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Lovely recipe book at bargain price.


carlt

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This link looks really good. I was on a course today in London, and (unlike the usual boring fare) the lunchtime meal was excellent, and included sweet potatoes - which I've never tried cooking myself. I notice one of these recipes has sweet potatoes, so I think I'm going to be trying some new stuff soon.

Cheers

Cath

 

 

Sweet potatoes are very good sources of vitamin A and C and contain potassium and vitamin B6. You might find this site useful when considering the relative merits of different foodstuffs.

 

 

Linky

 

 

One thing to bear in mind with a diet relatively free of meat is that you will be deficient or partially deficient in three out of ten essential amino acids (the building block of protein is the simplest way to describe them) so you have to do some clever combining to ensure that that deficiency is covered. Meat eaters don't have to worry about this, although they are almost certainly eating far more than they need. Unfortunately, many vegetarian diets are far too heavily laden with fat and sugar. We should eat a balanced diet and the key word is 'balanced' - it really doesn't matter whether your diet is herbivore or omnivore as long as you are considering what you're eating and it's place in your everyday routine and activities.

 

Okay, teacher hat off! I love sweet potato gratin with roasted garlic and topped off with a scraping of parmesan and paprika. If any one wants the recipe, I'll post it later when I've got more time ....

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Surely, this is more true these days!

 

Sadly not. Whilst most diets are unbalanced in some respects, poorly balanced vegetarian diets are noted for their consumption of fats and sugars (usually in the form of oil-fried carbohydrates).

 

It's natural that this should be so, because simply speaking, the deficiency in three amino acids causes the brain to demand replacements. All starches are converted to sugars in the digestive process as that's how the body absorbs the nutritional content of foods we call carbohydrates which contain trace elements of a few amino acids. But most amino acids (roughly protein in everyday language) is delivered to the body in the form of fats and the application of heat starts the enzymitic process of digestion and so begins to convert the starch to sugar.

 

If there is a deficiency, particularly in amino acids, then the mind will send signals for more which triggers the desire to eat these foods in their most easily digestible form (less processing time really). which is why vegetarian diets can sub-consciously end up being high in fats and sugar. It's natural bodily response. The problem is that without understanding the process it's difficult to understand why this happens and the other major problem is that most of us are lazy, greedy pigs and we like food for all sorts of reasons beyond pure nutrition.

 

So for vegetarians, oil-fried carbohydrates are the way to go as far as the body concerned and they taste nice, because of the Maillard reaction which causing the browning we see on things like chips and toast, where a sugar reacts with an amino acid, to produces those nice crispy-tasty brown bits we all love so much. Which would be fine if we didn't completely overdo it and I think we'd agree that we're all susceptible to that, herbivore or omnivore.

 

For myself, I think it's simply important to eat a balanced and varied diet in moderation and one that tastes nice. Be comforted by this thought though .... meat-eaters have a different set of problems - meat can be both a blessing and a curse, because it takes the body a long time to digest the components of meat, which is why it hangs around in the gut for so long and why it can be a health risk. The innards of your tummy really aren't a very nice place at all.

 

Perhaps we should all note daily what we're planning to eat so we can review our eating habits and scrounge each other's recipes?

 

For lunch today I ate venison burger and red cabbage relish with tomato salad and for tonight's tea I shall eat butternut and parmesan risotto. I haven't eaten any biscuits or cake and I was naughty and made bread last night which provided me with toast and butter for breakfast.

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This thread is making me really hungry......sat waiting for a train with only a packet of polos. I should have bought some sweet potatoes while I was out...I won't be happy with anything else when I get home.

 

 

 

edited .....because of phone induced repetition

Edited by lemontoes
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