What helps you keep going?

[ditchdwellers]

Why don't they just go back to foil wrapping that you could reseal easily and recycle? Surely better than plastic packaging even if it is resealable?

[oldtone27]

A good idea except that I don't think foil is easy to print on so they would probably need to go back to the paper sleeve as well. That might still be more eco friendly.

[Sunny Clouds]

Surely companies that manufacture food products, especially what I'll generically call 'junk food' need to focus on looking good, not being good?  Being good in terms of whatever's the current public and scientific understanding of it doesn't of itself bring profits.

Further, there's a careful balance to be drawn between producing your product in a way that convinces people to buy it and producing it in a way that makes maximum profit.  Thus if the cheapest way to do something is the least environmentally friendly, but also currently least attractive to sell, you want to find a point at which your ingredients, methods, marketing etc. bring good sales and profits but not one at which those increased profits from extra sales are wiped out by increased costs from change what you produce and how.

Random illustration.

You have a product you currently sell lots of.  Word goes round that it's not environmentally friendsly and your sales drop by three quarters.  You want to increase your sales, but if you try to make it 'environmentally friendly', you've got problems.  Hmm.  What ingredients are produced where and how?  (Are there child slaves involved in your cocoa production?  Is high water usage causing problems in that almond production?)  What's your transportation and distribution costs?  (Can manufacturers nearer to your target market say they're more environmentally friendly or that they provide work for local people?) And wrappers?  (I don't need to describe the issues.)

So you make it all environmentally super-duper.  Local factories, better paid farm workers producing organic ingredients.  Electric-powered lorries transporting stuff both ways.  Etc., etc.  Lovely, jubbly.  Sales now twice what they were originally, eight times the reduced sales.  Oops, costs of production now five times what they were.  You're making a loss not a profit.

So the only way to sell what I'm unkindly characterising as 'junk' (and also a lot of healthy food) is to 'greenwash' it.

[Fiz]

I think there should be a sugar levy on foods in the same way that there is for drinks. Says I who could just grab some cookies right now.

[lankou]

I think there should be a sugar levy on foods in the same way that there is for drinks. Says I who could just grab some cookies right now.

[Sunny Clouds]

(Edited to say, I know my posts are long but sorry this is so non-concise.  My brain's just not brief today.)

I think there should be a sugar levy on foods in the same way that there is for drinks. Says I who could just grab some cookies right now.

That's logical and there's a lot to be said in its favour.

That being said (yes, it's me, so there's a 'but') I think the manufacturers would just fill their products with more artificial sweeteners instead, not all of which are as healthy as we might like.  Some of them also produce responses in the body similar to sugar, including unwanted ones.

In theory, marking products with what's in them was a good idea, but I loathe the way companies label products with ridiculous 'portions'.  I like hummus and also, for quite a while, took to coleslaw and potato 'salad', sold in the same 'snacky things in little tubs' part of supermarkets.

I didn't count calories, but eventually I forced myself to look at the ingredients and at sugar content (yes, I'm also trying to stop myself eating cookies, and also trying to limit my sugar intake), and it really, really bugged me what they considered to be a 'portion'.  If I buy a 100g tub of something like that, I'll eat a 100g tub.  No way is that tub '3 portions'. 

Then again (I should scroll back and see if I'm being repetitive but I'm struggling today, so you might need to scroll by), there are lots of other ingredients that are also problematic.  I've mentioned sweeteners.  Then we've had the ongoing pro/anti fat saga where we were told that fat was bad and carbs were good and now the reverse, but fat comes in lots of sorts and whilst I am generally more concerned about sugars than fats, some of what I read about some of the oils in our foods doesn't make me happy.

Something that really struck me a few years back was the appallingly bad balance between omega 3 and omega 6 essential fatty acids in my diet.  I swotted up on it after I'd already been supplementing my omega 3 because of the clinical research evidence of its usefulness in bipolar disorder (I later researched the mechanisms by which it helps as well).  But then I learnt how imbalanced a lot of our intake is.  Not just how much oil/fat, but which.

So whilst I think it's good to reduce sugar intake, I think that making sugar less affordable wouldn't necessarily help as much as I'd like it to.

What I try to do, and seriously struggle with, is what I used to be much better at when younger, which is to use as a general principle (not a rigid one) when shopping, wherever possible to stick to buying things with only one ingredient. 

