Another post about food. One track mind, that's me.

[davywavy]

"You really ought to eat more fruit and veg", she said to me, eyeing my huge bowl of pancakes, cream and chocolate sauce.
"The heck are you talking about?" I asked. "This is right healthy, this is. Pancakes are make from flour, which is made from grain and I'm pretty sure that's a vegetable of some sort. Cream? Cream is make from grass and water, so that's totally one of my five a day. And chocolate? Chocolate is a bean, and beans are way healthy. Noted for their cardiac properties." I scooped another dollop into my mouth.
"Cream is one of your five a day? Have you even looked at what counts as your five a day?"
I considered this whilst I wiped cream off my face. "Actually", I said, "No."

So I did.

Looking at the government's 'five a day' website, I've got admit that I was surprised by the sheer volume of vegetative matter you might have to consume to meet the guidelines. Some vegetables are better than others, obviously - stuff like kale you only need a little - but others you need more. A lot more. I was especially stuck when I noticed that 1 portion of your five a day is "Eight cauliflower florets".

Eight.

That's forty cauliflower florets in a single day for your full allocation.

A quick headcount at the greengrocers informed me that forty cauliflower florets is pretty much three entire cauliflowers and ever since then I've have had this terrible urge. It's like a story by Edgar Allen Poe, or maybe The Enigma of Amigara Fault. The hapless protagonist learns of some dangerous/creepy/bloody stupid action and is then wracked by an awful temptation to perform it despite knowing what the effects will be.
In this case, I know what the effects will be - nobody will talk to me for a day and I'll get a seat to myself on the train.

But... eating three entire cauliflowers in a day. It draws me with a horrible gnawing power.

Comments

[gnommi.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty sure that the most current research suggests that the health of your gut (in particular, colon cancer risk) is linked positively only to your intake of dietary fibre and not vegetable intake per se.
Of course, now I'm going to have to go and look it up.
Bollocks.
Of course, antioxidants in vegetables also have a positive effect on health (prevention of free radical damage*), but they are in Other Foods too.


*There's a joke in here about Fortnum and Mason's but I'm too tired

[gnommi.livejournal.com]

...although, most of the largest studies only significantly correlate "following all dietary recommendations" with reduced cancer risk. I think this involves regulating several dietary variables:
percentage of calorie intake as fats
red meat consumption
alcohol consumption
dietary fiber intake
fruit and vegetable consumption

it's bloody complex though, one of my ex-colleagues had researched the effects of dietary fiber on rats for decades and found that actually if you give rats prone to hereditary colon cancer a high fiber diet, that some certain types of dietary fiber actually increased their likelihood of developing cancer, and very high levels were uniformly deleterious. He got ousted from his prestigious charitable institution lab, at least in part, for "not supporting the institutional message". Ha.

I was gonna add that obviously this debate about fruit and veg and antioxidants and leptins and obesity and cancer and fiber has been raging for decades and never seems to settle. Not to mention that it's been politicised to some extent, which is never useful. "Eat a balanced diet and not too much" seems to work in general!

However, I cannot see any harm in embracing a 40 florets of cauliflower a day diet. I would recommend you make it into a book.