Ham or not?

Traditionally ham is eaten at Christmas in the Nordic countries, so also here in Finland.

At this time of the year the supermarkets are full of hams in all sizes, ecologically grown and traditionally grown from various manufacturers salted in different ways and the prizes may vary quite a bit from where you live and which supermarket you shop in. This year the prizes may drop even more than previous years as we get closer the Christmas.

All that is Finnish has been considered as better, cleaner and safer than anything imported from abroad and so far that has been the same with the traditional Christmas ham. This year it is not discussed whether or not to glaze the ham or in what way to do it but whether to get a ham or not and many hams might not be sold at all as Finnish pig meat, or the pig farmers have lost their good image.

An activist group called "Justice for animals" secretly filmed Finnish pig farms two years ago publishing their filmed material, which was not nice to look at. The condition of some of the pigs were, well, I'd rather not mention it here so I guess you get the picture. I am sad to say I do not anymore recall what, or if anything came out of their action then, as I doubt the details of the farms in question were ever made known to the officials. But when doing the same thing this year again the Finnish Food Safety authority did inspect the farms in question and found major
negligence in half of them.

Anyway, protests are rare in the middle of parliamentary sessions here in Finland, but earlier this week one took place, and this when TV was broadcasting the discussion that was taking place at the time. Two persons hung a streamer from the second floor balcony stating "Is this what we want to do to the animals?" together with a picture of a pig lying down for all the world to be seen.

Strangely enough, the pig industry was granted government funds to clean up the image of Finnish pig meat not too long ago...and this prior to these incidents as far as I know. So the funds might come in handy for a campaign for improving the image, but what I am really concerned about is the conditions of the pigs...not the farmers that treat them badly.

So the big question in Finland this year is not whether to get an ecologically grown ham but if to get a ham at all for Christmas...

Teachers missing table manners

With the economical downfall everything is done to try to save some money by cutback, both in companies, the state and municipalities.

It has so far been customary in Finland for the teacher's to eat with their pupils in the lunch room, at least when they are in an early age, a meal that has been a taxable benefit for the teachers, and thus considered as work as they have been advising and teaching their own class how to behave properly at the table and how to eat.

Now the city of Tampere has decided to cut back on the teacher's lunch benefits resulting in teachers having their lunch in the teachers lounge in future.

Well, I personally think they could do this more commonly, as the off-spring has only been corrected in faulty ways by teachers resulting in many disagreements home at the dinner table. Or the teachers should at least themselves be taught how to eat and hold a spoon properly!

"Chicks not ground alive"

Yesterday you could read in the newspaper that male chicks ground alive, as they are of no use in the egg industry.

Today the Finnish poultry farmer union denies that they are ground alive, as the chicks are first stunned with carbon dioxide gas. Well, according to my knowledge they are still alive.

Bottom line still is, it is completely legal to grind chicks alive here in Finland. No wonder people turn vegetarians as animals are not treated humanely when grown industrially as livestock, for food.

Anyway, as animals are not human, so then why should they be treated humanely?

Chicks ground alive

We all eat eggs, but do we know where they come from?

I just read that little chicks if they hatch before the eggs are packed for distribution and selling, the chicks are ground alive to become animal food. This also happens here in Finland, and there is an outrageous video to see how it is done in the US.
The Finnish bureau for food safety is aware of this, but claim to never have seen such machines, but states at the same time that chicken also are ground alive after first having been stunned unconscious.

I am absolutely outraged, or maybe mortified, just to try to define my feelings...
Where can you find chick friendly eggs?!?

Here is a link where you can watch how it is done:
http://www.mercyforanimals.org/hatchery/

Food poisoning in cafeteria

65 people have caught micro-organism called Cryptosporidium that causes gastro-intestinal illness and 4 have been admitted to hospital because of dehydration.

The infection was as traced to the public works cafeteria in Helsinki that closed on Friday after the health officials learned about it, but the source of the outbreak is still to be determined to avoid it from spreading further in the country, as imported food is suspected to be the culprit.

