Month: September 2021

TOKYO, Sept 29 (Reuters) – Japan’s struggle to emerge from the pandemic-induced doldrums will leave next prime minister Fumio Kishida with little choice but to maintain massive fiscal and monetary support for a fragile economy.

But Kishida may gradually shake off the legacies of former premier Shinzo Abe’s “Abenomics” stimulus policies if he strengthens his grip on power by winning forthcoming general elections, some analysts say.

Having won a ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) leadership race on Wednesday with support from various factions, Kishida is unlikely to rock the boat by overhauling the current pro-business, reflationary policies undertaken by Abe and his successor Yoshihide Suga any time soon. read more

“We must compile by year-end a stimulus package sized at several tens of trillion yen,” Kishida said in a speech after the party race, signalling that Japan will lag other advanced nations in dialing back crisis-mode policies.

Wednesday’s victory assures Kishida will be voted to become next prime minister in a Diet session to be convened next week, given the party’s majority in parliament.

Analysts also expect little change to the Bank of Japan’s ultra-loose policy given Kishida’s recent comments stressing the need to underpin growth with huge monetary stimulus. read more

Over the long-term, however, Kishida could bring change particularly if he secures a strong mandate by winning a lower house vote this year and an upper house election next year.

Kishida has already distanced himself from Abenomics by calling for more focus on distributing wealth to households. read more

Under Abenomics – a strategy deployed by Abe in 2013 seeking to boost growth and inflation with a mix of expansionary fiscal and monetary policies – share prices and corporate profits boomed. But household wealth shrank as companies remained reluctant to boost wages. read more

“If anything, Kishida’s policies will likely focus on income distribution compared to Abenomics,” said Masaaki Kanno, chief economist at Sony Financial Holdings.

LESS BOJ PRESSURE

While Kishida has called on the BOJ to keep its policy ultra-loose for now as the economy tries to recover from the pandemic, he said back in 2018 the current monetary easing “cannot last forever” given the rising side-effects of prolonged stimulus.

Kishida’s awareness of the demerits of radical easing could mean he will rely less on monetary stimulus to drive up growth, said Izuru Kato, chief economist at Totan Research.

“As prime minister, Kishida won’t want any abrupt reversal of monetary easing. But he also won’t put explicit pressure on the BOJ to ramp up stimulus,” Kato said.

Kishida could also yield strong influence on how quickly the central bank withdraws stimulus, if he stays in power long enough to choose a successor when BOJ Governor Haruhiko Kuroda’s term ends in 2023.

“Debate over a post-Kuroda monetary policy framework may emerge late 2022, around the time the U.S. Federal Reserve could be deliberating interest rate hikes,” said Daiju Aoki, chief Japan economist at UBS Sumi Trust Wealth Management.

“If so, the government and the BOJ may face the need to lay out their views on an exit strategy from ultra-loose monetary policy,” he said.

Reporting by Leika Kihara; Additional reporting by Tetsushi Kajimoto, Daniel Leussink and Kantaro Komiya; Editing by Ana Nicolaci da Costa

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Eating healthier is a worthy goal in its own right, rather than just a means to an end for weight loss. But if you’ve ever tried to change your eating habits, you likely know the mess of misinformation that is online diet culture.

There seems to be only a few things that everybody agrees on when it comes to nutrition, so no matter your health goals, here are science-backed tips for healthy eating that don’t require you to count calories.

Get in some lean protein 

I like to think of protein as the jock of the three macronutrients (fats, carbs, and protein). It’s the building block of your muscles, and foods high in protein tend to be the most filling. Think meat, fish, poultry, eggs, legumes (like black beans and chickpeas), and soy products (like tofu or tempeh). Our protein guide takes you through how much you need depending on your health goals, from losing weight, to building muscle, to growing stronger nails and hair.

Focus on your fiber

Fiber improves satiety and, pretty famously, normalizes bowel movements. If you struggle with putting down a bag of chips, swapping out less nutritious snack foods for high fiber options will help you naturally feel full. Examples include whole grains, beans, and most fruits and vegetables. Speaking of…

Eat more vegetables

This is another one of those rare points of agreement in nutrition. Vegetables are major sources for important nutrients and vitamins to help your entire body function. It’s that simple, really. Toss yourself a salad and start blissfully laughing. Consider expanding your palate with more types of vegetables, especially going by season.

Go for good fats

The reputation of fat in your diet has come a long way—but that doesn’t make it any less confusing. We’ve broken down different kinds of fats and their benefits. To start incorporating healthy fats into your diet, seek out foods like avocados, nuts, eggs, and fatty fish like salmon.

Cut back on sugar

We’ve covered practical and effective tips to gradually cut sugar out of your diet, and the mix of opinions on how your body processes sugar is headache-inducing (like a so-called sugar crash). But what you can do is focus your sugar sources on apples, berries, and other fruits that at least come with fiber and vitamins to help all your systems run in tip-top shape.

