Stop Ready Meals

1. NEWS - 2. WHY STOP READY MEALS? - 3. FOOD PATHOGENS AND FOODBORNE DISEASES - 4. THE DAWN OF FOOD CORPORATISM-WHO CONTROLS WHAT WE EAT AND DRINK?

CONGRATIOLATIONS! THE "STOP READY MEALS" CAMPAIGN IS THREE YEARS OLD! THREE YEARS IGNORED BY THE MEDIA (The profession with one of the highest consumption rates of Ready Meals)

to visit NUTRITIONLONDON CLICK HERE
to visit IBSFORUM CLICK HERE

To listen To Dirk's Podcast with Merliannews.com in the USA CLICK HERE

NEWS

After being 'served' with the news, that many newly build hospitals do not have a kitchen any more and will be supplied with READY MEALS, now the "SCANDAL OF FILTHY HOSPITAL KITCHENS" is being published (OBSERVER, Sunday the 12th of August).
Patients in British hospitals are now presented with many choices: unhealthy food from filthy hospital kitchens OR unhealthy Ready Meals. Another choice:
to catch MRSA OR the superbug Clostridium difficile. There must be great material for a new Endemol-TV-Show out there...

+++THE TIMES in their "Body And Soul" supplement on Saturday, 02 June 2007:

"FOOD FOR FEAR...
Prepare for the next food scare: antibiotic-resistant ready-meals..."

This news is as old as ready meals themselves, nothing is new regarding antibiotic resistant bacteria or heat/cold resistant bacteria especially in ready meals.


+++THE TIMES, March 17 2007
"Timebomb Of Listeria In Poisoned Sandwiches"
by Valerie Elliott and David Rose

Front page news (although other papers did not report) for something which happens all the time! This time it came out...that's the difference. Every microbiology student in the first year nows that Listeria monocytogenes is a bacteria that never dies. And ready meals are generally bacterial time bombs, because of bacterial activities and bacterial products.
What's better than serving more ready meals in hospitals, where we find a high number of immuno-compromised patients? A new approach to save the NHS? And then there is the Fool's Standard Agency (sorry, means Food)... but this is a complete different story...

It is still interesting why journalists ignore the actions and campaigns against ready meals... One reason is obvious: looking at their hectic life(style), they are probably the best customers for fast-food/ready-meal outlets.


INTRODUCTION

NEWS 15/12/2006: "Hundreds of thousands of frozen ready meals are being withdrawn over fears they may contain pieces of glass. Asda, Birds Eye and Sainsbury are recalling products" (See newspapers)

A new aspect, the stop-readymeals-campaign has to take into account. Not only are ready meals unhealthy... now the adventure is added: recently we heard of glass in ready meals, moth larvae/cocoons, white hard plastic, metal, etc. We keep you posted - in the meantime have a look at the SUMMER DINNER on the NEWS & FUN page.

WHY STOP READY MEALS?


Once upon a time READY MEALS were an alternative exception, a substitute for a ’real meal’- used rarely when in a hurry. READY MEALS were deemed unhealthy.
Then manufacturers discovered the profitability and the mighty supermarket chains discovered how easy it is to stock and to manage READY MEALS compared to fresh food.
Since then, the ready meal has undergone a change of image. It is not deemed unhealthy any more, but a healthy option, and it is just a question of time when fresh food has the image of being unhealthy. The latest campaigns of the food industry are focussing on telling the customer how healthy their products are rather than how convenient.
And although The Food Labelling Regulations 1996 make it an offence to make medical claims on food – these are claims that a product has the ability to treat, prevent or cure a human disease or any reference to such a property – many products are marketed as “lowering cholesterol”, “helps your heart”, “gives you good bacteria”. The MHRA - Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency - has some very strange rules why big companies like Unilever (FLORA SOFT) are allowed to make medical claims for their "healthy products"... and why suppliers of good food supplements not. One example: It is proven that Vitamin B3 (NIACIN)reduces cholesterol. But manufacturers/distributors of NIACIN are not not allowed to claim this fact... As said before ... margarines can.

Anyway... Enough is said about reducing salt and fats, enough about the use of fresh ingredients or even organic food, which is likely to be undergoing a major change within the next years towards the interest of those who produce and sell ready meals, enough about fighting obesity.

The STOP READY MEALS campaign will also focus on different aspects of health problems caused by ready meals.
The following research projects have been already started:

1. Microbial Activities And Our Immune System – the connection between rising incidents of food allergies/intolerances or gastrointestinal diseases and the change of our food, especially ready meals.