This is the first of its’ kind in Finland so far, even though they are relatively common around the world. The symptoms of the infection begin to appear one week after you’ve become infected. The symptoms of the infection are diarrhoea, stomach cramps, nausea and fever and can last from two weeks but can remain for up to five weeks. The treatment is symptomatic with fluid rehydration, electrolyte correction and relieving pain. Cryptosporidiosis is an acute short-term infection and in healthy adults the illness usually passes on its own but can become severe in children and persons with immune deficits.

Gold medal in cooking

The Culinary Olympics founded in 1896, is one of the oldest and most prestigious international cooking competitions in the world. And this year the gold medal was won by the Finnish team in Erfurt, Germany, with participating teams from 40 other countries.

So, what does this mean for Finnish cuisine after years of bad mouthed comments from leaders of other European countries, have they been wrong or has the Finns improved their cooking skills?

I am quite sure there were teams present from the countries with leaders who think they have the best culinary skills in their country and I doubt any drastic change has been taken place in the Finnish cuisine, so i guess these famous politicians must have been wrong. And maybe not for the first time as I has been all across the European tabloids.

Anyway, to my own disappointment, the menu served, did not consist of any Finnish specialities, but I guess the ingredients were chosen before hand, as in most renowned cooking competitions.The Finnish winning menu consisted a three-course meal consisting of salmon and lobster with spinach for starters, veal with sweetbread sausages for main, followed by an orange-yoghurt cake and strawberry-chocolate mousse.

Sounds yummy!

As sweet as it comes

As sweet as it comes

Sucralose is a non-caloric sweetener.

It is an approved food additive and is also called E 955 and it is also available as a tabletop sweetener under the brand name SPLENDA. Sucralose is used in diet sodas, yoghurts

It is the only non-caloric sweetener made from sugar, yet it is 600 times sweeter than sucrose which is ordinary sugar. Sucralose tastes like sugar and it has a clean, sweet taste that does not leave an unpleasant aftertaste compared to other artificial sweeteners and it passes rapidly through the body virtually unchanged and it is proven non-toxic to humans in the amounts it is used in food products.

Well, I have enjoyed my occasional use of low-calorie sweeteners as they have tasted artificial which goes well together with the junk food it has been accompanied with but the new Coca Cola being too sweet for my taste as it now contains Sucralose and this little secret pleasure of mine has come to an end but out of a completely different reason.

Sucralose as sweetener may sound good for dieters, but there seems to be a down side to it as 85% of the Sucralose we take in comes out as it was ingested, most of it remains as it was when swallowed and it is neither converted into something else in our digestive tract. So where does it go then?

According to recent Swedish research the Sucralose passes out of us down the toilet ending up in the nature as the today used wastewater treatment processes the have little effect on Sucralose removal rates and the breaking down of the Sucralose molecule is very slow in the nature and there is no knowledge whether the discharge of it into nature has any eco-toxical effects or not.

End of arctic night

Today the sun was above the horizon for the first time since November in Utsjoki, the northern most city in Finland.

The sun was up for almost an hour breaking the arctic winter night that had been going on there for over two months time. The length of the day in southern Finland is just a little bit short of 7 hours getting longer all the time as the spring is returning but with this murky weather it does not seem like spring is closing in on us. The wet weather just seeps all the light into itself making the countryside look blurred and grey, not the time for any walks with the camera either as some wet snow also has been falling from the sky.

Hot cocoa could have done the trick, making me not feel as blue as I do, but sometimes you just get too blue to remember even the most basic things, hot cocoa. Chocolate is good for you when you are feeling low.

A sauna is not a bad thing either so I guess I will be heating it up a bit later in order to get this cold out of my system.

Guidelines for restaurant food

As the Finns of today's modern society on average dine out in restaurants more than once a week suggestions on nutritional content on restaurant food are now considered in Finland.

Master of Health Sciences Enni Mertanen has done a research in a dozen à la Carte restaurants and found out that steak meals meet nutritional guidelines the best and that that are considered to be light suppers were surprisingly heavy alternatives even though the courses left much to be desired concerning their nutritional values. Well why not fixed prices on courses, menus and why not make it a law when you’re at it?!?

