• Discover why outrage from a daily newspaper is misplaced
• Here is the truth about the horror within your sandwich
• Are you happy living where even cheese isn’t really cheese?

Oh for pity’s sake people let’s get a bit of realism here can’t we?

Last week the Daily Mail had an expose of a factory in Nottinghamshire where pre-packed sandwiches are made – and the horror that the workers didn’t wear gloves.

Rather than have the workforce donning plastic or rubber coverings the owners insisted on clean bare hands.

Amazingly there was an uproar about this, with claims that no-one should be eating sandwiches that were being made in such unhygienic conditions…

…really, that’s the reason not to eat a shop bought pack of sandwiches!

Back in 2005 I told you about the anti-salt campaigners, CASH, declaring that these products should carry health warnings for the salt content alone.

The advice is that an adult should eat no more than 6g per day, yet the Waitrose sausage, egg and bacon pack contained 4.17g, the Tesco all day breakfast not far behind on 4g and even the nation’s favourite cheese ploughman’s from Boots wading in at 3.5g.

Surely this was something to get upset by rather than the potential state of someone’s fingernails.

The health risks from pre-packaged sandwiches have been highlighted in several newspapers, with The Times featuring the headline ‘Cheese and pickle sandwich and a heart attack’ in 2009 and a Which statement from the same year reporting that ‘apparently healthy options’ such as chicken are not as good as they seem, with a herb chicken and rocket sandwich from Pret A Manger containing the same levels of fat as a Big Mac burger.

Again the level of public outrage was barely more than a tut and shake of the head.

As a nation we consume over 2 billion shop bought sandwiches each year in the UK amounting to around £4 billion of revenue (interestingly the revenue from the sales of cookbook and recipe books accounts for a mere £90 million by comparison).

Now that is big business, and it is growing as more of us seek out a quick and satisfying lunch that we eat at our desks.

The lunch hour is a thing of the past, and even making your own sandwiches is less popular now than it has ever been.

But you really should know what it is that you are eating.

The horror within

Once you begin to look into the factory-made sandwich business you realise that a grubby fingernail and too much salt are just the tip of the iceberg.

How does blood gel, wheat starch and chemical colourants sound as a filling for you?

Understandably you might not choose that over a nice ham sandwich, but guess what, they are one and the same thing.

By combining blood plasma proteins, starch, flavourings, colourants, a raft of preservatives and shredded pork fat, allowing it to set then slicing it really fine, you would have ‘reconstituted meat’.

This is what you will see on the ingredients panel of a pack of sarnies.

The British Sandwich Association (who else would you turn to for the statistics!) say that the most popular sandwich filling in the UK is chicken, followed by cheese and with egg a distant third.

If only we could rely on them being what they say they are.

WARNING: If you love a chicken sandwich look away now!

Most cheap chicken is of the reformed type. By that I don’t mean it was once a chicken who made bad life choices then found its place back in society…

…I’m talking about birds (including guts, bones and feet) being minced, pushed through a sieve, slaked with salt, steamed to plump up the mixture then placed into moulds to ‘form’ a breast portion.

This is then sliced and mixed with a gloop containing yet more salt, high fructose corn syrup and starch to make the popular coronation chicken filling.

Mmm race you to Tesco’s for that one!

Even cheese isn’t safe

You would think that a nation of artisan cheese makers like Britain would be fiercely proud of our industry…

…but the quest for increasing profits overrides national sentiment!

Rather than use whole milk to make curds that are then left to mature for weeks and months, the alternative is to mix oil in with the milk, add yet more starch and compress the mixture to make processed ‘cheese food’ in a matter of hours.

None of this sounds appetising when laid out in this way, but pack it up in a pretty box, sit it in a refrigerated display case and hear the tills ring.

We should be thankful that there are no rubber gloves in the sandwich factory because the chances are they would end up in the mix as well – perhaps the most authentic and tasty part of it!

Sadly our society now seems to accept poor quality food as standard and is happy to fork out the huge prices for it.

Rather than get up a little earlier and cut up a nice box of fresh salad, pull together a proper ham sandwich and an apple for the grand price of about a pound, many folk prefer to queue at a shop, pay five times as much and get ‘meat gel’ and salt laden starch.

