Eat real food!

Part 2: Don't buy 'Low-carb' slimming foods

The overweight and obese have always provided a very lucrative and ready market for food companies to exploit with expensive, nutrient-poor, highly-processed, 'slimming foods' and diet products. Some of these, the liquid powders you made into a drink, were made largely from skim milk powder, with added chemicals and artificial flavours. The ingredients were very cheap for the manufacturers to buy (skim milk powder is almost given away), but were very expensive for the dieter to buy. Others included inert fillers which contained little or no food at all.

We had hoped that when the new low-carb way of eating caught on, these rip-off merchants would be unable to sell their products and go into liquidation.

How naive we were! It merely gave them yet another market to exploit.

The question we are asked most often is: 'Where can I buy low-carb foods?' The answer of course is simple: you can buy all the foods you need in any high street at the supermarket, butcher's shop, dairy and farm shop because it is not necessary to buy anything special with the diabetes diet way of eating.

Nevertheless, shopping for natural, fresh and healthy food was undermined when low-carb books promoted low-carb products such as meal replacements and dietary supplements. Readers were misled into believing that they needed these special products to be successful but, because most books were from the USA, these products were not at first available in the UK. As low-carb diets increased in popularity the products were shipped to Britain and British food producers adopted a 'me too please' attitude and also jumped on the low-carb bandwagon.

Eat real low-carb food

It is always healthier to eat foods as near to natural as possible. There are so many foods in this category that it is quite unnecessary to eat the heavily-promoted rubbish aimed at damaging both your wealth and your health.

Supermarkets are a way of life these days; they have supplanted specialist shops and stores, and that has not benefitted our health. But, although most of the products sold in supermarkets today are quite unsuitable for human consumption - if you want to remain healthy - it is possible to buy real food there. The secret is to shop around the edges. The cold cabinets around the edges of the stores are where you are most likely to find real food. Stay out of the aisles except for condiments, tea, coffee or cocoa, and the occxasional treat.

Real food will be plainly wrapped, rather than extravagently packaged and have a label that contains no additives, preservatives, colourings or items that you don't recognise as 'food'.