.

My mum constantly asked me to try foods that she knew I did not like but she did know better than me at the time with the knowledge that your tastebuds are kind of the last part of your body to mature & grow up ( I will do a seperate post soon on how we ” taste ” our foods).

There is an urban myth kicking about that celery is a negative calorie food. What is actually the case is that celery has such a low calorific value that the body uses more calories to eat & digest it than the vegetable contains, so is great for those who are trying to shed a few pounds.

Celery is high in Vitamin C & contains blood pressure reducing qualities.

Celery powder can be bought as a detox aid.

Bergapeten in the seeds of celery can increase photosensitivity.

Warning:

Essential oil of celery should be avoided externally due to increased photosensitivity & essential oil should be avoided during pregnancy as it can be a uterine stimulant.

Pre-pregnancy though celery is a good thing as it said to increase the quality, quantity & taste of sperm.

SEVERE ALLERGIC REACTIONS:

I have a friend who has a peanut allergy. I knew before we were friends that peanuts can kill by causung anaphaylactic shock. ( Where the throat closes resticting or stopping breathing ), and as I had been told of her severe reation shortly after “Pulp Fiction” had been released I thought it was ” cool ” that she carried an adrenaline shot in her bag incase she came into contact with the dreaded nut.

I did feel sorry for her affliction a couple of times, once when she told me that if she was hugged or kissed by someone who had recently eaten a peanut she could go into anaphaylactic shock in fact if she touched a wall for example that someone who had been eating peanuts had just touched the same reaction could occur, and once, when I nonchalantly offered her a bite of my snickers bar. It’s such an easy thing to forget when it does not effect you.

Celery is within this small group of foods including peanuts that can cause such a drastic reation ( ANAPHYLAXIS ).