FAO the over-fat and/or those with metabolic syndrome: Big breakfast, medium lunch & small dinner is beneficial.

Breakfast like a King/Queen.

Go to work on an egg.

According to High caloric intake at breakfast vs. dinner differentially influences weight loss of overweight and obese women.
"High-calorie breakfast with reduced intake at dinner is beneficial and might be a useful alternative for the management of obesity and metabolic syndrome." See the other PubMed studies listed in the above study, which corroborate it.

What about all the "artery-clogging" cholesterol in egg yolks? See Eat Whole Eggs All Day and Throw Your Statins Away? 375x Increased Dietary Cholesterol Intake From Eggs Reduces Visceral Fat & Promotes Healthy Cholesterol Metabolism.

Food Porn.

It's the only porn you're going to get on this Blog!

I was looking at Richard Nikoley's Blog at http://freetheanimal.com/ and I couldn't help but notice all of the pictures of yummy food on it. When I mention to people that I am on an "Atkins-style" diet, they usually say "Oh, so all you eat is bacon & eggs and those expensive low-carb bars, right?" I have yet to buy a low-carb bar.

This post should give you an idea of what I eat. Some of my meals contain Burgen soya & linseed bread and even sweetcorn. These foods are relatively high in starchy carbohydrate, but my body can tolerate them thanks to Vitamin D.

The first picture is what I often (but not always, as variety is important) have in the morning. It's basically coffee with extra oomph provided by a 60cc scoop of powdered linseeds (in the storage jar) and a 60cc scoop of unflavoured whey protein (a milk protein). Vanilla flavouring, brown sugar & Splenda improve the flavour of this concoction, which has the consistency of wallpaper paste!


I do eat bacon & eggs but not for breakfast. I usually have it for lunch, accompanied by chopped onions & mushrooms microwaved with Losalt, Lee & Perrins & Extra-Virgin Olive oil. A big squirt of tomato ketchup gives me my third portion of vegetables! The whole lot sits on top of a slice of Burgen toast.


For afternoon tea, I may have something salmony. Here's a simple smoked salmon sarnie made with ~100g of smoked salmon and a couple of slices of raw onion.


I have a friend who hates the skin & bones in tinned salmon. As this is where a lot of the omega-3 fat & minerals are, I tried an experiment to see if I could disguise them. I blended a 213g tin of wild red salmon with a couple of dollops of Hellman's Real Mayonnaise & a little "juice" from a tin of sweetcorn. I then mixed sweetcorn with the salmon mayonnaise. I dumped a load of the salmon & sweetcorn mayonnaise mix onto a slice of Burgen buttered with Anchor. A little sliced tomato & cucumber completed the ensemble.


Sometimes. I just dump everything on a plate!


For supper, I usually microwave something meaty with something vegetably. Here are some Somerfield "Best Ever" Pork & Chorizo sausages microwaved with chopped onions & mushrooms in a Lea & Perrins-based gravy.


Here's an Aldi quarter-pounder beefburger with microwaved chopped onions, mushrooms & English mustard.


Here's an Aldi chicken jambonette in a sun-dried tomato, balsamic & sweet basil sauce microwaved with peas & mixed veg. The sauce went everywhere!


Here's an Aldi lamb shank in a mint & red wine-flavoured sauce. The shank was in a bag, so the sauce didn't go everywhere when I microwaved it on the plate alongside the peas & mixed veg. The vegetables look a little strange as I microwaved them as they were with a little Losalt (and no added water), but they tasted just fine. Not adding any water means that there is no loss of minerals.


And finally, here's an Aldi pork shank in sweet & sour sauce cooked as per the lamb shank. Aldi have a lot of different varieties of chicken jambonettes, lamb & pork shanks and I will be trying them out as they are very reasonably priced.


So, can I spend the rest of my life on this sort of diet? Oh, yes yes yes yes yes!

As sure as Eggs is Eggs.....

...is grammatically incorrect! Rumour has it that it's a corruption of "As sure as x = x". But anyway....

Eggs are very nutritious and should be eaten freely as part of a healthy diet.

Click http://www.nutritiondata.com/facts/dairy-and-egg-products/111/2 and set the serving size to 1 large (50g) to see what nutrients there are in a raw whole egg.

Click http://www.nutritiondata.com/facts/dairy-and-egg-products/112/2 and set the serving size to 1 large (33g) to see what nutrients there are in a raw egg white.

Click http://www.nutritiondata.com/facts/dairy-and-egg-products/113/2 and set serving size to 1 large (17g) to see what nutrients there are in a raw egg yolk.

The amino acid scores for whole egg , white and yolk are 136, 145 and 146 respectively. Eggs are a good source of complete proteins. This is because the yolk and white need to contain everything necessary for a growing chick embryo.


Can I drink eggs raw to save time?There are three potential problems with this:

1) Salmonella poisoning. Unless you’re pretty sure of the hens that the eggs came from, there is a risk of poisoning from raw eggs. This doesn’t apply to pasteurised eggs from suppliers like http://www.eggnation.co.uk/ for example.

2) Poor absorption of egg white protein. According to http://jn.nutrition.org/cgi/content/full/128/10/1716 , only 51% of raw egg white protein is absorbed during digestion compared to 91% for cooked egg white protein. According to http://ajpgi.physiology.org/cgi/content/full/277/5/G935 , the figures are 65% and 94% respectively. The second study used 200g of white and one yolk. I don’t believe that there is a problem with the absorption of raw egg yolk, though problem 1 still remains. Pasteurised egg white protein is well absorbed.

3) Poor biotin absorption. Raw egg white contains a glycoprotein called avidin which binds to biotin (Vit. B7) in the yolk and prevents its absorption. Cooking or pasteurisation denatures (changes the 3-D structure of) the avidin and renders it harmless.


What about all that cholesterol in egg yolks?

Current “Healthy Eating” guidelines state that we should eat no more than 3 egg yolks/whole eggs per week. This is based on the erroneous assumption that dietary cholesterol always increases serum cholesterol and that this is always a bad thing. According to http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/reprint/32/5/1051.pdf , adding or not adding 500mg of dietary cholesterol from two large eggs per day made no significant difference to serum cholesterol or triglycerides in 116 healthy male subjects. Some went up and some went down. Eddie Vos at http://www.health-heart.org/cholesterol.htm reckons that you’d have to eat 20 whole eggs per day to get as much dietary cholesterol as the liver produces each day (5g). Egg yolks do contain some fat and this should be factored into your total diet. If you happen to have the genes for familial hypercholesterolaemia, then you need to keep a close eye on dietary cholesterol intake. See also Eat Whole Eggs All Day and Throw Your Statins Away? 375x Increased Dietary Cholesterol Intake From Eggs Reduces Visceral Fat & Promotes Healthy Cholesterol Metabolism.

There is a problem with modern eggs though, and it’s caused by the food that’s fed to the hens. Grains contain about 50 times more Linoleic acid (omega-6) than Alpha-Linolenic acid (omega-3) and this raises the omega-6:omega-3 ratio of the eggs that the hens lay. Hens eating a natural diet of bugs, grubs and vegetation lay eggs with a 1:1 ratio of omega-6:omega-3, but grain-fed hens lay eggs with an omega-6:omega-3 ratio of >10:1. A high omega-6:omega-3 ratio in the diet is associated with increased risk factors for heart disease, cancer and Insulin Resistance (pre-type 2 diabetes). Therefore, if large numbers of cheapo eggs are eaten, it’s advisable to eat other foods that are rich in omega-3 fats.