Daily Mail readers I encourage you to be reviled by the sandwich factory, but maybe not for the reasons you thought you were.

Yours, as always

Ray Collins
The Good Life Letter

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• Don’t miss out on this simple home solution to getting the best food
• Have you been a victim of food fraud and fakery?
• Why you should NEVER trust a label

After a few days in Devon with friends and family I was pleasantly surprised when I returned to Chez Collins.

Over the weekend much had happened in the garden.

My potatoes were breaking through the ridges, the summer cabbages had flourished and the broad beans were racing away after just a few warm n’ wet days.

A sight to behold.

I don’t care whether you have a full sized allotment, a few places amongst the flower borders or a window box, there is no joy greater than seeing healthy vegetables growing.

Well, actually the greater delight is the one where you pick your crop and eat it fresh from the soil…

…there truly is no better feeling.

Knowing that the minerals and vitamins are at optimum levels, taste and texture maximised and vibrant colours adding to a visual feast on the plate make a few hours of caring all worthwhile.

Of course we shouldn’t overlook one other major benefit.

I am a man who works hard for my pennies (believe me these letters don’t just write themselves you know!) and I like to keep them in my pocket for as long as possible.

Handing over my hard earned cash at a supermarket till fills me with dread – and it looks like thousands of us have been seriously ripped off when we do so.

Let me explain how our big shops are offering discounts but still earn more than they would normally, plus are destroying our countryside in the process.

Misleading Multibuys & Shameless Shopping Subterfuge

The consumer magazine Which? has revealed that shoppers who think they are being savvy by seeking out special offers are more likely being ripped off than saving money.

Supermarkets advertising huge savings are actually breaking the law by creating the illusion of thrift, and I hope the full weight of the law is brought to bear.

A few examples featured in the Times on May 19th such as Hovis bread being sold by Asda at a special price of £1… the problem is that before the price offer was announced the loaf cost £1 anyway!

Others such as Tesco selling a box of 100 Twinings Tea Bags for £4.40 then putting the price up to £4.49 when they reduced the pack size to 80 bags.

Two for one offers featured a lot in the rip off list, especially when the sellers claimed that the goods were priced at a much higher level than they were before the offer period, for example our friends from Asda again with a Robinsons fruit squash previously available at £1 each being sold as two for £2.50 (as they claimed it was previously available at £1.59 each!).

It shows that the general public is being dupped at every turn by the big businesses that now control food supply in the UK.

There is legislation to prevent this type of retailing fraud but it rarely gets applied due to the complexity of enforcement – and that is why they get away with it.

But the lengths they go to in their drive for profits don’t just stop at straight fraud, they think nothing of forgery either.

Why you should NEVER trust a label

It seems there’s been an upsurge in fake “organic” meat, fish, fruit and veg across the country.

Labels changed… big black marker pens used to blatantly lie on market stall packaging… sneaky loopholes exploited to bend the truth… that kind of thing.

And this criminal deceit is everywhere.

Shoppers have been duped into buying fake free range eggs that were actually factory farmed. This means we pay double what the Continent pays for similar eggs.

Organic Scotch Beef was found to be poor quality beef from South America… “wild” salmon was found to be as wild as a pet gerbil… “corn fed” chicken was found to be nothing of the sort.

But you can see why the rogue traders have moved in.

A chicken worth £2 can fetch £10 when you stick on an organic label. Steak that sells for £10 per kilo can fetch as much as £29.59 if it’s “organic”.

A lot of people are making a lot of money by taking advantage of our desire to eat good food.
It’s not easy to find a solution, either.

I usually come up with a specific tip for you to follow though when I moan about a big health issue.

But in this case it’s tricky.

I mean, what can you do when food manufacturers lie to you on the packet? How can we tell?

All I can say is that, if you can, try and buy fresh British produce from farmers’ markets, bona fide organic retailers, and good, traditional markets.

I realise this is sometimes hard for people to do. But check out this email I got from a friend of mine who reads the Good Life Letter and whose father is in the farming business.