Cheaper prices in restaurants with good nutritional meals and more expensive in junk food chains not to mention any names. Then do the same thing with food prices in supermarkets, the better and healthier for you the less expensive, the more unhealthy the food the more expensive.

Hello big brother!

When will we get the food police to check up in each home to see if we eat according to nutritional guidelines? Quit smoking and drinking alcohol, exercise more, or quit coffee for that matter?

Maybe we should have cameras installed in our homes so big brother can check up on us when he wants to see if we exercise as much as we need and be good boys and girls ought to so Santa will bring us some presents next Xmas.

Is Big Brother maybe Santa Claus?

By the way, dear spouse’s quitting coffee drinking has been much easier than we first feared. He has been out on extensive long walks, kept quietly to himself and not been bad at all. It is only I who has badly missed my daily one cup of coffee we always have at the time when he gets home in the weeks. It is always dear husband of mine who turns the percolator on and makes the coffee, as mine of horrible most of the time so there is a good reason for it, or then it is flooding all over the kitchen tops pouring down the sides to the floor.

I only know how to cook, not how to make coffee.

No more coffee!

Sulphite is a commonly known migraine trigger together with cheeses, nuts and onion.

I know dear spouse of mine gets his from sulphites, the reason he has never been very keen on red wine as they more commonly contain sulphites. Last time he had migraine was during Xmas as he had eaten chocolates containing apricots.

Apricots you might ask, how come you get a migraine from them? Well, they are commonly treated with sulphites to preserve their lovely orange colour. This was actually referred to on the chocolate box, but as I did not read it through, as I normally do with most of the edible stuff entering this house it was left unnoticed and the search for the migraines trigger began.

Funny those, as there are several persons suffering from migraine headaches in our family, we all have different things that set it off. Mine is a bit more irregular, I can never tell what set it off and the warning signs have disappeared with age so I can never take any medication in advance, which is a shame but I have to cope with. Last time it was triggered by my chiropractor, the headache I had when entering his surgery shifted places and turned out as s full blooming migraine. So what to do, take a pill go back home by bus and leave the car standing in order to collect some parking tickets, take a pill and drive under the influence back home, or drive home straight away not taking any medication before entering home, which still would be like driving under the influence this time not some medical substance risking an accident? I mean you might just be alright and nothing happens, but what is something happens?!?

Anyway, dear spouse of mine has finally been to the doctor, an appointment we, the rest of the family, have been on him about for more than a year now, but men, they take more than they should, if sane, sometimes resulting a bit too drastic measures, like this time. He just happily phoned me telling me our family doctor was a bit busy at this time, but that he has to quit rye bread, all raw vegetables and coffee to find out what 's wrong.

Well I can understand why in order to be able to determine what in his diet it is that has been causing the trouble; the rest of us gasping in despair for some fresh air, if you know what I mean, but quitting his coffee! Well, this is the day the really sh** hits the fan. It might not be migraines he will be having, and here we are just facing the weekend when he will be home and not shouting at work at somebody else but us suffering from bad headaches.

I must now seriously consider in which order I have to visit all my friends, right this weekend as of this moment before the gets back home. And of course we will be celebrating some, drinking wine and I will have to stay overnight. And this I expect to be worse, and last for longer, than when he quit smoking a year ago.

Turkey feast

I was always a bit envious of the Americans who have their turkey at Thanksgiving as I come from a traditional Christmas ham eating family, and I was desperately looking for a date to have our turkey dinner for years but not until arriving in Finland I got the perfect date, the Finnish Independence day on December 6^th.

And so it was yesterday time for out annual turkey feast once again. This year I had decided to document the cooking and the dinner preparations normally going on from the day before the Independence Day, but once again found out I had forgotten about it. It was not until the turkey was carved and most of it eaten I came to think about getting my precious dear camera into the shrine of cooking, which was too late of course. Now there is only the left overs to photograph, but they can sometimes be more thrilling to work with as you have to be creative in more than just the one single way.