You don’t have to sacrifice taste 

Despite decades of harmful rhetoric—partly from old-timey children’s television—healthy food really does taste good. If you’re skeptical, try out some of the best ways to make healthy food taste better. Plus, with fall here, there’s no better time to elevate your veggie game by roasting them to delicious perfection. You don’t need to become a master chef, either—there are plenty of cheap and lazy ways to eat healthy.

Get better sleep

The most underrated healthy eating tips has nothing to do with food. Studies show that getting less than seven hours of sleep on a regular basis can lead to difficult-to-control hunger and cravings. Here’s how to get the most of out your sleep.

Start with your mindset

Healthy eating should be about treating yourself (#selfcare), not punishing yourself. To practice mindfulness, consider reading up on intuitive eating. Additionally, there are concrete tips to make healthy eating easier on yourself, like reorganizing your refrigerator around ready-to-grab healthy options. Ensuring you always have healthy options on hand can help less-than-perfect decisions when hunger strikes.

At the same time, remember to practice patience with yourself. No one diet is perfect, and neither is any one person.

 

New research this week may make diet soda lovers a bit less confident in their habit. The small experimental trial found that some groups of people seemed hungrier and consumed more calories after drinking something with artificial sweetener than they did after drinking a sugary beverage. In particular, those with obesity and women appeared to display more hunger cues, while women ate more food afterward.

Diet sodas and other artificially sweetened beverages have long been a popular alternative for those who want to avoid the empty calories of regular soda but still want that sugary experience. For about as long, though, people have been worried that the artificial sweeteners used to create this illusion are themselves harmful—perhaps even more so than sugar. Diet sodas have been blamed for raising the risk of everything from cancer to blindness to dementia. 

The evidence for some of these claims is pretty weak and based on limited observational research, while others have been thoroughly investigated and not validated so far, such as the fear that aspartame causes cancer. Regulators including the Food and Drug Administration continue to insist that artificial sweeteners are generally safe to eat. But other health concerns possibly linked to diet sodas, such as an increased risk of weight gain or type 2 diabetes, are less easily dismissed, with conflicting data on either side.

This new research, conducted by scientists at the University of Southern California, is one of the relatively few studies to experimentally test the effects of diet beverages on the body and the brain. Experimental studies in the world of nutrition are generally rare, partly because they can be very expensive and harder to conduct than a typical drug trial. The data comes from the researchers’ existing project, known as the Brain Response to Sugar study, which tested how the brain responds to eating different types of sugars as well as the artificial sweetener sucralose.

“Our study included both female and male young adults of varying body weights so that we could understand how specific factors, such as a person’s sex or body weight, might impact the way the brain and body respond to artificial sweeteners when compared to real sugar,” study author Kathleen Page, a physician and endocrinologist at USC’s Keck School of Medicine, told Gizmodo in an email.

Seventy-two participants took part in a cross-over trial, where they were made to go through each of the various conditions over the course of three visits. After a 12-hour fast the day before, at 8 a.m. they drank water sweetened with either sucrose (natural sugar), sucralose (commonly known as Splenda), or nothing at all. Before and after the water, they had their blood taken for testing. And about 20 minutes in, they were given a visual test where they were shown pictures of food while undergoing a functional MRI scan. The MRI and blood test results were intended to record signs of unconscious hunger, such as certain patterns of brain activity or fluctuating levels of certain hormones. Two hours after the water, the volunteers were taken to a buffet, where they could eat as much or as little as they wanted.

Page and her team found that people with obesity (a body mass index over 30) seemed to display more signs of hunger in their brain activity during the test after drinking the fake sugar water than they did after drinking the sugar, while there was no difference among overweight and normal weight participants. Similarly, the women in the study seemed hungrier based on brain response than men after drinking the sucralose, and they also ate more calories at the buffet afterwards.

The findings, the authors say, could provide some explanation for the conflicting data that’s been collected so far on diet sodas, by suggesting that the bodily effects of artificial sweeteners could be influenced by other factors.

“Overall, these results suggest that females and those with obesity may be more sensitive to differences in the way the brain and body respond to artificial sweeteners when compared to regular sugar,” Page said. “This could affect the efficacy of artificial sweeteners in some groups, including women and people with obesity.”

The experimental study is one of the largest of its kind, the authors say, but the findings are still based on a relatively small sample size. And while a lab setting has advantages in testing out a hypothesis, it has drawbacks, too. The study can’t tell us anything about the potential long-term effects of drinking diet soda, for instance, and it only looked at one particular artificial sweetener. According to Page, there’s plenty more research that has to be done into how these sweeteners can affect us.

“There are a lot of questions about the effects of artificial sweeteners on hunger and overall health that still need to be tested. For example, we need to know more about how artificial sweeteners impact appetite and metabolic risk when people eat or drink them on a regular basis,” she said. “We also need to study other types of artificial sweeteners, and we need to test how they affect people of different age groups and people with metabolic disorders, such as diabetes.”

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When one thinks of vampire bats, friendship and cooperation may not be among the qualities that come to mind for these blood-feasting creatures of the night. But maybe they should.