“Supermarkets are bleeding farmers and producers dry. In a few years our dairy farms will be broke and we’ll be net importers of milk.

“We should stop buying fruit, veg and meat from the supermarkets, use farmers and normal markets instead.

“In many cases, I think it’s cheaper and a whole load tastier than supermarket stuff and when you get home there’s none of that packaging to get rid of so it’s much better for the environment too.

“It’s really satisfying to sit down to a meal knowing that more of the money is going back to the farmers and producers as opposed to lining the pockets of monopolistic supermarkets.”

Do your own thing

What all this adds up to is quite a shocking level of blatant profiteering by the food retailers.

Right now they are driving farmers and growers out of business, promoting poor quality and fake foods and then charging us a premium price by sleight of hand.

Looking out over my growing crops I feel strongly that we should all do more for ourselves.

Take any chance to grow a few salad leaves, a fresh tomato or two, even just a bit of cress on damp blotting paper will make a difference.

I wrote the two books that make up Natural Food Wisdom because I passionately believe that we have to regain the control over our food – I urge you to take a positive step today.

Yours, as always

Ray Collins
The Good Life Letter

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• A group of GPs finally take the blinkers off – more than you’d think
• Here’s an angry scientist that should get his facts straight
• A powerful and natural homeopathic remedy for all men to try

I truly believe that when a new GP qualifies they are given a stethoscope, a black bag and a set of blinkers.

It seems to be that every doctor is a passionate believer that the only cures available are pharmaceutical or surgical.

Anything else is pure quackery in their book.

The fact that healing has been an art for many years before Hippocrates roamed the earth, and long before each doctor swore allegiance to his philosophies, seems to have slipped their minds.

Damning statements about how ineffective/dangerous/unscientific any approach to healthcare that doesn’t involve a prescription pad or a scalpel are pushed out into the media on a regular basis.

But, some recent information provides a glimmer of hope that some of the old guard are finally beginning to open their eyes to ‘alternative’ medicine.

A recent survey of GPs found that around half of UK doctors are offering access to ‘therapy outside conventional medicine’, including osteopathy and acupuncture.

In addition the records show that there are 900 GP members of the British Medical Acupuncture Society and an even more surprising 400 who are active members of the British Homeopathy Society.

Why surprising you may ask?

Well of all the alternative therapies this is the one that has attracted most criticism, not least because it is a preferred therapy for our Royal Family.

And that really winds up some of the great and good of the medical profession.

Discover the homeopathic option for this major health concern – click here

An angry scientist…but one that needs to get his facts straight

In the leafy corner of Exeter lies the domain of one Edzard Ernst.

This academic is something of a poster boy for the pharmaceutical industry as he is an outspoken critic of alternative or complementary medicine…despite holding the title of Emeritus Professor at the University, and even once was Professor of Complementary Medicine at the University of Exeter.

You’d think that would make him a force for good wouldn’t you? Unfortunately he is anything but, and this week launched yet another promotion for his memoirs by attacking Prince Charles over his support for integrated medicine.

The vicious nature of Prof Ernst’s attacks on the heir to the throne knows no limits, and in less benevolent times would have seen the foolhardy academic spending time in a deep and painful cellar.

The basis of his ire is two-fold:

A government funded guide on homeopathy for patients which was produced in 2013 as part of an initiative by Prince Charles
The Smallwood report, again commissioned by Prince Charles, which suggested greater access to complementary therapies in the NHS might lead to widespread benefits.
Both of these reports were hardly glowing in their consideration of alternative approaches but did say that there were good reasons to remain open minded.

This waved a red rag to the bull, and Prof Ernst wasn’t slow on the charge.

And all because there’s no SCIENTIFIC proof that complementary therapies work.

The fact that there’s anecdotal proof, and that real people have made real progress using complementary therapies isn’t worth a stuff in his myopic world.

Even when someone tries an alternative therapy and makes a FULL recovery from a terrible illness (after having been written off as a hopeless case by the mainstream), that’s STILL not enough to convince these blinkered doctors that maybe… just maybe…complementary therapies are worth considering.

Unless some scientists can explain WHY this progress has been made, in a series of formulas and flow charts, then the therapy is rubbish and shouldn’t be encouraged.