Anyway, by the time the turkey was ready to be taken out of the oven and to be carved it was all too dark to take any photos in nature’s own light anyway so I will seriously have to consider acquiring additional lights in order to be able to shoot the photos I want of food, at least this time of the year, until it once again turns into lighter on December 21^st. Being very disappointed about forgetting to take my photos I was very pleased with the outcome of the bird though, it was delicious. But so it has been every year, and this time I had a different stuffing with the gravy turning out absolutely superb. I could have spooned just gravy all day so nothing would have been left until dinner time!

Cranberry sauce is one thing we only serve with the annual Independence Day turkey, and with the recipe I have it turns a really dark fuchsia colour. The cranberry sauce served with orange carrots, roasted potatoes, orange sweet potato gratin, brown gravy, white turkey meat and either green peas or haricots verts is a colour clash screaming at you on your plate when eating it, but tastes delicious.

Anyway, I feel bad for the citizens of the town of Nokia with no potable water in their taps, must have been quite a sad way to celebrate the 90^th Independence Day with the army been called to help distribute fresh drinking water for the town inhabitants to collect. Now there has even been found Salmonella together with other as virulent bacteria in the water.

Even more sad for the person who opened a valve thus poisoning the whole town doing so by mistake, what feelings of guilt and regret. The Finnish Criminal Police are investigating the incident and it seems that the possibility of polluted waste water getting into fresh cleaned tap water is supposed to be impossible as a safety precaution and a faulty construction is suspected. Now all municipalities are encouraged to see over their water facilities in order to avoid other such incidents.

Buy nothing day

To day is the "Buy Nothing" Day and the intention is to discourage people from shopping and to live without spending money, if only for this one day.

Well I fortunately did my weekend shopping already yesterday, so at least I am game for it even if unintentionally.
But the idea is good; we buy too much unnecessary things without even thinking about it.

Anyway, now Finland's largest retail fashion chains have confessed to having been selling textiles produced with Uzbek child labour, with out knowing about it of course, and the S-Group might even take some of the products off their shelves.

All textile companies are now trying to determine how much of their textiles might be originating from Uzbekistan as the Finnish retail chains wants to trade fair in all lines in the manufacturing of their products.
The cartoon Cow & chicken has been my favourite for long, but seeing it in reality is putting me off meat once again as it already did some 15 years ago, when I turned vegetarian for over a decade and am strongly considering of doing it again after having seen what I saw on the TV last night.

The Finnish welfare organisation Oikeutta eläimille, which would be "Justice for Animals" in English, provided the A-studio TV program with footage of animals cramped together in extremely bad conditions. The footage showed dirty facilities full with sick and injured, suffering animals. As the footage was shown without reference to where it takes place now Evira, the Finnish Food Safety Authority, wants to thoroughly investigate the truth in these claims and the organisation has been asked to give the addresses so the veterinary authorities can inspect the farms in question. The animal cruelty allegations hit the news big yesterday and they were even discussed in the Parliament, but I think that is fair as if we are to keep animals for food and to eat them, then they have to be respected for what they are and not kept in poor conditions in order to make a quick profit.

Unfortunately as our lives have become so urbanised most of us today are not even conscious of where the food comes from, how it is produces or how it appears on to the shelves in the supermarkets where we buy it to carry home in order to cook it and eat it. Milk comes from cartons and meat wrapped in cling-foil.

Piece of cake, or should I say peace of mind?

Healthier but more obese

Finns are still getting healthier but at the same time more and more are obese.

According to recently done new wide scale health survey Finns gain weight despite pursuing a healthier diet with a fifth of both men and women obese. The survey was carried out by the National Public Health Institute with some 6,000 Finns interviewed across the country with the research taking into account peoples' dietary habits, their lifestyle and their blood levels were examined.

So the Finns are healthier but still get more obese, might there maybe something in the western style of eating that is wrong? If people eat and exercise as they are told to do, maybe there is something wrong with the dietary guidelines we are fed with? Or maybe there are some additives commonly used in our food that we are not aware of how it works within the human metabolism, or something badly lacking in our food that used to be there?

One thing though is, the consumption of alcohol has increased and is suspected to be the culprit in many cases as the use of sodium in common used foodsalt has declined as well as people have switched to healthier vegetable oils instead of the satured animal fatty acids that used to be more common. People also tend to take more care of getting their daily exercise, which reminds me of my own.

