Posted on December 12, 2009 in Food and Drink, Life, the Universe and Everything by Jay12 Comments »

BabyFeeding-800No, really – I mean ‘good for you’ .. if you’re a woman, that is.

Now, the world’s women have known that breastfeeding is good for their babies for millennia – since the first woman had the first baby, in fact.   We’ve known this because babies have a regrettable tendency to die if you don’t feed them, and let’s face it, until very recently breast milk wasn’t a choice, it was all there was.  Human babies don’t tend to do well on, say, dog’s milk.  Or cow’s milk, sheep’s milk, goat’s milk, or even mare’s milk, come to that.  Once they’re past a certain age they can manage on it, of course, but newborns?  Not so much.  They might have done pretty nicely on ape’s milk, but good luck with milking that chimp.

However, when the very first baby milk formula was invented, things changed.  Suddenly there was a choice, and provided your baby wasn’t allergic to it, baby formula based on cow’s milk appeared to be a very good alternative.  Many women chose not to breast feed at all, but fed their child solely on ‘baby milk’ – and of course, for some, powdered baby milk was a lifesaver.  Maybe Mum didn’t produce enough milk.  Maybe she was on toxic drugs.  Maybe she had inverted nipples, or for one of a hundred other reasons, chose to feed her baby with breast milk replacement formula.

The companies that produced baby milk put out some very convincing propaganda, too, to persuade ‘on the fence’ mothers to climb down on their side, and – reprehensibly – they also introduced rural parents in third world countries to the magic tins, which caused a lot of illness and death, because of course, people living in those areas often don’t have access to clean water, let alone sterilising equipment.

But anyway.  I digress.

Where was I?

Oh yeah.  Breastfeeding – it turns out – is good for the mothers who do it.  This isn’t one of those studies where you sigh and say ‘but didn’t they do this study already, like about sixteen times?’  No, this is a new and interesting study.  This study, started in 1985, strongly suggests that women who breastfeed are themselves protected against heart disease decades later.

“Breast-feeding, even for just a couple of months, can significantly lower a woman’s risk of metabolic syndrome — a dangerous cluster of heart disease risk factors — years later, reports a new study appearing online Dec. 3 in the journal Diabetes.

In women who didn’t have pregnancy-related (gestational) diabetes, breast-feeding between one and five months lowered a woman’s risk of developing metabolic syndrome by 39 percent, while breast-feeding for the same duration lowered the risk of the syndrome by 44 percent in women with gestational diabetes.”

They think that the important factor is glucose management, but they didn’t anticipate this when they started the study, so they didn’t measure insulin production.   Pity.  But there you go. We live and learn – even scientists.

Fascinating, huh?

Photo by Morguefile.

Posted on December 7, 2009 in Food and Drink, The Home Front by Jay23 Comments »

Pmgrnt-800cjs

I love pomegranates! But ‘the king of fruit’? I don’t know, but they do seem to be wearing a very kingly crown, don’t they?

Sadly, this dish of small pomegranates shrivelled into inedibility because shortly after I bought them I had a bad attack of acid reflux and I knew they wouldn’t help. What a shame … opening up a pomegranate is a feast for the eyes as well as the tastebuds, with that jewelled mass of seeds glowing like rubies against the pale creamy skin and golden-pink outside shell.

No wonder they each wear a little crown, when they have a king’s ransom of fruit sealed inside like gems in a vault.

Macro Monday. Not just a load of old rocks.

O2Arn-800cjs

I’ve just put my feet up with a nice cup of tea after bringing Sid back home from his hotel – otherwise known his former home at the racing kennel, where he spends his holidays curled up at his ex-trainer’s feet in her lounge with upwards of six other dogs. And yes, he thanks you for asking, he did enjoy his two nights away. He always has fun with the other dogs, but he’s glad to be home now with his nose buried in his sheepskin and his mouth watering at the prospect of pigs’ kidneys for tea.

And where have we been, you may ask? Well, we popped down to London to see Eddie Izzard at the O2 arena! My goodness, he was funny! Well worth the trip and the hassle of two round trips over bad fen roads to deliver and collect Sid!

While we were in London, we took the opportunity to visit Harrods. It’s a fun place to spend a day, though it can be awfully disorienting when, not being insanely rich or famous, you aren’t followed around by an obsequious personal shopper to make sure you don’t get lost between silverware and the pet boutique and later deliver you to your chauffeur-driven limo.

Harrods has at least one eating place on each of its six gigantic floors, with about ten or so at ground level. So when we were exhausted from all the orienteering (not to mention the walking), we slumped down in Mo’s Diner (fourth floor) for a bite to eat. I ordered a Philly cheese steak sandwich and OH ordered a tuna melt, and we got a side of bacon and cheese fries to share.

Oh. My. Goodness. Those fries were out of this world. OH would have preferred them crisper, but to me they were just about perfect, dripping with – not just melted cheese, but a flavourful thick cheese sauce too, and plenty of crispy bacon pieces and chopped spring onion on top. YumYumYUMYumYum!

Once I’d finished about half of my sandwich and about two thirds of my share of the fries, I’d really had enough and I knew it, but I kept on eating. And the conversation went something like this:

Me: Do you want some more of these fries?

OH: Nah, you can have them.

Me: Mmmmm. You know how fond I am of potato … (shovelling another forkful into my mouth)

OH: You can’t resist them, can you? If it came to a choice between me, Johnny Depp and potatoes, there’s no telling who’d win!

Me: Add chocolate into the mix and I would have a hard time.

OH: On the potato?

Me: No. Potato and chocolate do not go well together.

OH: (Unsure) Not on the potato?

Me: (Smiles innocently)

OH: Oh. On Johnny. (Sighs) Ooookay .. time to leave. *Signals to waitress*

*Waitress comes along with the bill, OH pays, waitress walks off*

OH: (Consideringly) You could put chocolate on her.

Me: Hahahaha! Yeah, pretty, wasn’t she?

The waitress was a charming (and, yes, pretty) young Polish girl. But stick thin. She was wearing an official ‘Mo’s Diner’ white tee shirt, and what looked like black leggings, but could well have been stretch drainpipe jeans. Stick. Thin. Did I mention that? And the thing about ’stick thin’ is that I’m not even remotely ‘thin’, let alone ’stick’. So I’m swearing off potato, and cheese, and bacon, and Philly cheese steak sandwiches.

But not chocolate.

OR Johnny.

I mean .. let’s not get silly.

He might be ‘drunk as a skunk’, as the news bods put it, but Johnny Depp is still a sweetheart. Take a look at this vid.

Even smashed out of his skull he stops and signs autographs on his way out of a New York bar on Wednesday night, and he’s nice to his fans – even if Jerry does have to point out to him exactly where to put his moniker.

He’s an excellent example to other celebs, some of whom who aren’t always pleasant to be around when they have a skinful. To be fair, Johnny himself hasn’t always behaved well while under the influence, but he’s all grown up now and he’s turned into a real gentleman.

And if you can avoid being rude or embarrassing, isn’t everyone allowed to go a little over the top now and then?

Of course, it’s always possible he just had a really bad migraine ...

… isn’t it?