There've been studies saying that if you eat, say, a McDonald's hamburger that your reactions to stress are a lot worse. (Now when I Googled, apparently caffeine does too. I stopped with my occasional caffeine because I was having a surgery and found out it makes you heal slower.) I don't know if that has to do with blood pressure. This lady who talked about the wheat/sugar said that high blood pressure is one of the things that those processed foods affect, but I don't remember exactly what she said about it (it was just a brief mention I think). Her notes ranged from being about cultures that eat mostly (whole-wheat) bread and vegetables, to the inuits who eat entirely just animal meat and fat... After I finish the books I already have I'm going to check out her book from the library and then I can see if she talks about it any more.
...And now I Googled a bit. People are saying, for high blood pressure, to do stuff like lower your salt intake - "except you literally (when in America) cannot lower your intake to be within the recommended daily limit if you eat any kind of pre-made food. Look at Subway's sandwiches, look at a can of soup, just one of those will put you nearly at or past the daily limit". They add to this derisive comments about how "no one in today's busy world can cook all their own meals every day" which is absolute nonsense. Cook in large amounts, freeze them in meal-sized packages, learn to realize that 30 minutes spent on a meal isn't a long time and that your health (and the health of your kids) is worth more than anything else.
When I look at some Swedish pages about how to lower your blood pressure naturally, it's all "Eat nuts, fish, meat, vegetables and fruits; exercise more; eat brown bread and brown rice, not French bread". They mention dark chocolate helping - plain cocoa powder is just a vegetable, dark chocolate simply has more cocoa and less other stuff. What are people eating if they're not eating all the things listed there? There's not many options.
Then there's the difference in the food itself between countries. Here, all bread is much more likely to have a higher amount of whole-grain or rye in it because Swedes just think white bread is "tasteless" - at the Swedish fast-food chain, the hamburger buns are (mostly) whole-wheat, and you normally bread fish (strömming, forgot the name) using rye flour. Their cakes have marzipan (mashed almonds + sugar), not frosting (sugar + sugar), and instead of whipped cream with sugar they might have "egg cream" in pastries (I think it's egg + whipped cream, without sugar), or plain jam, etc. They have much lower quantities of salt, sugar and spices in general in their food (my wife claims America must put so much in "in order to cover up the taste of the poison"). They might eat cookies, but there's less sugar and more butter and they're not covered in frosting.
And there's zero culture of dessert. Especially not dessert after every meal. I even have a friend who literally never had "dessert" until when at age 20 his dad was trying to suck up to him. So if they get fat, it's probably on different foods. It's like comparing the rate of lung cancer between the US and Japan - I'm pretty sure Japan's cigarettes aren't the same.
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momijizukamori
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Date: 2015-09-13 09:06 pm (UTC)...And now I Googled a bit. People are saying, for high blood pressure, to do stuff like lower your salt intake - "except you literally (when in America) cannot lower your intake to be within the recommended daily limit if you eat any kind of pre-made food. Look at Subway's sandwiches, look at a can of soup, just one of those will put you nearly at or past the daily limit". They add to this derisive comments about how "no one in today's busy world can cook all their own meals every day" which is absolute nonsense. Cook in large amounts, freeze them in meal-sized packages, learn to realize that 30 minutes spent on a meal isn't a long time and that your health (and the health of your kids) is worth more than anything else.
When I look at some Swedish pages about how to lower your blood pressure naturally, it's all "Eat nuts, fish, meat, vegetables and fruits; exercise more; eat brown bread and brown rice, not French bread". They mention dark chocolate helping - plain cocoa powder is just a vegetable, dark chocolate simply has more cocoa and less other stuff. What are people eating if they're not eating all the things listed there? There's not many options.
Then there's the difference in the food itself between countries. Here, all bread is much more likely to have a higher amount of whole-grain or rye in it because Swedes just think white bread is "tasteless" - at the Swedish fast-food chain, the hamburger buns are (mostly) whole-wheat, and you normally bread fish (strömming, forgot the name) using rye flour. Their cakes have marzipan (mashed almonds + sugar), not frosting (sugar + sugar), and instead of whipped cream with sugar they might have "egg cream" in pastries (I think it's egg + whipped cream, without sugar), or plain jam, etc. They have much lower quantities of salt, sugar and spices in general in their food (my wife claims America must put so much in "in order to cover up the taste of the poison"). They might eat cookies, but there's less sugar and more butter and they're not covered in frosting.
And there's zero culture of dessert. Especially not dessert after every meal. I even have a friend who literally never had "dessert" until when at age 20 his dad was trying to suck up to him. So if they get fat, it's probably on different foods. It's like comparing the rate of lung cancer between the US and Japan - I'm pretty sure Japan's cigarettes aren't the same.