Can you blame me if my cornflakes go everywhere when leading doctors support such a narrow-minded view?

Of course we ALL want to understand WHY something has worked. That way the therapy can be replicated and improved upon.

But surely the most important thing is that it works?

The whys and hows are secondary.

To dismiss complementary therapies that have helped people overcome many, many ailments, just because some boffin can’t figure out the exact mechanism of action, is madness.

After all, what is the primary role of a doctor? To help us and cure us, or to tell us HOW he’s curing us?

“I’m sorry Mrs Smith, I know that by giving you this tiny green leaf your arthritis pain would be gone in an instant. But I don’t understand how it works, so I’ll just lock it away in my drawer and give you these manmade drugs instead.”

How would that make YOU feel?

I know how I feel… angry. Angry and let down yet again by the mainstream’s intolerance of anything they don’t understand.

Or anything the major drugs companies can’t make money out of.

Take a leaf out of Prince Charles’ book and discover a much maligned approach to health

Basically we shouldn’t write anything off just because we don’t understand it.

A challenge for all of us

I have chosen to consider homeopathy for one condition in particular and have selected a trusted partner to help me develop a solution that we can all try safely… or at least 50% of us can.

I apologise to those of the fairer sex, but I have decided to challenge the grumpy ones out there.

The sweary, grumbly and whinging folk at the other end of the settee…you know who you are chaps!

Unless you have been away on a trip to Mars you can’t have missed the focus being applied to the prostate – with prostate cancer now being predicted to affect one in eight men in the UK.

But it is not just cancer that affects this walnut sized gland at the base of our bladders, there are several other conditions that we need to take note of such as:

• Benign prostatic hyperplasia or BPH, means your prostate is enlarged, but is not cancerous.
• Acute bacterial prostatitis usually starts suddenly from a bacterial infection.
• Chronic bacterial prostatitis is an infection that comes back again and again.
• Chronic prostatitis also called Chronic Pelvic Pain Syndrome (CPPS), is a common prostate problem which can also cause back pain.

Given that the male of the species is typically loathe to take their health seriously I want to REALLY encourage each of you to consider taking the homeopathic approach to better prostate health.

And if you won’t do it for yourself maybe your better halves can act for you. (Ladies, you will be doing him more than a favour by getting him to think about his prostate.)

This special homeopathic preparation isn’t claiming to be a cure for cancer or anything outrageous, merely a natural and gentle way to deal with some of the effects of ageing, and potential precursors of one of the conditions listed above.

I won’t make myself popular with Exeter’s professional cynic, but the Good Prince might applaud this approach.

I’m certain that any of you that try it will also be converts to this gentle and natural health approach.

Prostate Relief – a homeopathic treatment approach to better male health

Yours, as always

Ray Collins

Ray Collins
The Good Life Letter

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•  Looking ill might just make you worse
•  Find out why the latest health scare is pure junk
•  Big deal, it’s only your health being put on the bottom line

“Oh you don’t look so well!”

What’s your natural response to someone saying this?

Do you raise yourself up to a swagger and say, “I’ve never been better; in fact I am positively perky.”

Or, more than likely do you say, “Really? Well I have been under the cosh a bit.”

It’s an interesting fact of human psychology that when we are told we don’t look in rude health we tend to feel unwell.

Of course if we are suffering from something major or worrying the very last thing we want to hear is that we look like we’re at death’s door.

Speaking to a GP at the golf club the other day he said that it was an absolute no-no to start telling patients that they looked sickly… even if they were completely green around the gills.

The premise being that by re-enforcing the problem it makes it more difficult to cure.

So, what in the name of all that is holy is going on with the medical profession of late?

Anyone else come across the term pre-diabetic being used?

This phrase has entered the medical lexicon of late to describe someone who may have blood sugar, blood pressure or even cholesterol levels slightly higher than normal.

This strikes me as just plain stupid – and many much stronger words as well.

Pre-Diabetes – the new health scare

Just think about this for a minute.

Right now it is pre-lunch as I write this, which means I haven’t had my sandwich yet and so I feel a little hungry.