Better get my wellies on and grab the umbrella before I go out for my daily exercise in the winter rain.

Red nose

Comic relief, red nose day campaign, originally created in 1988 in the UK, was now on Friday held for the first time in Finland.

1, 6 million euros were gathered for charity in the work against child labour. The other of the national TV stations Yle broadcasted 6 hours of special red nose program issues for the charity campaign during the night in order to collect money.

The idea has been to buy you a red nose and do something funny you have always dreamed of doing with the idea of doing something fun for charity. I wonder if Rudolf the red nosed reindeer joined the fun.

And I just got mine absolutely free, the offspring has cursed me with the flu and nobody has bothered to make me any soup. Thank God I had some ready salmon soup in the freezer to heat up !

New ways

According to the news The Finnish National Public Health Institute has been taken by surprise by a study carried out at the Harvard University in the US which conclude that children may five times more likely develop bone cancer if they ingest fluoride added to their drinking water and if Harvard's research holds up to more scientific scrutiny Finland should re-examine the quantity of fluoride it adds to public drinking water, as it is added into drinking as it is believed to strengthen bone structure.

Well, well, here we are once again. Something that was believed years ago to be good for you no longer might be and that we really don not have a choice to say no to as there was no other option. The tap water we all are drinking with out even thinking about what I might, or might not contain. Or the filling in our teeth containing mercury that are bad four our health but would be too expensive to remove.

Have you ever been on a diet?

Well, a lot of us have especially when growing older and becoming more comfortable and the pace slowed down than in the youth when you were still “going places”.

Anyway, why is it that when you are on a diet just one failure, once wrong step always ruins it all and then you think you have a good excuse just going on eating in the wrong way for the rest of the day, and get an even better excuse to continue eating that way for the rest of the week as you are filled with your feeling of disappointment, self-loathing and guilt. Why not just accept the fact you made a mistake after having eaten your chocolate bar or what ever and continue as nothing had happened after having eaten it?

It is just like all these New Year’s resolutions. You might honestly mean it when you make them, but sticking to them is hard as hell. Dieting, or quitting any bad habit like smoking, is a question of a change in your lifestyle, to change your behaviour and normally that is not an easy thing to do. It is not made just out of the spur of the moment’s inspiration; you have to adjust into a new way of thinking and acting, and that normally takes time…anyway, just back on the waggon again asap after your error.

God, I need some more tea as I really don’t know where I am going with this today!

Specs trouble

A tradition that dates back centuries, the traditional herring market opened for this year in Helsinki this weekend. There are quite a few fish markets around the country and most of them have their market days twice a year, one weekend is normally in the fall and the other in the spring and there are large amounts of delicacies to try on place or to buy home apart from the smoked herring I am so fond of eating on rye bread. Dear husband of mine has his preferences of many of the pickled herring varieties and I think he has tried it in any way they pickle it in addition to the many recipes I have tried out here at home. Some with great success, others to great disappointment of the hungry ones and the offspring unwilling and reluctant to even try.

Anyway, with age most of us get poor eyesight and in time we have to get ourselves an aid to be able to cope with daily chores, simple things like reading. For me this already occurred years ago in my teens and I have since then had many glasses and now it was time to get new ones again.

One thing I do dislike is being obliged to change opticians as it always turns bad in the end and so this time once again to no surprise, at least to me now afterwards but I tend to forget about it during the years it works out as it should with the “old and familiar” optician.

Out of some peculiar reason the new opticians never really listen to what I say about my eyes being able to adjust and pretend to see, if you know what I mean. My eyes are for a short period of time, able to make the impossible, that is to pretend almost perfect eyesight and that is just about the time it takes to make the test and after a while it all becomes a blur again and happily the optician prescribes the wrong glasses for me. So this time and here I now am with new specs that are completely useless to me as I can not read with them, not to mention being able to judge if the photos I take are good or bad.

