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Health / Food / Blood Pressure (merged)

I was 101kg when my nan passed away in Jan 2021.
I’ve now got to 92.1kg from walking to/from work and walking everywhere.
Started reducing my calories intake and it seems to be speeding up :)

Qualified PPL with IR SP/SE PBN
EGSG, United Kingdom

Peter wrote:

In France they don’t yet have this issue much because the culture (and crucially even among the poor) is to go to the market and buy a load of veg. Also, my guess is that France has a lot more women at home, relatively speaking. If the “cook” has to go to work, not much food preparation will be done.

Im sorry but I live in France, I look around, and thats not what I see – its surely an issue in France as in the UK.
I think most women in France work today, even if a part time job like my partner/GF (who isnt French).
Most people dont go to “the market” to buy veg, pretty much everyone goes to a Supermarche or Hypermarche.
Oh, and they certainly do not all “cook” – my Ex-wife (French) certainly cant cook. (Now her mother, thats different, she is a culinary genius…)
I also dont think that your average French Cafe/Bistro today is all it was cracked up to be (shock-horror!!).

PS: @Peter , I was looking through your photos. You are right its not really “cooking” more salad preparation and a little grilling of key veggies. Some of that looked really interesting though even to a confirmed meat eater : What are the mushrooms pic67 stuffed with? What are the Cauliflower heads in pic60? Your various soups look interesting too. Thanks for sharing.

Regards, SD..

Graham wrote:

It has been incredibly clear for some time now that those suffering severe Covid-19 are disproportionately those who are overweight and obese. You don’t need a BMI of anything like 40 (which is enormously obese, beyond all sense) to have this increased risk.

I have linked the data that says that the risk only increases strongly >40 BMI. Can you show data for your hypothesis? “It has been incredibly clear…” is rarely the start of a good fact based debate, unfortunately..

Graham wrote:

While it may be J-shaped and affect BMI>40 the most, I don’t believe it concluded that <40 there is no increased risk.

No it doesn’t – but the risk increase of overweight <40 BMI is quite limited (btw.: Within the margin of error of no risk increase) and in the same ballpark as the risk increase from many other factors (including the one of being a former smoker).
So if we are talking about a “disproportional” risk increase, according to this data it is only existent at > 40 BMI.

P.S. if interested in a fact based discussion (unfortunately we lost @Medewok in this thread who might have a very good perspective from practice):

I’m not at all surprised that we see such a step change in morbidity esp. around 40 BMI. There is other data (if I remember correctly from the CDC but I had to look it up) that shows that risk of ICU admission with Covid is even slightly decreased with higher BMI (makes sense as higher BMI patients have “more reserves” before a period of no food intake becomes critical), but the morbidity when admitted to ICU is much higher at extreme BMIs.
That is absolutely not Covid related but a general fact of life (ok: medicine): Ventilation gets extremely tricky at extreme overweight patients. So what the presented Covid morbidity numbers actually show – in line with long term experience – is, that as soon as a Covid patient needs ventilation, an extreme BMI will kill him.

Would therefore actually be great to compare the US numbers to some European ones. My prediction would be that the effect of BMI on morbidity is lower at least in Germany, France and Sweden than in the US. That would be an indicator for the hypothesis that we are really mainly talking about the ventilation risk: Germany, France and Sweden (and surely some other countries but there I don’t know the statistics) have a significantly higher usage rate of ECMO where the BMI related risk is much lower than with ventilation.

Last Edited by Malibuflyer at 21 Oct 06:41
Germany

If you ask privately any nurse working in a hospital, this is what you find. It could be different in different countries, too, for reasons unknown, like so much of the development of the CV19 epidemic. It could also be a description of ICU content; I was told early on that practically the whole ICU was obese people (they didn’t put “old/frail” people in ICU).

You are right its not really “cooking” more salad preparation and a little grilling of key veggies. Some of that looked really interesting though even to a confirmed meat eater : What are the mushrooms pic67 stuffed with? What are the Cauliflower heads in pic60? Your various soups look interesting too. Thanks for sharing.

Yes you are right. “Cooking” tends to kill food. Grilling is good because one isn’t dunking everything in oil (the totally standard commercial practice). Mushrooms are a great meat replacement – a texture quite similar to fine meat (fillet steak). BTW recently a pilot friend gave me some of these and they are ever so tasty (not a usual thing for “fake meat”). Made in Canada and not cheap.

