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Joanna Blythman What to Eat: Food that’s good for your health, pocket and plate «HarperCollins» Blythman J. What to Eat: Food that’s good for your health, pocket and plate / J. Blythman — «HarperCollins», Covering all our pressing food dilemmas, the award-winning food writer leads the way to sensible and practical choices about what to eat.Food should be one of life's greatest pleasures, yet increasingly, the choices facing consumers have become increasingly problematic. As well as having to think about what food may, or may not, be doing to you and yours, twenty-first century eaters have to think about what impact the food we eat is having on the environment, farm animals and food producers, both in far away places and back home. Globally, the world is running low on food and water, so we can no longer rely on a steady supply of cheap food. Meanwhile on the home front, many of us are watching our money like never before.Armed with this comprehensive, easy-to-navigate reference book which covers all common types of food, you can simplify your food choices, be aware of environmental and food security issues and quickly identify the best and most ethical food to eat.Answering the most frequently asked questions such as 'Is farmed fish better than wild?'; 'Is red meat bad for you?'; 'Could GM food feed the world?'; 'Is it better to drink bottled or tap water?'; 'Is saturated fat really so bad for me?' and 'Are organic foods really worth the extra expense?', Blythman will help you choose what to eat, guiding you to everything you need to know to eat well. © Blythman J. © HarperCollins J. Blythman. «What to Eat: Food that’s good for your health, pocket and plate» Contents Cover Title Page Introduction 4 J. Blythman. «What to Eat: Food that’s good for your health, pocket and plate» Chapter 1 - Vegetables Asparagus Aubergine Peppers Potatoes Spinach and Swiss chard Tomatoes Broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower and other brassicas Carrots and other root vegetables Celery Courgettes, marrow, squash and pumpkin Green beans and runner beans Herbs Lettuce and other salad leaves Mushrooms, cultivated and wild Onions, garlic, shallots, leeks and spring onions Peas, broad beans, mangetouts and sugarsnaps Chapter 2 - Meat Chicken and other poultry Beef Lamb and mutton Pork, bacon and ham and wild boar Venison Veal Rabbit Sausages Chapter 3 - Dairy Milk and cream Butter, ghee and buttermilk Yogurt and yogurt drinks Cheese Ice cream Chapter 4 - Fish Cod and other white fish Salmon and other oily fish Prawns and other crustaceans Mussels and other shellfish Chapter 5 - Fruit Apples Avocados Bananas and other tropical fruits Cherries Citrus fruits Currants Grapes Nectarines, peaches and apricots Pears Plums, greengages and damsons Pomegranates 5 J. Blythman. «What to Eat: Food that’s good for your health, pocket and plate» Raspberries, blackberries and blueberries Rhubarb Strawberries Chapter 6 - Larder Eggs Grains Breakfast cereals Bread Pasta Nuts and seeds Dried and candied fruits Pulses Sugar and other sweeteners Oils Margarines and spreads Soya foods Chocolate Salt Spices and aromatics Lists Acknowledgments About the Author By the Same Author: Copyright About the Publisher Introduction One night I was talking to a friend who was complaining about how hard she found it to shop for food. She was tight for cash, she explained, which made it difficult to afford the more ethical, progressive food she aspired to. She tended to shop on the way home from work, when only one smaller-format chain supermarket with a limited, overpriced selection, heavily skewed to convenience food, was still open. And that was only half the problem. Tired and uninspired by the dullness of the food on offer, she still had to dream up ideas for something to cook when she got home, then prepare it, and fit all that in with other activities, like going to the gym and doing the washing. Net result? ‘I’m not eating as well, or as healthily, as I’d like to,’ she said. ‘Food is just so complicated.’ This got me thinking. Is food really that complicated, or does it just seem that way? Surely there must be a clear, practical way to help people recognize and locate food that’s good in the broadest sense of that word: food that’s healthy, affordable, doesn’t trash the environment, exploit producers or cause unnecessary animal suffering, and, last but not least, tastes great? So I wrote this book, a distillation of many disparate types of information about common foods that are not yet, as far as I know, brought together in any other place. Being impatient and, like many people, often short of time, I am a great believer in executive summaries, so any reader can cut to the chase, so to speak, by reading my 20 guiding principles for eating good food. But broad generalities can’t answer many of the pressing food dilemmas of the day, so all the foods we eat commonly are then discussed in detail, either individually, or in their family groups. Each section is free-standing. What to Eat is a reference book after all, so you can dip into the section on breakfast cereals, say, without having first read the one on grains. This inevitably means that there is some repetition, but of course you can skip over that. 6 J. Blythman. «What to Eat: Food that’s good for your health, pocket and plate» To steer readers in the direction of the best food – what to eat – I have dished up some unsavoury facts about the worst stuff – what not to eat. This isn’t meant to put you off eating, just remind you of why it’s worthwhile seeking out something better. Food is a contentious subject, so as well as picking up lots of useful information and the odd flash of inspiration, anyone who reads this book will get a mini crash course in the live debates in this field. What to Eat looks at food from a 360-degree angle (or at least takes a few purposeful steps in that direction). I hope it will help anyone, anywhere, make the best possible all-round choice, irrespective of personal circumstances. The 20 principles of eating, made simple Base your diet on real, unprocessed food This is the bedrock principle of this book, and you can’t go too far wrong if you follow it. Nature is a very clever, intricate system and natural foods in their whole, unprocessed form have an intrinsic nutritional integrity. We know this because humans have been eating them for centuries. We don’t yet, and may never, fully understand all the complex interrelationships between the major and minor nutritional components that go to make up familiar foods such as eggs, meat, fruits, vegetables and grains, but we do know that they act in synergy, supporting and enhancing one another, adding up to one wholesome entity. If you choose mainly unprocessed, or only minimally processed food, and regularly eat a variety of different foods from all the major food groups, then you really don’t need to worry too much about being healthy. See the value of cooking Even if you can’t cook meals from scratch all the time, it is important to recognize that cooking from raw materials gives you infinitely more control over the quality of what you eat than if you rely on convenience foods. The more food you eat that isn’t home-made, the poorer your diet is likely to be, both in terms of nutrition, and the quality and provenance of the ingredients used. If you surrender sovereignty of what you eat by becoming dependent on convenience foods, the fatter you, and any other members of your household, are likely to become and the more readily your nagging concerns about not eating well can be exploited by food manufacturers selling you technofoods that make dubious health claims. Every meal that you take back under your control by cooking yourself, the better your health and your spirits will be, and the more pleasure you will get from the act of eating. If you have got out of, or have never acquired, the habit of cooking, revisit this default setting. Cooking needn’t be arduous. If you are one of those people who only think about food at the last minute, you may find yourself in shops where your choice is likely to be very restricted, and therefore forced to buy a lot of expensive rubbish. To alter your habits, you will need to decide in advance roughly what you are going to eat, then make sure that you have the ingredients. Other more creative cooks get ideas from shopping in stimulating places with inspiring ingredients, such as markets and small food shops, and then just come home and throw it all together. Either way, you can make life easier for yourself by cooking more than you need so that you can have the same thing later in the week, perhaps in a slightly different form or with different accompaniments. And here, your freezer will prove to be a trusty friend. Cook once, eat twice, or even thrice. Don’t be a sucker for processed foods Here’s one thing you need to know: the more processed a food is, the worse it is for you. Food processing is the food industry’s way of making profit by taking apart natural foods and reinventing them in more lucrative form. Not usually to your nutritional benefit either, irrespective of what the label might claim. Commodity crops like wheat and corn, stripped of most of their beneficial nutrients, then loaded with sugar, salt and a sprinkling of synthetic vitamins, are presented as a nutritious breakfast.

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