Scientists have provided a deeper understanding of social relationships among vampire bats, showing how those that have forged bonds akin to “friendships” with others will rendezvous with these buddies while foraging for a meal.

Researchers attached small devices to 50 vampire bats to track nighttime foraging in Panama, when these flying mammals drink blood from wounds they inflict upon cattle in pastures. The study involved female bats, known to have stronger social relationships than males.

Among the bats were 23 wild-born individuals that had been kept in captivity for about two years during related research into bat social behavior. Social bonds already had been observed among some of them. After being released back into the wild, the bats were found to often join a “friend” during foraging, possibly coordinating the hunt.

“Each bat maintains its own network of close cooperative social bonds,” said behavioral ecologist Gerald Carter of the Ohio State University and the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, who led the research published in the journal PLoS Biology.

Social bonds among vampire bats as they roost in trees include grooming one another and regurgitating blood meals for hungry pals. The study showed that the social bonds formed in roosts extended into the hunt.

“This study opens up an exciting new window into the social lives of these animals,” Carter said.

The researchers suspect that the bats, while almost never departing on foraging forays with their “friends,” link up with them during the hunt – perhaps even recognizing one another’s vocalizations – for mutual benefit. They hypothesize the bats might exchange information about prey location or access to an open wound for feeding.

Vampire bats, which inhabit warmer regions of Latin America and boast wingspans of about 7 inches (18 cm), are the only mammals with a blood-only diet. They reside in colonies ranging from tens to thousands of individuals.

“People’s first reaction to vampire bats is usually, ‘Uh, scary.’ But once you tell them about their complex social lives, they are quite surprised that we can find such behavior that is somewhat similar to what humans do – and which one would maybe expect in primates – in bats,” said study co-author Simon Ripperger, a Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute post-doctoral researcher.

Ripperger called them “amazing creatures” for several reasons.

“Even besides their social lives, vampire bats are quite special: specializing in a diet of 100% blood is already quite rare among vertebrates,” Ripperger said. “They are amazing runners, which you wouldn’t expect in a bat. They have heat sensors in their snouts that help them find a spot to make a bite. They have a protein in their saliva that prevents blood from coagulation, which is actually being used in medical trials to help prevent blood clots in patients who suffered a stroke.”

The bats attack prey from the ground, using their sharp teeth to open a wound, lapping up blood with their tongues.

Carter said there is reason to fear vampire bats because they can transmit rabies to livestock and people.

“But I do think they are beautiful and interesting animals in their own right,” Carter added. “In this way they are a bit like grizzly bears, sharks, rats and venomous snakes: animals that might not help people in any way and might even endanger them, but should still be appreciated for their own sake.”

TOKYO, Sept 27 (Reuters) – A group of junior lawmakers has emerged as a force to be reckoned with in Japan’s ruling party leadership contest, facing off with party barons in the wide-open race for votes on Wednesday, which will also determine the premiership.

Many of the 90-strong members of the grouping, who rode into power on the coat-tails of former prime minister Shinzo Abe, fear losses in a general election within months of the leadership race, and chafe at party customs, including the weakening but still present grip of old guard factions.

“There’s no transparency in how they operate, no explanation,” lawmaker Keitaro Ohno, 53, one of the founders of the Group for Renewing Party Spirit, told Reuters, referring to the established factions.

“Even if we can operate pretty freely, when it comes time for leadership races and big party events, we’re told from the top ‘hey you guys, look right’. If you ask ‘why right?’, they’ll say ‘Just listen to me. If I say it’s right, it’s right.’ This isn’t good.”

Though similar groups have formed throughout the history of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), this one appears to be having an impact.

Due to its pressure, party barons have ruled that members of the formal factions can vote as they wish on Wednesday.

All four candidates for party leader – who will almost certainly become prime minister as leader of the biggest party in parliament – also joined a debate with the group’s top members, apparently looking to win backing.

Though analysts believe many members of the group will choose vaccine minister Taro Kono, it isn’t endorsing any candidate.

Ohno supports former foreign minister Fumio Kishida – who has talked about party reform, including term limits.

The old party factions have lost influence since reforms in the 1990s when they were banned from funding candidates, leaving that solely to party headquarters. Now they mostly jostle for cabinet and party posts.

‘ENERGETIC’

Though Ohno said party elders can have useful experience, and factions can be helpful, voters tell him and others they’re increasingly distrustful of old-style politics, characterised by backroom deals, like the way Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga was chosen last year.

Members of the group say they have to take the initiative to win over voters.

“I hear talk that our ability to communicate is weak, that we have to do what the elders want,” said Arata Takebe, a 51-year-old Hokkaido lawmaker, in a video on his website.

“If the younger members aren’t energetic the LDP isn’t appealing. That’s why we have this group.”

Rebels they’re not. Many, including Ohno and Takebe, are second- or third-generation politicians. Group leader Tatsuo Fukuda, 54, is the son and grandson of prime ministers.