2. The Production Of Biogenic Amines By Gram Positive And Gram Negative Bacteria In Foodstuff.

3. H5N1 Birdflu – Is There A Gastrointestinal Portal For The Bird Flu Virus?

4. Ready Meals And Listeria Monocytogenes


FOOD PATHOGENS AND FOOD-BORNE DISEASES


Many food pathogens are far more resistant to long-standing food-processing and storage techniques than expected. This causes alarm within the food industry, regulatory authorities and with scientists.
Bacteria and their products like endotoxins, enterotoxins and biogenic amines may directly or indirectly cause chronic diseases in humans or function as environmental triggers of diseases. This complex interaction between the microbe or its product and the human immune system can lead to autoimmune reactions and tissue damage in organs.
Microbial activity might be one reason for the rapid increase in food allergies and food intolerances. The increase in gastrointestinal diseases and digestive disorders is also a result of the activity of the microbe or its products which may disrupt intestinal integrity followed by the entry of substances or disruption of nutrient transport, which may lead to nutritional and immunologic deficits. Scientists and medical practitioners still do not know the origin of Inflammatory Bowel Disease (Crohn’s Disease and Ulcerative Colitis) and Irritable Bowel Syndrome or IBS-RS (Irritable Bowel Syndrome Related Symptoms). And there are more diseases which are still more or less not fully understand but are connected with the change of the food we eat: the Histamine Intolerance, Leaky Gut Syndrome, Candida, Dysbiosis and other digestive disorders.

There is a knowledge gap in relation to food-borne diseases… and this gap might be in the interest of the food manufacturing and distribution industry. Why? New regulations, hastily put together by local authorities, food regulatory authorities like the FSA (Food Standard Agency), or the EU, are often bureaucratic, or already out of date, because of the ability of microbes to adapt rapidly to new environments.

The mighty food industry will always fight new health and safety regulations, because new regulations mean loss of profits. Food production and distribution practices have to keep pace with consumer demand and international competition.
The highest profitability is in READY MEALS.
Consumers are buying ready meals, which are offered to us under many different names: home meal replacement, convenience food, ready meals, ready-to-eat meals, sous-vide meals, pre-packed sandwiches/wraps/salads, ready-to-reheat meals, added-value food products… you name it.
Britain’s desire for convenience food is far ahead of the rest of Europe. (80% of the British population own a microwave oven compared to 27% of Italians). Ready meals represent the ultimate convenience food and require no preparation, which seems to be important when looking at our working and family patterns.

But: new pathogens are emerging and long-known microbes are expanding their reach. There is intensified food production, more food-miles and of course use of antimicrobials and hormones as growth promoters.
Resilient bacteria insinuate themselves into fruit, vegetables, poultry, beef and dairy products as they circulate around the globe, generating TRADE-RELATED INFECTIONS (Jill R. Hodges in ‘Globalization and Health’).
Many pathogens survive or even multiply… or they produce high levels of biogenic amines and/or toxins and spread to humans. Of course food safety measures are trying to address infectious pathways, but all of a sudden the microbes appear somewhere else…even in places where they have never been detected before.

THE DAWN OF FOOD CORPORATISM... and who controls what we eat and drink?


This is the dawn of Food Corporatism: The power of the food industry (we have to include the pharmaceutical industry when talking about preservation, food modification, colouring, gene-manipulation) is enormous.
There is a combined interest in selling products nobody needs but many want.
The industry is extremely successful in marketing their products and new trends. In the UK the ready meal has undergone a change of image. It is not deemed as unhealthy any more, it is not even an acceptable alternative but more and more a healthy option.
Yes! Ready meals are healthy! So they say… And the aggressive campaigns to promote ready meals as healthy options will lead rather sooner than later to an accepted opinion “Fresh food is unhealthy”.
Beside the main shopping factors (“I have not much time to shop and to prepare food”) and (“It has to be cheap”), consumers decide with their eyes (“looks yummy!”) and their smell, once the food is ready to eat. There is not much interest in the production of the food and no interest in food technology.
Technologies used include: MicVac overpressure, rapid microwave heating, Ohmic heating, Infrared drying, Halogen (IR) lamp- microwave combination oven for bread baking, non-thermal processing, pulsed electric field processing (PEF), E-beams (irridation), cold plasma, high intensity light, nanotechnology filtration, food-bioprocessing, membrane separation technology for saving energy and water, and many more. The customer trust that the food-companies’ main interest is the consumer’s well-being and not their profits…
Even the health practitioner ‘The Food Doctor”, has his own ranges of ready meals. He promotes it as follows:
“The range demonstrates that healthy food can be delicious and satisfying and provides a great alternative to the many high fat, high salt sandwiches available today.”
In this case, the consumer is told that a debate if ready meals are healthy or not, is not the point any more. In the past, healthy food had the stigma of not being tasty. And in this example the health debate is avoided by manipulating the consumer and telling him that the ‘obviously’ healthy food (of course healthy because it was created by nutritionists) even tastes good.
They are still within the pattern: “Change of ingredients makes us healthy again”. Now the industry uses less salt, less fats in general and less saturated fats and they try to avoid hydrogenated fats and use even organic ingredients. (By the way… nobody is prosecuting them for using the high amount of salt and fat in the first place.). But they are not focussing on the fact that convenience food is fighting our immune-system, which has not adapted to the new food, and might create new diseases. We have to bear in mind that some foods need many generations before our bodies adapt to it. Best example: Compare the incidents of soy allergies in the Western World to those in China or Japan. Magazines print articles written by “one-fits-all-nutritionists” who celebrate the advantage of soy without even mentioning the downsides.