Another thing that went wrong this time is that my eyes do not have the same prescription, as I have poorer sight on my left than on my right and as I have always been farsighted I very much doubt my sight ever improves as these new specs would suggest as they are not strong enough for me to be able to read. And these new ones are the same strength both of them. The thing I hate most about this is not getting the wrong glasses but it is to go back and tell someone whom I am absolutely sure did their best but still failed, it’s the having to “question their professional skills” part that I hate. We all make mistakes but like most people in general neither the Finns do like to be told they are wrong, and as paying customer I am entitled to have what I am paying them for and that is new specs I can see with instead of such I could have used years ago. Guess this is a time I should not be trying out any new, untried food recipes as I might get it all wrong as I might not see what it says in the recipes.

Optional food

The day was again spent on an expedition out in the woods picking mushrooms, this time baskets full of Suppilovahvero, Cantharellus tubiformis, a kind of tube formed chanterelle that is brown on top and yellow underneath like the ordinary chanterelle.

The catch was big even though the season for them mushrooms is not quite yet with the recent warmer than usual weather, so I expect to be going out again later on when the weather has cooled down a bit, just before the winter hits with snow is normally the best time as night frosts do no harm to this species.

We also found surprisingly many ordinary Chanterelles, Cantharellus cibarius, which is quite unusual for this time of the year, but that must be due to the lack of night frost. As the day’s catch was fairly big dear spouse of mine had the good idea of going for a second walk into the woods looking for a third species of Chanterelles, the black tube form chanterelle, Cratellus cornucopoides, but fortunately he found none as he would once again have overdone it. We already, that means me, had loads of mushrooms to clean, some for drying which is where the sauna comes in handy, and the rest to cook with a portion to be indigested right away at dinner time and the rest to be stored in the freezer for future culinary experiences. Just after having put the rest of the tube formed Chanterelles away I read a recipe for mushroom pie I feel an obligation to try so I am looking forward to the next trip to the woods.

Surprisingly many elk flies were still around, but as I now know they do no harm to humans, they are easier to deal with than on our last mushroom expedition when I had not yet googled it.

It is strange how the offspring whom used to be so fond of food in their childhood and now with having grown up and heard the opinions and theories of their friends’ opinions on certain foods, their taste has deteriorated. Some foods that used to be considered as happily savoured are now turned down. Like blue mould cheese, Stilton, Roquefort and Gorgonzola for instance used to be a favourite and now it is over the line detested.

At some point I had to keep in mind a list of fish, that were concerned as “white fish” and there for edible, the same went with mushrooms, some were digestible and others were disgusting, and still very much remains so they are the food optionals, the ones we could do without according to the offspring that is. One thing though that has strangely enough not changed over the years is that broccoli is edible and that is rare, most children hate their veggies and especially broccoli. At one point the offspring even planned to build a house inside a huge broccoli to live in when older, and a second one made out of a huge tomato. Must have been some odd advertisement seen at the time.

Anyway, our palate change over the time and I am not anymore fond of the same things as I earlier used to be, learning new foods is an exciting part of life, at least of mine that is. And here in Finland I never cease to find surprisingly new and innovative ways to cook food.

Helping out

A strange thing I have noticed here in Finland is that sometimes when you are asked to help you are out of some peculiar reason meant to ask when it is convenient for the help you have promised to give. Like for instance when a friend needed help with help with babysitting a toddler with chicken-pox in the early feverish stage just to run a couple of errands on her own like the pharmacists and so on. She never managed to ask me when it was convenient for me to baby-sit, or whether I could baby-sit at a certain time she wanted to go out. In the end she got angry with me as I did not understand that I was expected to have an opinion when she wanted my favour so in the end she told me off by phone in not a very nice way.

How was I supposed to know what she wanted without her either telling or asking me? It’s like when moving your friends don’t arrive to help you with carrying your furniture until the next day when you’re packed gone and unpacked in the new place.

The weather was supposed to be raining all day with intermittent rain showers and as thus the day was completely wrongly planned as most part of this lovely sunny day has been spent indoors cooking after a short shopping trip down to the market when the rain was pouring down earlier this morning.