No doubt at a dinner party this weekend I may enjoy a pre-dinner drink (or two!) at a point prior to tucking into my meal, bearing in mind that I won’t have even tasted a morsel of it by then.

On my trip to Portugal I expect the captain of the aircraft to make a series of pre-flight checks whilst we are still on the ground and well before we reach our cruising altitude of 34,000 feet.

My point here is that this concept of PRE- happens well before something occurs, and sometimes could mean that the event doesn’t occur at all.

So, PRE-Diabetes doesn’t make any sense at all.

Researchers state that labelling millions of people in this way merely turns healthy people into patients.

John Yukin, emeritus professor of medicine at University College London agrees, saying that doctors would be better off telling everyone to eat better and exercise more rather than putting them into a spurious medical category.

Having been given this moniker doesn’t help, especially when you consider that within a normal population there will be perfectly healthy individuals who happen to have higher readings than the arbitrary ‘normal’.

“Pre-diabetes is an artificial category with virtually zero clinical relevance,” continues the good prof. “There is no proven benefit of giving diabetes treatment drugs to people in this category before they go on to develop diabetes, particularly since many of them would not go on to develop the condition anyway.”

So, why are we seeing this diagnosis being used?

Should we be surprised?

If a state of human health can be given a label it is usually for one purpose only…

…to coral a pool of potential drug users.

By labelling a group and implying that they have a medical need it affords a ready market for the nice boys and girls employed as pharmaceutical representatives to create a glossy PowerPoint presentation for GPs.

Their counterparts in the marketing team can do a similar job for lazy journos by issuing crafted press releases that write their stories for them.

Let me give you an example of how this works –

From: Diabetes – How GSK is making a difference (a promotional leaflet for GP’s)

‘Another area of research is pre-diabetes, a condition where blood sugar levels are higher than normal but not yet high enough to be diagnosed as diabetes. Pre-diabetes is a key stage in the development of type 2 diabetes and more than 300 million people worldwide are thought to have pre-diabetes.’

Just look at how they quickly identify pre-diabetes as a condition and one that heralds full blown diabetes as a result.

You can imagine how the headline writers would take this information to create a major health scare…

‘300 Million at risk as the obesity crisis worsens’

This is the real danger with this obsession of creating a diagnosis, but if we take the information and use it more positively then we can do good.

The real deal on national health

In an editorial in the British Medical Journal they said that rather than turning healthy people into patients we should use available resources to change the food, education, health and economic policies which have affected so many people.

I could not have put it better myself.

For many years I have banged on about the problems caused by the lack of food technology at school, the decline in home grown and home cooked meals and the domination of our food supply by supermarkets and major food companies.

The real food issue is not that we are eating too much, but that we can’t avoid eating badly.
Having access to the information we need to source and cook healthy meals is constantly being denied to us as big bucks come to the fore.

When you pick up any newspaper or watch the TV news the blame is always put on the consumer choosing to eat fatty, sugary fast food – but the truth is that many have no choice.

Bad food education, bad economic policy and bad health programmes have all been made worse by big company profiteering.

If we do look unwell then it is the global money men who have made us sick.

How much pleasure would there be in being able to say to them, “Your business doesn’t look very healthy, in fact I think you have developed a really nasty syndrome from which you’ll never recover.”

Maybe that particular diagnosis was the cause of the head man at Tesco leaving this week…
…he didn’t look well in the newspapers did he!

Yours, as always

Ray Collins
The Good Life Letter

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• It’s all a bit late for a festive panto…but we now know the bad guys
• Discover the truth about the bad cholesterol myth
• Here are three favourites to celebrate with – guilt free fat!

Anyone else feel like we are involved in a pantomime?

“Oh yes it is… Oh no it isn’t… Oh yes it is…!”

Over the past few weeks a big debate has been raging about saturated fats and whether or not we should be eating them.

Various foods have come in for the kind of scrutiny that a poor dancer does on ‘Strictly’ and it looks like no one can agree on how to score them.

Far be it from me to chuck my two penn’orth in but I feel we need a bit of reason here.

But before I leap up and shout “It’s behind you!” let’s have a look at the facts.

