Fruit juice - cancer trigger?

In the news...... fruit juice may trigger cancer?

A recent study suggests that people who drink a lot of fruit juice may be more susceptible to some cancers.
The ordinary person in the street (judging from news site comments) who hasn't spent time studying health and nutrition is fairly understandably puzzled and so dangerously contemptuous of this link because they have become used to the idea that natural = good and artificial = bad. Life isn't so simple, sadly.

Two kinds of sugar:

INTRINSIC sugars are those naturally present in foods - a banana is sweet because of its intrinsic sugars.
EXTRINSIC sugars are those added to a food by humans. A cookie is sweet because sugar (white, honey, syrup - whatever) is part of its recipe. Even naturally occurring sugars become extrinsic if they are added to another food. Refined white sugar - sucrose, and natural sugars - fructose, maltose, etc; have minor differences in absorption rate and one may have traces of bleach and the other traces of minerals but when you come right down to it from your bodys point of view (and that of cancer cells) there is very little difference between them. Too much too quickly of any of them = trouble.

Some tumours are known as 'sugar feeders'. Cancer cells hijack the mitochondria (the 'battery' every living cell has) and can multiply furiously if they have an easy supply of their favoured fuel - glucose. The cancer cell doesn't care whether its glucose originates from extrinsic or intrinsic sugars, its the amount of it available in the bloodstream that matters. When you eat a whole piece of fruit the fibre ingested has to be digested, breaking the pieces down to liquids, and that takes a little time for the sugars to reach your blood stream. If that piece of fruit is juiced half the digesting is done already (and a lot of the fibre is missing anyway as its stayed behind in the juicer as pulp) so the sugar from a juiced piece of fruit reaches the blood stream much more quickly.

And no ever drinks just one piece of fruit as a juice - 6 oranges or up to a dozen apples may be needed to make one glass of juice. All of that sugar, intrinsic and 'natural' though it is, hits the blood stream in a flood and forces the pancreas to secrete insulin quickly to protect your brain from that flood (which oddly has the effect of starving your brain of its glucose fuel as it can't take enough before the insulin hits, but thats another story.......) I believe that it takes around 18 inches of sugar cane to supply a teaspoon of white sugar. No one could naturally eat the amount of sugar cane required to supply the sugar in one can of fizzy drink. Understanding intrinsic and extrinsic sugars rather than just 'natural' or 'refined' and how the body uses both will go a long way to helping you keep a healthier you.

High blood insulin levels are associated with some cancers and other diseases, as are high blood sugar levels. The answer is not to regularly force your body to take emergency measures by not ingesting high amounts of any kind of sugar in an unnatural way, whether that is drinking juice, or full fat fizzy drinks, or eating cakes, sweets, chocolates. If you like juices and sweeties keep them for once a day with a meal, never as a snack, as the other food, particularly fat and protein, slows down the absorption of the sugars. Easy. Your teeth will thank you too.

Drying apple slices

One of our neighbours has several apple trees, a small orchard in fact, and in return for the girls 'helping' him pick some gifted us two huge boxes of both cooking and eating apples.

Small and Smallest can easily dispatch an apple or two each a day, but even so there was an abundance. I make apple butter each year (lovely on toast) and copious pies and crumbles but it always rankles a little when I have to add sugar and/or fat to fruit. This year I finally got around to making dried apple slices......with 'help'.



I found the corer a bit hit and miss, but Small happily cut out the core once I'd sliced them using the vintage sweet cutter we use for making peppermint creams at Christmas time.

The slices get soaked in water with a little salt and lemon juice (and it was Smallest's job to keep them ducked under) then slid on bamboo canes strung on hooks below the shelves in the airing cupboard. Now we wait a few days........

I have dried apples before in the oven but why use energy when you can do it for free with just a little more patience?

Toxic childhood...... thoughts

There has been a fair bit in the papers again the last couple of weeks focusing on how miserable UK childrens lives are compared with other societies. Forceful consumerism, over-consumption and a venal media is blamed for this 'toxic' environment for children, but parents should shoulder a huge portion of blame too.

My children don't have much in the way of technological entertainment. We have FreeSat and they follow a few programmes on that and have plenty of video's and DVD's collected over the years, and I don't generally put a time limit on their viewing because I don't often have to.....they do it themselves. A film is all very well but not nearly so much fun as making mud pies and 'soups', or packing their bags for a day in the 'wild' (bottom of garden) or collecting and making habitats for insects... or building a den in the living room, or setting up a school or a shop or a band using my saucepans. I do limit what they see though, and soaps and reality shows are firmly off limits.

