Thinking about Food

After last week's blog post poem I've been giving 'stomach-gate' some serious thought. I recently saw an advertisement on the TV for a Food Smart - Change 4 Life campaign. I signed up and received a bright yellow pop-up recipe book with lots of healthy recipe ideas. I even downloaded their 'Be Food Smart' app on my iPad... and yet... and yet...

Why do I keep finding myself sitting beside an empty cake/chocolate wrapper with incriminating crumbs around my mouth? Is it enough to blame it on comfort eating? Is it? No, I don't think so either.

One of the main messages in the Food Smart campaign is to cook from scratch as there is so much hidden salt, sugar and saturated fats in ready-made foods. I do usually cook from scratch, except when we go for the occasional restaurant meal. Restaurant food isn't the healthiest way to eat. I watched a famous chef on the TV the other evening making a 'really tasty' shepherds pie. He used equal amounts of butter and potato when making his mash. Gaaah!! All that cholesterol!

My major problem is snacking in-between meals. The Food Smart campaign suggests exchanging chocolate and cake for fresh fruit but I know, truly in my heart I know, that I wouldn't stick to it. I love fruit but I have it as well as the chocolate and cake and so I'm going to try and change the ratio bit by teeny bit and see if I can kid my body into accepting the 'fruity' in place of the 'sugary'. Well, it's worth a try and it's recommended in today's Guardian in this article Healthy Food: can you train yourself to like it?

Look! I'm even experimenting with new fruit.
Anyone know how you eat sharon fruit?
It's a bit solid!

As for exercise, the suggestion in my poem that I do sit-ups is now out of the question as I've pulled something very painful in my lower back. [You see, I said it was intolerable!] And so I'm going to start walking more and see if that makes a difference. Watch this space!

What do you do when/if a similar stomach-gate looms large in your life?

Have we stopped listening to older people?

The headline in The Guardian on Tuesday 13^th February said,

      “Francis Report shows we have stopped listening to older people.”

The Francis Report, published on 6^th February 2013, sets out 290 recommendations for improvements in the NHS. This was in response to the neglect and unacceptably high death rate in the Mid Staffordshire NHS Trust hospitals.

One of those recommendations is that there needs to be more of a culture of care in the nursing profession.

I wonder how many experts it took to come to that conclusion. I hate to repeat myself but two years ago I was screaming - literally screaming because my Mum was being neglected! I was screaming about the fact that nurses in charge of caring for my mother, were not caring. From where I was sitting, standing or pacing up and down, they were not rushing around caring for other patients either. They were propping up their work station, chatting, drinking coffee, or they were nowhere to be seen. I accept that this was only one ward in a huge hospital but I saw it happening again and again and it infuriated me.

I blogged about my series of official complaints two years ago. I even got as far as two telephone interviews with the Chief Executive of the local NHS Trust. He had the grace to be shocked by my revelations, or perhaps this wasn’t grace. Perhaps it was political distancing. Was his reaction a part of the culture of fear highlighted in the Francis Report?

• Let us stop, as a nation, being afraid to complain.

• Let us start, as human beings, to listen sympathetically to the needs of others.

• Let us hope that if we witness such neglect in the future, we can report it in the confident knowledge that there will be no repercussions on us or on our elderly, hospitalised relatives and that someone will listen, someone will care and someone will do something about it.

[I shall now step off my soap box and stop shouting... for the time being.]

My Life in a Card

An awkward child,

I was in awe of those huge red cards

The boxed variety with the satin, padded hearts

That my sister received in the post.

I soon learnt the game

Not signing the card

Looking at his face

Wondering if he’d guessed.

Before I knew why or how

The card had lost its meaning.

I’d buy it in-between feeding the babies

Doing the school run

Surviving

until I knew

without a doubt

that my marriage

was broken

And it would take more

much more

than a red heart

on a card

for it to mend.

I never planned it but love came again

And all the better for the passing of time.

Two cards on the mantelpiece

Signed because we know.

A teddy with a red bow

A meal at home for two.

Happy Valentine’s Day, Mr A.