The wicked witch says that these fats are too complex for the body to deal with so end up being shunted around the bloodstream where they cause blockages.

Whilst the grinning Cheshire cat maintains that these hyper complex food sources contain untapped riches which the body needs to stay healthy and, far from being the cause of arterial congestion, can help reduce it.

A real dilemma for poor old Buttons once again then! Let’s see if we can help him out shall we children?

The bad cholesterol myth

Since the early seventies dieticians have been advising against high fat diets.

They told us that too much fat of the type found in meat, eggs, dairy produce and even chocolate was going to bring about certain heart disease.

Even I remember the stories.

Sitting in my purple Oxford bags trousers (the ones with twelve inch bottoms, a six button waistband and side pockets big enough to get my school books in) listening to the Radio 1 chart show on a Sunday teatime when Newsbeat told me to stop eating chips!

This was devastating news to a ten year old.

Not that I used to have chips often (the Friday night treat) but that my mum and dad might be at risk because they’d been eating chips for longer than me.

I was properly worried.

Over the next few years men in kipper ties appeared on the TV and started to discuss levels of cholesterol in the blood and especially the bad type.

The concept of ‘bad food’ had never occurred to me before.

As far as I was concerned my body would deal with anything I fed it and would only take out of it what I needed, the remainder went down the toilet. This was the basis on which I consumed such delights as Spangles, Spanish Gold sweet tobacco and Bazooka gum!

Now I was beginning to understand that some meals were really capable of causing harm. I found it hard to believe back in those vividly coloured days of my youth.

The baggy trousers and weird sweets have long gone but the sense that natural foods like eggs, cheese and chocolate could ever be anything other than nutritious has never left me.

In fact it is probably a major reason why I started writing the Good Life Letter in the first place.

Thankfully the scientists have caught up with common sense and these foods are now in the clear… sort of.

Cardiologist Dr Aseem Malhotra wrote an article in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) titled ‘Saturated Fat is Not the Major Issue’, in which he said the time has come to bust the myth that saturated fat consumption causes cardiovascular disease.

Commenting on a major study of over 600,000 people spread over 18 countries which showed saturated fat consumption had no effect on cardiovascular disease he said:

“This huge and important study provides even more evidence that our focus purely on saturated fat as the number one dietary villain in causing heart disease has been misplaced when we should be focusing on food groups.”

So, dear reader, which food groups do you think are most to blame for heart disease if it’s not saturated fats then?

The real villain of the piece

Standing centre stage with a dark menacing look, a big twirly moustache and an evil laugh is…

Carbohydrates!

But like all pantomime bad guys they have to have evil accomplices and in this case it is the modern day equivalent of the ugly sisters – trans fats, oil based manufactured fillers.

It is clear that to reduce the risk of heart disease we need to reduce the amounts of processed carbohydrates we eat (gluten, sugars and syrups) and cut out the enriched manufactured fats.

This all means…

…TA DA! Stop eating processed food and go back to basics!

Hardly a happy ever after ending but like most pantos the final act was obvious from the outset wasn’t it?

A return to the proper dinner table

How should we interpret these latest findings then?

Well I think it’s time we welcomed back some old favourites to our tables.

– Eggs. Long demonised for their rich, cholesterol-filled yolks they are in fact one of the most nutritious and healthy foods around. A soft boiled free range egg with a sprinkling of freshly ground pepper and toast soldiers will gladden even the hardest heart… Rather than harden its arteries.

– Butter. Where would the toast soldiers be without real dairy butter? Forget the processed low fat choices, opt for a little unsalted butter for the best in healthy spreads. The study found that a particular dairy fat called margaric acid acts to reduce the risk of developing heart disease.

– Cheese. I was enraged a few years ago when a report suggested that my cheddar treat was bad for me so I am delighted to be able to enjoy it without having to sneak off down the shed! The great thing about cheese is that the proteins it contains actually prevent your body absorbing the carbohydrates that we now know are the real problem.

So there you have it.  The players walk to the front of the stage and take their flamboyant bows – and we should all cheer.

Eggs, butter and cheese…

…time for the perfect omelette I think!

Ray Collins
The Good Life Letter

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