After a lot of peeling of carrots, beetroots and onions a great deal of chopping were made on the peeled carrots, beetroots, onions and cabbage for the annual bortsch soup. It has now been simmering on the stove in a large saucepan for hours to obtain the right taste. Bortsch soup has one advantage before many other soups, it gets just better for every time you heat it up and most part of it goes in the freezer to be savoured on cold winter nights together with some soured cream. I also managed to get a medium sized pumpkin as pumpkins tend to come in an oversized format, too big for me to handle on my own. So some pumpkin has also been simmering on heat for the traditional pumpkin pie and a very nice pumpkin pickle I learned to know here in Finland and have become very fond of.

Tomorrow is supposed to be a sunny day so the plan is to go mushroom picking but as the weather turned out to be this nice today I wonder if the weather Gods will be gracious enough to let us go out in the woods without getting wet all through.

Creamy stuff

The government budget talks have now agreed upon a cutback on the VAT on food in October 2009 with 5 % of the current rate of today’s 17 %.

I really wonder if that makes any difference to the consumer retail prices anyway, the shops and supermarkets tend to hike the prices up before such changes in order to be able to afford the prices going down with the tax reduction. Another thing that recently has been up for discussion is the origin of food, what it contains and where it comes from as many producers just refine what they have bought elsewhere and mostly not even locally or nationally.

Just recently one of the Finnish dairy manufacturers had to withdraw one type of food cream, which is a cream with lower percentage of fat than average cream, from the supermarkets. This cream in question was not even real cream made out of cow’s milk but instead a concoction made of vegetal fats with preservatives and other additives making it cream-like and said to be healthier than ordinary cream as it contains more vegetable oil, thus also containing more unsaturated and healthier fatty acids.

The reason for the manufacturer being obliged to withdraw the creamy stuff was that the guar gum used as emulsifier in the product was discovered containing too high levels of dioxin and according to the cream manufacturer the dioxin containing guar gum in question originating from abroad as it does of course not grow in Finland. Even when food is made organically, grown locally here in Finland, how do you know it is not grown next to the most trafficked roads in the country, right in the middle of a big city or next to a chemical plant? Even though the food is grown without fertilizers and pesticides, according to my logic it is not organically grown with nearby sources of pollution.

Where does our food come from originally?
How healthy is it ?
Anyway, it snowed yesterday in the most northern parts of Finland and snow is quite rare this early in the year and up in the north people woke up with 5 cms of snow that had fallen during the nightIt is currently colder than it usually is in the rest of the country as well and the fall is well on its way. Funny you always look for the migrating birds to arrive in the spring and especially for the swallows to return to Finland, but you hardly ever see them leave, they just disappear every fall over night like they have done it one more time. Of course you see the other migrating birds flying to the south for the winter in long rows, singing as they leave.

Is coffee good or bad?

Just last winter Finnish research suggested that coffee has beneficial effects on our cholesterol-levels also reducing blood-sugar which would mean less heart-disease and diabetes but now according to this latest Finnish research suggesting the consumption of coffee can lead to hypertension in no concordance with the consumed amount of coffee with one out of 10 commencing an anti-hypertensive drug treatment from the test group.

So, is coffee good for us or is it bad?

Who is to tell if the test group in the latest research would have had to begin the drug treatment anyway even if not drinking any coffee ever? It seems to always be the same, you have to make up your own mind whether to and what, just if and with moderation. Same thing about alcohol, good for you in moderation, especially red wine with it’s’ health effects, but bad for you when over doing it.

One thing lately widely discussed has been whether to treat smokers in the public health care as they have inflicted their deteriorating health by smoking, but years ago no one knew it was bad for you and the same government that now is limiting and prohibiting the smoking in every possible way actually gave away cigarettes for free during the wars to every soldier whether smoking or not smoking! It was back then every man’s right and I know for a fact that in many homes parents smoking indoors with the children present still was every day life in the 70’s here in Finland!

There are nowadays warning texts on every cigarette pack sold in the country and currently is discussed whether to place pictures on the cigarette packs in the future. Like with everything, when it becomes the ordinary every day you don’t even notice it anymore, like the warning texts, and in many ways you rebel against too much of “Big Brother watching you” mentality and now it seems we are to quit drinking coffee as well.

Well good for me as I only drink an average of one cup a day of coffee just for company’s sake and have stickled to my accustomed tea for decades already but guess it will be banned as a health risk too in the near future.