I have submitted your questions to the cook The mushrooms are stuffed with pesto mixed up with sourdough breadcrumbs. The caulliflower heads are probably some kind of smoked paprika. The soups vary… most are ground up veg. You start by frying up onions (can fry them in water), adding garlic (lots) and herbs, adding whatever vegetables you want and possibly blending it up. I have suggested to Justine that she knocks up a simple online cookbook.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

Thanks Peter,

I freely admit I was thinking several of your veg piccies would be great with a piece of grilled chicken or steak…

Regards, SD..

@Johnh and @skydriller you seem to have forgotten that many French men can also turn fresh meat and veg into a healthy and tasty meal🙂
Many of the large supermarket chains in particular eLeClerc are proud of the fact that buy much of their produce locally and tend to hire artisans, such as butchers, when they have decided that self employment is not worth it any more.
But different countries and different parts of those countries tend to have vastly different diets, due to the fact that some veg for instance is not easy to grow on a commercial scale.
In this area for instance parsnips are mostly brought in from the north or more regularly from the UK. So small turnips tend to be used more. (Yes I know they don’t taste the same but one adapts) Rhubarb is another, here we can usually only get it to grow in thin stalks and it is expensive to buy. In UKs Leeds triangle the abundance of rhubarb meant many chefs adapting their recipes to use it as a vegetable or as a fruit in a desert. We can’t easily do that here so instead we use figs for the same purpose. Honey roasted duck and figs make a very tasty main course. For those who enjoy meat of course. Meat and 2 veg is not our thing.🙂
And as @leSving says in Norway they eat a lot of fish and fish based products. Natural cod liver oils etc, not these dreadful supplements that do sod all except make money for the people who manufacture them. Garlic supplements for instance, contain none of the vitamin qualities contained in natural and wild garlic and it only vaguely tastes of it.

France

Rhubarb

Really? People IMPORT rhubarb? My wife considers it to be some kind of gastronomic monstrosity. I think it’s one of those things people eat because it’s available and very little else is, a bit like sea slug (which is now a delicacy, but didn’t start that way).

A bit like Christmas Pudding. When we met and I was invited by her family at Xmas, I took one as a typically British contribution to the proceedings. If I’d taken purée of sea slug it would have gone down about as well!

LFMD, France

I freely admit I was thinking several of your veg piccies would be great with a piece of grilled chicken or steak

Look up chicken and prostate cancer… Chicken is just about the worst meat. Some stories from the processing trade are pretty incredible, too; notably the huge wholesale price range of the stuff (a factor of 5x). If I have to eat something substantial and can’t get “veg” (true generally when travelling) then I have fish, but quality fish is expensive which is why it doesn’t feature much in N Europe. And sh1tty fish (most British “fish and chips” battered fish) barely tastes of fish; it could be mashed potato mixed up with polyfilla for all that one can tell. Also nowadays most fish is contaminated with all kinds of crap (antibiotics, heavy metals, etc); the only fish that is still clean is Alaskan wild salmon and that’s what Justine buys when we have fish (usually when my sons come round to eat ).

A bit like Christmas Pudding.

Disgusting stuff Like most UK diet.

But different countries and different parts of those countries tend to have vastly different diets, due to the fact that some veg for instance is not easy to grow on a commercial scale.

I suspect France has an “undercover policy” to make it hard for the junk food outlets to set up. And that’s a good thing. They serve no useful function.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

@Johnh yep imported rhubarb it is delicious in a crême brulee.🙂
But rhubarb adds a touch of acidity to many recipes that would be too fatty otherwise. It is a good way to break down any bad fats. For instance if you use lardons and mushroom mix to add over chicken portions. You can grill, roast in olive oil or water, sauce or whatever the rhubarb and replace any side vegetable with it. Add a touch of ginger and it tastes even better.
And talking about adding ginger the two together make a superb sorbet for cleansing the palate between the entrée and main course.😁 I do love food and my BMI is where it should be. My cholesterol is 0.5 which in UK measurements works out at under 2. So I’m happy, but I do have to avoid most cheeses, and I love cheese and with over 365 different French cheese varieties to choose from I will admit it’s a hardship.:)

France

Peter wrote:

Look up chicken and prostate cancer… Chicken is just about the worst meat.

What is so bad about the fact that poultry has no significant impact on prostate cancer?

Germany
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