Hum ? Food for thought maybe ?

A recent programme which alleges to tell us which of the regional/national diets (not exact, individual ones, generally ones tied to location and it's culture) is best.

Now in fairness, I might have missed the point a bit as I didn't manage to catch the whole programme - I missed about the first 10 or 15 minutes. Whether than means I missed some explanation of the criteria of "best", I don't know.

Whether the conclusions are drawn purely from sources like WHO data on various illnesses, life expectancy and death rates I can't say.

What the programme did for me, was to demonstrate that there's no real, single answer. If you took the differences in the actual make up of the diet of the top 10, then it would seem that it's about money. More specifically economic inequality.

It showed to me, that in some places, it was about what was available to the people of that region/nation i.e. that in some places, it was more about what could be grown on the available land. The available land might vary and depend on the relative wealth of the individual/family thereof. In turn, what could be grown for consumption was relative to geographical location.

This doesn't take into account of political and geo-economic factors i.e. that X is easily grown in one place, so lets grow lots then make political deals for the "markets" to buy lots of the excess and then sell it to populations where it wasn't routinely available.

This point and many others were obviously used to work out this league table of diet.

If the programme is available to you for viewing, I'd encourage you to take a look. There is some obvious targets for the good, bad and indifferent. There are few surprises too.

A bigger problem is, that it's a populist bit of programming. Yes it may be that the programmes producers, presenters et al, are "food evangelists" trying and genuinely believing their content, but this whole subject is too big and important to try and put it into such a basic form.

Yes, it could be as easy as taking the currently held and understood knowledge about various foodstuffs, then "cherry picking" the best elements to try and get to a health based pinnacle. Equally, could that idea end up in giving us cross contamination of types/styles of foods that provide a negative effect ?

I'll just go with the position that it seems to be the case that the industrialisation of food production to make it cheaper and more convenient is a negative. Yes, it may be the case that many of the "E numbers" that are used by the food industry are indeed naturally produced, but if you take the analogy of difference between medicine and poison being the dosage or amount, then it would make sense to only use enough of anything to make "it" taste good when it's made in the normal (traditional ?) way. Routine seems to be important i.e. 3 meals a day but with no snacking in between (is that routine or maybe it's cultural/traditional ?). That where excessive amounts of an ingredient need to be considered as to whether it's really needed or not (sugar and salt are two good examples) i.e. what to the ingredients actually bring to a given recipe/food ?

Balance seems important to. Too much of anything is likely not healthy. The base mix of protein, fibre, vitamins and minerals etc appear to be a good mix. Many veggies contain enough of those. There are some diets that do have different make up than that, if you consider that that base mix is a "holy grail".

The programme is worth a watch, if for no other reason, to explain that "your way, isn't the ONLY way". That there are some ingredients we should consider reducing and others that would be beneficial in greater amounts........