Many have corporate experience like Ohno, an ex-researcher at electronics firm Fujitsu who held a fellowship at a U.S. university. They also matured after Japan’s economic bubble burst, which Ohno said means they don’t take things for granted.

“Younger Diet members feel like they have nothing to do, they’re cut out, they haven’t earned their service time so they have to be quiet and just do what they’re told, and who likes that?” said Tobias Harris, senior fellow at the Center for American Progress.

The pressure of an imminent general election – one has to be held by Nov. 28 – has given the younger politicians leverage for change, Harris said.

“The circumstances of this election gave them an opening which they’ve used to weaken factional control over the outcome.”

Ohno, who has not identified himself with any of the party’s old factions, hopes his group can fulfil what he says are widespread voter hopes for a more contemporary political system.

“That means breaking away from the Showa-era style of political management,” he said, referring to the period from 1926-1989, corresponding with the reign of Emperor Hirohito. “And, modernisation.”

Reporting by Elaine Lies
Editing by Robert Birsel

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Waste not

These quick pancakes can be made out of most gluten-free grains and pseudo-grains, and will happily take on all sorts of sweet and savoury toppings

Sat 11 Sep 2021 01.00 EDT

This week’s recipe was created by my thrifty mother-in-law. She likes to text us delicious food ideas and updates from her home in South Africa, and she first made these gluten-free pancakes with leftover quinoa, which puffs up splendidly and works with sweet and savoury toppings alike. I’ve also made them with leftover rice and millet, and while the millet was equally puffy, the rice made more of a fritter; both were delicious, though.

Most grains are refined and bleached to make them pearly-white and as long-lasting as possible, but the process creates waste out of the most nutritional parts: the bran and germ. Whole grains such as these are super-economical, even when they’re organic, and are the foundation of a well-balanced diet.

Leftover grain pancakes

This recipe works best with pseudo-cereals such as quinoa, millet, amaranth and buckwheat groats. Pseudo-cereals are any non grass-based seeds that are used like cereals, and can be ground into flour or boiled in much the same way. They seem also to be more cohesive and puff up slightly when cooked into pancakes, so removing the need for a raising agent. However, if you make these with other grains such as rice, be sure to add the optional tablespoon of buckwheat flour as a binder.

If the pancake sticks at first, don’t touch it – just be patient and, once a crust forms, carefully flip over. For the best results, make the batter a couple of hours before you plan to cook the pancakes, or even the day before.

Makes 6 small pancakes

150g leftover cooked quinoa or millet
1 egg
1 tbsp buckwheat flour (optional)
1 pinch salt
Neutral oil, for greasing

In a medium bowl, beat the cooked grains with the egg, an optional tablespoon of buckwheat flour and salt, then chill and store in the fridge until needed. Like most batters, this one works best when it’s mixed a couple of hours in advance.

Warm a nonstick or well seasoned frying pan over a medium heat, and brush all over with a touch of oil. Beat the mixture one last time, then spoon dessertspoonfuls into the hot pan, leaving space between them to allow them to spread out. After a minute or two, when the underside turns golden brown, flip and cook on the other side for another minute or two, until golden brown. Serve hot with your favourite toppings.

Diets and dieting

Collagen supplements are booming, but there is mixed advice on whether eating the protein offers anything more than a healthy, balanced diet

Sat 28 Aug 2021 16.00 EDT

To fulfil our culture’s relentless drive for wrinkle-free skin and an eternal youthful glow, collagen supplements have been gaining more attention, fuelling a booming industry. How well do they work? The short answer: there is evidence that eating collagen may be effective, but experts say we can get what we need through a healthy diet.

There’s no doubt this protein – the most abundant in the body – is important. Collagen is derived from the Greek word kólla, meaning glue, and makes up around three quarters of the skin. More than skin-deep, collagen provides structure for bodily organs, blood vessels, teeth, bones, cartilage, tendons and ligaments (its properties have even been exploited for an assorted array of innovations including glue, musical instrument strings, fabrics and rope baskets).

As with many other biological assets that youth take for granted, collagen starts waning with age as bodies slow down and produce less of it. This manifests in wrinkles as skin becomes less supple and able to retain its tightness, potentially lowering its other vital functions such as hydration, antioxidant support and immune defence. Lower collagen production can also slow wound healing, which explains why increasing dietary protein can double the recovery rate.

Here’s the kicker: collagen is a complex protein made up of 19 different amino acids. If you eat it, the digestive tract’s job is to break down the amino acids before releasing them into the blood stream – and there’s no guarantee they will reform in the same way.

“Collagen doesn’t stay collagen,” explains Pia Winberg, a scientist exploring the benefits of seaweed for wound healing, “and [your body] only makes it if [that’s] what you need first in terms of protein and you have the right set of amino acid building blocks to make it”.

“The marketing of collagen supplements is taking people for a ride, a bit, unless they are deficient in certain dietary amino acids, in which case of course it will benefit. But they could equally get that from just increasing amounts and/or diversity of protein intake.”