You've just prompted stuff.  I have three A4 sheets of pictures of foods with numbers for relative amount of carbs in them, which I keep in my kitchen.  I keep telling myself to stick them on a wall.  Putting them on the fridge door and cupboard doors didn't work.  I could even be dotty and put them on the loo wall.

Sad thought - where I am, when cash donations to the local beggars went down in the early stages of the pandemic, quite a few started behaving very differently and a chat with an alcoholic beggar I know confirmed my suspicions.  You see, he was savvy and begged shoppers donations of food instead of cash.  Then he could use his benefits for booze.  But quite a few of the local 'drunks' were reliant on their begged cash, especially if they'd lost their benefits, and had turned to cheaper substances on the black market.  They weren't even using the relatively harmless spice & mamba that was on the market before and used by some, they were using some pretty badly contaminated stuff and some pretty mis-labelled stuff.  Word went round not to trust the alleged 'heroin' but it's still been a rough ride for lots of struggling people. 

So I'm always twitchy when people are nudged into changing what they buy about what they'll buy instead.

Yesterday, I was desperate to go and buy chocolate cookies.  I persuaded myself not to by eating other favourite food.  At bedtime I realised to my bemusement that I'd managed to bake and eat four frozen battered fish portions from my freezer.  Hmm.  Dare I look at how much junk is in those next time I'm shopping?  What happened to the days when I popped into the fishmongers, took a fresh fish home (whatever was fat and shiny and on offer), de-scaled it, gutted it, put some herbs or something in it, wrapped it in foil and baked it?  It was probably cheaper than this battered stuff.

[lankou]

  What happened to the days when I popped into the fishmongers, took a fresh fish home (whatever was fat and shiny and on offer), de-scaled it, gutted it, put some herbs or something in it, wrapped it in foil and baked it?  It was probably cheaper than this battered stuff.

I live in a coastal village with loads of fishermen as neighbours but no fishmongers. (I can't get any fresh fish either.)

[Sunny Clouds]

I recently looked around three local supermarkets for fresh fish and realised that all the fresh fish I could see was fish fillets.

There's an open market a bus ride away from me, but I think it's on its last legs.  I can't complain, given that I haven't shopped there for ages.

Sudden thought - there's a butcher's shop only half an hour's walk from me (and walking's good for my mental state).  I don't usually shop there because I don't usually eat meat, but I wonder whether they do fish?

This thread's having a bad influence on me - I'm already looking at eating healthier.  That's cruel to unwanted cookies looking miserable on supermarket shelves.

[Fiz]

Sometimes a healthier swap is a good step to take. Swapping battered fish to breaded fish to pop in the oven has still added carbs to your protein but the amount of saturated fat has drastically reduced down and the fish retains more of its nutrients too.


I doubt a sugar levy on foods would reduce consumption much. My adult children still choose full sugar versions of fizzy drinks rather than the diet versions and the balance of full sugar and diet versions of fizzy drinks in supermarkets seems to have remained the same. The money gained could go to the NHS but of course will go to Boris's mates instead.


I would love to see the NHS run more healthy eating groups for those in need as well as group physical exercise classes for people with physical disabilities and groups for people with mental health problems. Sugar levys could help with that.


I'm still craving cookies but am in hospital and there aren't any here!

[Sunny Clouds]

I hated the food situation in psychiatric places.

In one hospital, where I had dietary requirements, in theory they were catered for.   However, what happened was that they'd bring a trolley of food to the ward at an unpredictable time and let people help themselves.  What then happened was that food for particular diets often got eaten by patients that weren't on those diets if they got there first.  People wanting specific diets such as kosher, halal, vegetarian, pescatarian, vegan, gluten-free etc. could find themselves without food.

On another occasion, I spent months in a 'respite unit' under threat of being sectioned to a hospital I'd whistleblown on if I tried to discharge myself. There were problems with cooking facilities and there were problems with money, because for quite a few of us, there were problems with benefits.  I also felt seriously traumatised by the conditions in the respite unit and by being effectively isolated from those close to me, making it hard for me to look after myself.  I ended up losing about a pound a day, several stones over the course of my stay.

But then stays in my local psychiatric units always felt like being in prison, rather like being in the 'care' of the home treatment team, forced to stay home most of the time, was effectively spending most of my time in solitary confinement, unable to get support from family and friends in the community.

I'm so relieved that the way you speak of where you're staying seems to suggest that it's much less cruel and punitive.