We have less control over the food we eat and drink. We are putting our trust in safe food in the hand of others.

Who are the “others”?

At the bottom of the scale are the workers within the food-industry, often on a minimum wage, without the best understanding of food handling practices, trying to make a decent living.

At the top we have those who own manufacturing and/or distribution companies/outlets or are shareholders of those companies. In free-market terms it is their right to maximise profits and they are therefore interested in saving money wherever possible.

Somewhere in the middle we find small scale farmers and producers, in-house scientists with questionable independence, external scientists/researchers paid by the interested groups to deliver wanted results, herds of public relations people who influence the ‘independent’ media whose primary interest is not to inform but to be ahead of competitors.

And there is another group: the government, local authorities, governmental institutions, the EU, … and all those who have only the best interest of the consumers in their minds… of course.
Here we find all people and groups being lobbied by the industry.

Some examples of their ‘independence’:

-
after Chernobyl there was no risk to eat all kinds of foods;
-

-
during ‘foot and mouth’ outbreaks it was safe to eat pork;
-

-
during BSE it was perfectly safe to eat beef and we even saw a politician who fed his daughter with a burger in front of running cameras;

-
It is widely ignored that there might exist a gastro-intestinal portal for the H5N1 virus (Bird Flu)

-
Food Standards Agency (FSA) chair Sir John Krebs said on the 4th of June 2003:
"In our view the current scientific evidence does not show that organic food is any safer or more nutritious than conventionally produced food”. Now… that’s something…

Here is one example of how a regulatory body reacts to “loss of nutrients in foods”

-
The EU allows the fortification of food. Why? ”Added vitamins and minerals may replace some of the nutritional value lost when the food is being manufactured or stored. They can be added to substitute foods that resemble ordinary food. The best known example is margarine. (Yes, again "cholesterol-reducing FLORA") Vitamins A and D are added to margarine during production so it will have a similar vitamin level to butter. Nutrients may also be added to foods to fortify or enrich them even if the vitamins and minerals added are not normally contained in that food. Calcium is often added to fruit juices and this can provide an important source for people who do not eat dairy products.”
Fortification is fine – even without consulting the consumers – ... now they want to add Folic Acid to bread - but on the other hand the authorities regulate the food supplement industry more and more… because the pharmaceutical industry together with the food manufacturing giants like Danone, Unilever and Heinz are very successful lobbyists with more resources and possibilities to convince decision-makers.

We can go further and further…
Privatisation of hospitals (many new hospitals will have no kitchen and will be supplied with ready meals), schools, universities will spell the end of independent research. We will replace independent research with lobby research. Of course they will introduce much better names like target research or solution research. Means: The researcher is told what has to be the outcome of the research. But he can still decide the way towards the outcome :-)

So… the battle is lost!

Is it…?

STOP!

We can fight the trend… We will try to make the consumers aware of the risks of ready meals and microbial activity in convenience food.

The clear connection between “Microbial Activities And Our Immune system” and the “Production Of Biogenic Amines By Gram Positive and Gram Negative Bacteria In Foodstuff” is part of a report/research which will be published in 2007.
Extracts will be published over the next months on the other pages of this website.
Dirk Budka


LINKS

To visit Dirk Budka's websites NUTRITIONLONDON and IBS-FORUM just CLICK HERE(nutritionlondon) or CLICK HERE (IBS-forum) to go straight to it
for parasite clinic London CLICK HERE
for the virus medical clinic London CLICK HERE