Associate professor Stephen Shumack, a clinical dermatologist, agrees that while there’s little harm in taking collagen supplements, getting the building blocks of the protein from a good, rounded diet is a logical and cheaper way to go.

“Collagen supplements are a current fad based on little scientific evidence,” he says. “Fortunately, there is little downside to taking them.”

Some evidence supports supplements

However, various animal studies suggest the whole protein might be directly absorbed, so the story could be a bit more complex. Whether it’s from the whole protein or its constituents, the small body of research that has been conducted in humans does offer some support for collagen supplementation (usually derived from cows, pigs and fish, although Winberg is exploring seaweed as a vegetarian source of the key amino acids).

A 12-week placebo-controlled trial reported that a collagen supplement with nutritional cofactors including vitamins C and E, and zinc improved skin quality in women over 35 years old. Overall, a review found 11 studies that provide supporting evidence for improved skin elasticity and hydration, and wound healing.

There may also be some benefit for osteoarthritis, supported by a controlled trial with athletes that found reduced subjective joint pain in those who took the collagen supplement. Another study reports superior muscle mass and strength following supplementation combined with strength training in male volunteers.

One limiting factor to studies is inconsistent dosages, which makes it hard to determine optimal levels of supplementation.

Dominique Condo, a sports dietitian and researcher with Deakin University in Melbourne, says we are still learning about collagen, but she uses the supplements regularly with elite athletes to strengthen their joints and muscles, particularly important for injury prevention and rehab. She notes that dose is important, especially given that it could be used anywhere in the body.

“I can’t speak to the beauty products as I don’t know enough about them,” she says, “but from a muscle and joint perspective we know there is a certain dose you need to see increases in collagen production (around 15 grams per serve). This is a decent amount of collagen and so it may be that some of the products marketed for the benefits don’t actually have the amount needed.”

Supplements aside, there are several ways to protect and boost collagen levels, where healthy habits come up trumps. First, avoid collagen damaging activities like smoking, eating too much sugar and refined carbohydrates, lack of sleep and exercise, stress and ultraviolet rays from excessive sun exposure.

A healthy diet rich in diverse plant foods can deliver a suite of antioxidants that help counter skin damage. We can also derive the necessary amino acids and nutritional cofactors that help the body make collagen from dietary sources.

Amino acids come from protein-rich foods like eggs, legumes, dairy, fish, poultry and meat. Vitamin C, a critical cofactor, is found in many plant foods including red capsicum, broccoli, citrus and berries. Zinc is also important, high quantities are found in shellfish, legumes, nuts and seeds. Others include proline, found in egg whites, wheat germ, dairy products, cabbage, asparagus and mushrooms, and glycine, delivered by gelatin and protein-rich foods. Copper might also help, which can be ingested through sesame seeds, organ meats, cashews, lentils – and for chocolate lovers, it’s also found in cocoa powder.

So if you’re starting to see unwanted wrinkles or have deeper needs like wound healing and muscle repair, there’s no harm in taking a collagen supplement. However, you’re likely to get the same benefits from living and eating well and including plenty of good quality protein.

Food

A new Swedish study says decades of official dairy wisdom is wrong. Here, a nutrition expert examines more science that questions standard health advice

Sun 26 Sep 2021 05.00 EDT

Over the past 70 years the public health establishment in Anglophone countries has issued a number of diet rules, their common thread being that the natural ingredients populations all around the world have eaten for millennia – meat, dairy, eggs and more – and certain components of these foods, notably saturated fat, are dangerous for human health.

The consequences of these diet ordinances are all around us: 60% of Britons are now overweight or obese, and the country’s metabolic health has never been worse.

Government-led lack of trust in the healthfulness of whole foods in their natural forms encouraged us to buy foods that have been physically and chemically modified, such as salt-reduced cheese and skimmed milk, supposedly to make them healthier for us.

No wonder that more than 50% of the food we eat in the UK is now ultra-processed.

The grave effects of this relatively recent departure from time-honoured eating habits comes as no surprise to those of us who never swallowed government “healthy eating” advice in the first place, largely on evolutionary grounds.

Is mother nature a psychopath? Why would she design foods to shorten the lifespan of the human race?

And time is vindicating. This bankrupt postwar nutrition paradigm is being knocked for six, time and again, by up-to-date, high quality research evidence that reasserts how healthy traditional ingredients and eating habits are.

Dairy

Pass the cheese … dairy fats can lower your risk of cardiovascular disease

The NHS Eatwell Guide, fondly known to its critics as the Eat badly guide, still tells us to choose lower-fat products, such as 1% fat milk, reduced-fat cheese, or low-fat yoghurt. This is based on the inadequately evidenced postwar belief that saturated fat is bad for your heart.

How embarrassing, then, for government dietetic gurus, that a major study of 4,150 Swedes, followed over 16 years, has last week reported that a diet rich in dairy fat may lower, not raise your risk of cardiovascular disease.