We couldn't afford a summer holiday again (we've never had a family holiday) but we went to the zoo; spent a lot of time in the village library taking part in their summer reading scheme; enjoyed walks across fields to the stream; picked blackberries and plums from the garden (and they helped neighbours pick their apples, hauling back baskets of them and helping me turn them into pies and jams and crumbles)

My children make happily do, the same as I do; and on this I wouldn't have it any other way even if we had pots of money!

How to help YOUR children avoid being a toxic harm statistic:

• Don't put money and things above time with them. Work to keep the roof over your head not a Sky subscription; designer clothing; electronic toys (for children or adults!) or expensive food from posh supermarkets. Be honest about that. Want to stay home with your children more than you want to go out to work or want stuff. And yes its normally mums - the person to stay home should ideally be the person the child calls for when ill, or runs to for comfort I think, so usually thats mum. For young children one or two dedicated constant presences concerned only with them and their siblings is important - mum, dad, grandparent, not someone paid to love them just for the day.
  

• Give them time and room to play. Don't fill their time with organised activities that only teach them that someone else will always entertain them. Its expensive anyway. You don't have to play with them all the time, you just need to be there. Start the ideas off sometimes and watch them grow....
  

• Provide blankets/quilts/bits of fabric/old scarves to make dens, costumes and just to snuggle under.
  

• Let them play in mud within reason. Draw the line at bringing it inside (and make that rule clear early on - trust me on this)

• If you have a local library make use of it. They often run special activities for children but even if not, a library offers access to ideas and stories to help their imagination soar. Yours too! If you don't know how to cook, or recognise trees, or answer questions like "why is the sky blue?" then seize the opportunity to learn.
  

• Don't let children watch soaps and daytime chat shows or reality shows. Don't watch them yourself with them in the room. Nothing normalises poor behaviour like them, and even little children take in more than you think. If you wouldn't argue and shout at and belittle your partner in front of them (and hopefully you wouldn't) then why let them see that on telly? For the same reason, teach children early on what adverts are really trying to do, ie, make you want that particular brand of 'stuff' when you probably don't need it or can get something as good more cheaply elsewhere. Teach them to be discerning and don't take what the telly says as good information.

• Cook for them and with them. Show them the process of how food comes out of the ground and what happens to get it on the plate. Let them help choose new vegetables and fruits when shopping and find out how to cook them. Engage them in simple, healthy food from small and you innoculate them against much of the desire for junk.
  

• Say no firmly and mean it, but say yes too sometimes when its something you could do but just would rather avoid making the effort. Their pleasure nearly always makes it worthwhile and you'll feel better too. I make nearly every cake and set up the pop-up shop when my tired body has said no but my heart and mind has said YES!

• A really big cardboard box. 'Nuff said.

That really isn't meant to read like I have all the answers and my children are perfect - that is very far from the truth - but I have lately found how inspiring and helpful some blogs can be......often stating tips and ideas of such simplicity you wonder how you didn't think of it yourself now its staring you in the face with obviousness..... and think that those suggestions could be a start for any parent worried about their children becoming 'toxified'. Just knowing that there are ordinary parents fighting back and enjoying it might help. And however careful we are to give our children a simple childhood they still have to mix with other children. Don't let your children perpetuate the 'toxic' lifestyle.

"Teaching a child not to step on a caterpillar is as valuable to the child as it is to the caterpillar."
~ Bradley Millar


"The only thing children learn when you give them more than they need is to how to take"
~ unknown

Ooops I forgot I had this

How can anyone forget they began a blog? I don't even use strong drink! The only reason I remembered this is because I commented on someone elses blog and was asked if I'd like to do it as elpha.

Its been a nice suprise actually - a positive CRAFT moment (can't remember a f....laming thing) for a change. Not like putting the Weetabix on the birdtable and filling my breakfast bowl with mealworms: that wasn't a positive CRAFT moment at all......the birds don't like weetabix.

Now I've found this again I'll celebrate by sharing my Amazing Thing of the day:


An Amanita Muscaria, otherwise known as Fly Agaric. Very beautiful but very poisonous and I've always wanted to see one but never had, then this one popped up in my garden and absolutely qualifies as an Amazing Thing to me.

I'm a simple soul, easily pleased.......

Hello!

Until very recently I thought I had nothing to say that anyone would want to read. Then I realised that maybe there were more people like me - a stay at home mum on a verrrrrrry tight budget using make do and mend to get by and having a good time doing it.

We can do without holidays, brands, meals out, Sky subscrition, magazines and visits to the hairdresser. We can't do without knowing that our children have me to rely on 24/7. Simple as that. Until Small and Smallest are 'bigger' its Daddy who goes to work to bring in the pennies and me who stays home..... and we muddle through.

I hope I can put some things on here to show that you can stay at home and have a good enough life without all the commercial trappings that the venal media and advertisers would have us believe are essential; but if not at least I'll have a proper place to talk to myself in :)