This Swedish study echoes the findings of a 2018 meta-analysis of 29 previous studies, which also found that consumption of dairy products protects against heart disease and stroke.

A body of research also suggests that consumption of dairy fat is protective against type 2 diabetes.

Five a day

A slogan invented to shift more fruit and veg, but not one to live your life by

This catchy slogan, now a central plank of government eating advice, came out of a 1991 meeting of fruit and veg companies in California.

Five a day logos now appear on many ultra-processed foods, from baked beans to ready meals, imbuing them with a questionable aura of health.

But other than as a marketing tool, any justification for this slogan is thin.

A major study in 2010 involving 500,000 people across 23 European locations for eight years could not establish a clear association, let alone causation, for this recommendation.

While fruit and vegetables do bring valuable micronutrients to the table, overall they compare poorly in nutrient-density terms with foods such as dairy, meat, fish and eggs.

Very few people in the UK manage to meet the five a day target, and those who do generally attain it by eating more fruit than vegetables.

Fruit contains lots of sugar. A small banana has the equivalent of 5.7 teaspoons of sugar, whereas an egg contains none.

Has the five a day mantra persuaded us to eat more healthy greens? Two of the most fashionable vegetables at the moment are sweet potatoes and squash, both of which are as sugary as sweet fruit.

Perhaps we should face the possibility that the five a day dogma has actually prompted us to eat more sugar.

Salt

Don’t cut out salt completely – a moderate amount is better for you

We are told to minimise our salt (sodium) intake, even to the extent of not salting water to boil pasta.

However, research published recently concludes that the extremely low levels of sodium intake currently advised are associated with increased heart disease risk, whereas moderate amounts are ideal for most people.

The researchers say that most countries in the world, apart from China and a few others, already have average sodium intakes within the lowest risk range. “There is little evidence that lowering sodium [below this average level] will reduce cardiovascular events or death” it finds.

Meat

Ditch processed products such as hotdogs, but a steak won’t kill you

Although meat has been a central component of ancestral diets for millions of years, some nutrition authorities, often with close connections to animal rights activists or other forms of ideological vegetarianism, promote the view that it is an unhealthy food.

The health case against meat is predicated on cherry-picked evidence from low-quality, unreliable, observational studies that fail to draw a distinction between meat in its unprocessed form and multi-ingredient, chemically altered, ultra-processed meat products, such as hotdogs.

Association doesn’t mean causation. Confounding factors exist; someone who eats bacon butties daily might also be eating too much sugar, be consuming lots of additive-laden bread, be under stress, or smoke – the list goes on.

The International Agency for Research on Cancer’s 2015 claim that red meat is “probably carcinogenic” has never been substantiated.

In fact, a subsequent risk assessment concluded that this is not the case.

Epidemiological data has been unable to demonstrate a consistent causal link between red meat intake and disease.

Starchy foods

Official advice to base your diet on carbs is contradicted by science

“Base your meals around starchy carbohydrate foods” – another nugget of government “healthy eating” advice that is contradicted by robust science and well overdue for a rethink.

In February the Pure study, which followed 148,858 participants in 21 countries over nine years was published. It concluded that: “High intake of refined grains was associated with higher risk of mortality and major cardiovascular disease events.”

The researchers found that those who had the highest category of intake of refined grains (at least 350g a day) had a 27% higher risk of death and a 33% higher risk of serious cardiovascular events compared with those whose consumption was in the lowest category.

“Globally, lower consumption of refined grains should be considered,” it concluded. Yet our government stubbornly recommends the opposite.

Eggs

Years of conflicting advice have been unfair to eggs – eat as many as you like

Remember when public health advice was to eat no more than two eggs weekly? That pearl of wisdom was based on the mistaken idea that foods containing cholesterol are bad for you.

When it became clear that eating cholesterol had no effect on the cholesterol profile of your blood, government advice was belatedly changed. Now it tells us: “There is no recommended limit on how many eggs people should eat.” Unfortunately, decades of top-down public health misinformation is hard to shift.

Many people are still unsure whether eggs are healthy or not, despite the fact that eggs are one of the most nutrient-rich foods you can eat.

Food

Protein has gone from a niche bodybuilding supplement to a mainstream obsession – and is now added to a huge range of food and drink products. What led to the sudden growth of this multimillion-dollar industry?

Wed 15 Sep 2021 01.00 EDT

At the Protein Pick and Mix store in Tunbridge Wells, you can have any snack you like, as long as it comes with extra protein. Protein pancakes, protein burger buns, protein muffins, protein nachos, protein croissants. Protein bars, of course, in every conceivable flavour: caramel millionaire’s shortbread, New York cheesecake, mint chocolate chip, double chocolate fudge, lemon drizzle, cinnamon swirl. White chocolate chip cookies that incorporate something called a “high protein lean matrix”.

I am being shown around the store and warehouse by the founder, Anthony Rodgers, 36, who has the well-defined musculature of a man who regularly eats three protein bars a day. He started the business, originally as an online shop, in 2013, after observing the trend for exotically flavoured protein bars in the US. “At the time I was an avid gym-goer,” he says, “and protein bars were just starting to be a little more creative, a little more exciting. People were putting actual effort into the flavours, and it started to transcend the boring, functional: ‘we’re just going to ram some protein in you.’”

Rodgers is a man ahead of his time. In scarcely a decade, protein has ballooned from a niche supplement favoured by bodybuilders to mainstream macronutrient. According to the market research firm Mintel, 6.1% of food and drink product launches in 2020 claimed to be high-protein or contain added protein, up from 3.3% in 2016. The major multinationals are all muscling in: you can buy Mars, Snickers and Bounty bars with added protein at most newsagents. Mondelēz International, which owns Cadbury and Toblerone, acquired the British protein bar brand Grenade earlier this year in a rumoured £200m deal; Kellogg’s acquired RXBar, another protein bar, for $600m in 2017.

The upmarket grocery chain Whole Foods Market has stocked 50 new protein-enriched products in the past year alone, including chickpea tofu and red lentil pasta. “Our 2022 trend report predicts that sunflower seeds will be a hot protein ingredient next year, being included in butters, milk and even ice-cream,” says the UK director of purchasing and operations, Jade Hoai.

The UK is at the centre of the protein craze: according to Mintel, we have the third-highest percentage of products with a high-protein or added-protein claim in the world, after Finland and Australia. During the first lockdown, demand for Protein Pick and Mix’s products tripled: Rodgers and his staff had to work six days a week, just to keep up with orders.

“It’s amazing how much this stuff has become mainstream,” says Rodgers. “When M&S starts doing protein bars, that’s a serious cultural shift … now even my grandmother loves them. She’s buying boxes.”

This multimillion-dollar industry all started, says Rodgers, with one bar: the Quest Cookies and Cream. Incorporating 21g of protein – slightly less than a can of tuna – it was the first protein bar to cross over into the confectionery aisle. I try one: it has the appearance and mouthfeel of a door stop, and tastes like an in-flight dessert. I would eat it if I was very hungry, or drunk.

The technology behind protein bars has evolved to the point where they almost approximate to ordinary chocolate bars. I sample Rodgers’ personal favourite, the Grenade Chocolate Chip Salted Caramel, which contains 20g of protein. “It’s more like a candy bar,” he promises. “It’s genuinely delicious.” The bar is truly tasty, although afterwards I feel as if I have swallowed a remote control, and have no appetite for dinner. “It is very satiating,” Rodgers explains.

Protein contains the amino acids necessary for muscle growth, which is why added-protein products were initially designed for avid gym-goers seeking to pack on muscle. They were stocked by specialist shops, such as Holland & Barrett. These “functional foods”, which included protein powders and shakes, were branded as sports nutrition and primarily targeted at men. The Protein Pick and Mix marketing manager, Milli Levett, 28, used to work for Grenade, a protein-bar manufacturer. At pop-up events, she struggled to persuade women to eat more protein.

Now, 85% of the Protein Pick and Mix’s customers are women. “Everybody’s jumping on the bandwagon,” says Levett. “Lots of the Instagram girlies love it. They’re all MyProtein [a protein supplement brand] ambassadors.” The Protein Pick and Mix Instagram account has 38,300 followers, many young women who post selfies with the new protein bar du jour. “There’s one who buys a single bar every time we list anything new – just to put it on Instagram,” adds Levett.

These women’s protein appetite tracks out of an endlessly evolving diet culture. In the 2000s, carbohydrates were demonised by fans of the Atkins diet; in the 1990s, fashionable (and flatulent) women subsisted on a cabbage soup crash diet for a week at a time. Today’s mania for protein aligns with the vogue for “wellness”, and the ultra-shredded physiques flaunted on television shows such as Love Island and by athleisure-wearing influencers on Instagram. “Protein is diet culture masquerading as something that fuels exercise,” says Eve Simmons of the blog Not Plant Based, and co-author of Eat It Anyway: Fight the Food Fads, Beat Anxiety and Eat in Peace. “In reality, most of us aren’t doing the exercise that is necessary to [require] that much protein.”

The NHS recommends a daily protein intake of 50g, about the same as two small chicken breasts. “A protein deficit is very unusual in a developed country,” says Clare Thornton-Wood, a dietitian and member of the British Dietetic Association. “People think about protein as meat and fish, but there is protein in many different foods, from cereals to vegetables.” The body can only really break down about 20g-30g of protein at a time. “If you eat more than that in one sitting,” Thornton-Wood says, “you are basically wee-ing it out. It’s going down the toilet.” With many protein bars costing upwards of £2.50 apiece, that is an expensive toilet trip. She also warns that excessive protein can be damaging for people with kidney disease as it puts extra pressure on these organs.

Not all protein bars contain animal products, although some use gelatine as a binder or are made from whey protein, a byproduct of cheese making. Soy is another common source of cheap protein. But the origins of western consumers’ love affair with protein can be traced back to lobbying by the meat industry. “There’s a paranoia about protein,” says Jennie Macdiarmid, professor in sustainable nutrition and health at the University of Aberdeen, “and the market is creating and fuelling this demand.”

Our overconsumption of protein is, says Alexandra Rutishauser-Perera of Action Against Hunger, “mostly because of the myth that has been spread about the requirements about animal protein, in particular at conferences financed by the animal-based food industry.” Research published in the journal Climatic Change in 2021 found that US meat and dairy producers have collectively spent $200m on lobbying since 2000. In 2015, the US government declined to include sustainability as a factor in its official dietary guidelines, in a move widely interpreted as a concession to meat and dairy manufacturers. Had sustainability been factored into the guidance, it is likely that Americans would have been encouraged to reduce their meat intake, the meat industry being a huge driver of emissions.

The average American adult eats 100g of protein a day, twice the recommended amount, while in Madagascar, 50% of children have stunted growth due to protein deficiency. “The consequences of protein deficiency can be not developing properly, not being able to do well in school due to reduced cognitive abilities,” says Rutishauser-Perera.

And, of course, the elephant in the exercise studio is the climate emergency. While hulking gym bros strip chicken carcasses daily, and teenagers scoff burgers on the school bus, Madagascar is experiencing its worst drought in four decades, caused directly by climate change. Protein-rich western diets are partly to blame. “Meat contributes significantly to greenhouse gas emissions compared to other foods,” says Macdiarmid, “both in terms of ruminant meats, which produce methane, but also in terms of the amount of land taken up to produce feed for animals.” In 2020, the Climate Change Committee advised the UK public to reduce consumption of meat and dairy by 20% for climate reasons.

If we don’t need to eat all this protein, why are we devouring so much? For many, it’s the pursuit of the body beautiful. The word protein semaphores virtuous self-restraint, visibly striated musculature and pert buttocks. Protein is eating clean and boutique gym memberships. Protein is nut bars nibbled elegantly between MacBook-led meetings. When we reach for protein-rich snacks, what we are really reaching for is a thinner version of ourselves, even if we substitute the word thin for other, more socially acceptable adjectives: lean, defined, fit.

Protein and diet culture go together like supermodels and garden salads, for the simple reason that a protein-rich diet can aid fat loss and build lean muscle (provided you exercise too). “Protein keeps you fuller for longer,” says Thornton-Wood. “That’s why people on diets often try to eat more protein.” When Simmons, of Not Plant Based, had the eating disorder anorexia in her early 20s, she often bought a takeaway boiled egg pot, in lieu of a meal. “It’s a snack,” Simmons says. “It’s not designed to be a lunch.”

To weight-conscious people, the word protein has a halo effect. “People associate protein with being healthy because it’s not carbs, and carbs have been vilified over the years,” says Simmons. It is telling that one of Rodgers’ bestselling bars, the Carb Killa, sounds as if it promises to expel carbohydrates from our bodies, as though they were cancerous cells, rather than macronutrients that fuel our brains, kidneys and hearts. “Protein is such a buzzword and there are so many diets based around high protein and low carbs,” says Levett. “Everyone knows protein … and if you can link the word protein to their favourite sweet treats, all of a sudden it becomes justifiable.”

The irony is that added-protein snacks are often far from healthy. Many bars contain ingredients such as palm oil, which is high in saturated fat, and corn syrup, which has been linked to insulin resistance. The NHS warns against replacing meals with protein snacks. They are highly processed; those white chocolate chip cookies contain 31 ingredients. “People used to be like, the fewer ingredients the better. I don’t want to put all those chemicals in my body,” says Levett. “Now, nobody cares.”

That is not to say that processed foods can’t form part of a balanced diet, in moderation. “It is always better to eat food that isn’t processed,” says Thornton-Wood. “But I’m realistic. I eat processed foods sometimes.” And some of Rodgers’ chocolate-covered protein bars are arguably healthier than a regular chocolate bar, as they are lower in sugar and will fill you up for longer. “You could have a couple of biscuits that are empty calories, that aren’t doing anything for you,” Rodgers points out reasonably. “Or you could have something that’s quite nice, and is hitting your protein [intake].” Plus, many protein bars are vegan – making them an option for people looking to reduce their meat intake for environmental reasons. (Providing they aren’t full of unsustainably produced palm oil.)

As someone who grew up in the fetid, diet-culture swamp of the mid-00s, and had to rewire her brain over two decades not to liken a bread basket to a bowl of heroin, a warehouse full of low-carbohydrate snacks recalls the disturbed messages of my youth. “It’s almost that guilt-free thing,” says Levett, explaining the appeal of a high-protein Snickers. She’s not wrong – I would probably reach for a high-protein version over a regular chocolate bar myself.

But I wonder if we will ever live in a world where women can eat a Snickers bar without feeling like they have run over a small animal. Until that day comes, there’s always a chocolate-covered Carb Killa, for our sins.