Episode 70 Latest Nutrition News: Olympic Village Meals and Lab Grown Meat

In this episode I discuss the latest in nutrition news.

The Paris Olympics have already run out of eggs and chicken, overestimating the demand for plant based meals or underestimating the need for animal proteins?  Michelin star chefs have made a very French Olympic Village menu with gourmet dishes, moving away from fast food staples like McDonald's. 

A study from the University of Edinburgh reveals that those who prioritise a natural lifestyle might reject meat created in a laboratory. I also discuss the alarming prevalence of ultra-processed foods in UK adolescents' diets.

Learn more about booking a nutrition consultation with Fiona: https://informedhealth.com.au/

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Credit for the music used in this podcast:

The Beat of Nature

Music by Olexy from Pixabay

Transcript

Fiona Kane: 0:31

Hello and welcome to the Wellness Connection with Fiona Kane. I'm your host, Fiona Kane. Today I'm going to be chatting about a few different things, but starting with at the moment, the Paris Olympics are happening at the moment the Summer Olympics and one of the things I was talking about on Breakfast Radio a couple of days ago was actually talking about the menus at the Olympics. And what's really interesting is that this Olympics they've actually banned Maccas, so that athletes have no access to Maccas, and at previous Olympics they've had a lot. At the London Olympics, I think that 20% of the food consumed was Maccas, and there's a sort of famous legend that apparently Usain Bolt ate over 1,000 chicken nuggets at one of the previous Olympics I think it was. Maybe it was at the. I've got to note here which one it was. It was at the Beijing Olympics, the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Now I don't know, like sometimes, when, if people choose to do that at Olympics, is it because they don't have it in their own country and it's something that's different, or they just love Maccas. I don't know. But anyway, previously there's been a lot and this Olympics there's none, and you know, I don't have a problem with that necessarily. I think that it's good to go for healthy food. I think it might be challenging for athletes, depending on what they're used to eating, having something different. But the good thing about the Paris Olympics is they have brought in a lot of healthy food and they're really focusing on good nutrition and there's a lot of.

Fiona Kane: 2:14

They've got all these Michelin star chefs there creating all of these beautiful things. Like they've got this thing. That's like, let me tell you what is in this thing. So it's actually, yeah, it's oh no, I've lost it now. Oh, it's got a croissant and it's like a poached egg, but it's also got all of these other fancy bits. Here we go. So croissant topped with poached egg, artichoke cream garnished with shaved sheep's cheese and truffles Only in Paris they've got sort of things like that on their menu. Truffles only in Paris. Like they've got sort of things like that on their menu. Uh, but they've also got.

Fiona Kane: 2:58

They've done things, for different countries have specially asked for different things. So, uh, they're North, uh, not the North Koreans, all of the Koreans. It's probably the South Koreans, I would think, but anyway, the Koreans have, uh, they have um kimchi and of course, the Australians have Milo, uh, so it's like just a chocolate powder that you put in milk porridge for the Brits, sticky rice for the Chinese, skewers for the Japanese. There's different things that people have requested. What they have done, though, is that they've done a lot of.

Fiona Kane: 3:30

They sort of said they were trying to do I think it was 30% of the food was supposed to be plant-based, because, in my opinion, just virtue signalling about saving the planet and it's not just about virtue signalling as in I don't blame them because they would have been forced to. I imagine, these days, just to even apply, a country, to even apply to hold the Olympics, would have to probably fill in a truckload of stuff all about how they're going to make it carbon neutral, and blah, blah, blah. That's something that a lot of people are being forced to do now, but anyway, the plant-based options and, instead of the chicken nuggets, like they were doing, some sort of soy nuggets sounds fabulous, doesn't it? And so I found that sort of well, they were having a lot of that kind of food there as well, and, look, it's fine. I obviously understand that. Catering for people who have different diets, whether it's for religious reasons or cultural reasons or health reasons, or whatever reason people choose to not eat meat, that's fine, and so they have different diets for those people. But I think that the issue I have is where they kind of really they're trying to push it down people's throats and force them to eat in a certain way, and people are just not going to have that. So, catering for people who choose to eat that way, fantastic, but trying to force a lot of people to eat that way who don't want to, that's a whole other thing. And it's interesting because I see and because, uh, when I'm recording this, it's just a monday and the olympics started on like thursday last week, so it's been going for about four days.

Fiona Kane: 5:13

And um, oh, and, by the way, uh, uh, a local, uh, girl from um, from who's from Penrith, uh, she just won the um, won a gold medal, uh, so that's, uh, jess Fox. Uh, so congratulations to her. She's just won a gold medal overnight. Uh, for she does paddle. What do you call it? My brain's not going to do it. I think it's at Slalom, whatever the canoe thing, where they go around all the different. They go through the oh, my brain's not going to do it today. They go through the rapids and go through all of the different poles and different things. To get past all of these different. It's like a no, my brain's not doing it, but it's anyway. You get what I'm saying. My brain's not going to work there, but anyway, congratulations to Jess Fox and she's run a gold medal today.

Fiona Kane: 6:08

But yeah, what I found interesting? I was having a look at this and they're just talking about the um, their food, and they've actually run out of, uh, they've run out of some of the meat products and some eggs, so they've run out of chicken and eggs. Uh, and what they said they did is they? Um, I was having a read through this article and they said that they were aiming to have. So, okay, for the entire period of the games it'll be um 40 000 meals a day.

Fiona Kane: 6:40

Of the menu, of 500 recipes. Half of the recipes are vegetarian, half of 500. That's a lot, half being vegetarian. Um, about 50 hot dishes and you know, and they've got, it's great, they've got French gastronomy and international cuisine, asian cuisine, african, caribbean option. That's great. But they anyway, they planned for a whole lot more vegetarian and a whole lot less meat and eggs and, surprisingly enough, they kind of ran out pretty much straight away. So they've had to get more in. So it shows you that people want their meat and their eggs and things. So, yes, have the vegetarian and vegan options for people who want that, but don't try and push that on people because they don't want it. It's quite interesting where I live. People because they don't want it. It's quite interesting where I live.

Fiona Kane: 7:38

We fairly frequently have flood events where we get cut off and there's a sort of a bridge that we get cut off from the rest of Sydney, and what happens? Sometimes we get cut off completely and sometimes there's other kind of roads, but it usually happens in rain and weather events where it's kind of hard to get out and hard to get around. And what happens every single time? The first thing that disappears from the supermarket is the meat. The meat all disappears. It sells out. But what happens, though, is, even when we get to a point where it's been a week and they're sort of starting to helicopter drop in food and things, the supermarket shelves have been empty for days. You go to the kind of pretend meat kind of section and the vegan sort of section, and it's full.

Fiona Kane: 8:24

So people have to be really desperate to want to choose those foods. It would seem a lot of the time. So just because they want to push these foods on us, it doesn't mean that that's what we want to eat and what people want to eat. People use their wallet to decide what they want to have and they're not choosing to have these foods. And look, I, by the way, I think I've talked about this before, but I have got no issue with eating those, eating vegetables and eating healthy foods.

Fiona Kane: 8:51

It it's just pushing particular diets, like vegan diets, on people. I think most people don't do well on a vegan diet. Some people do. I think most people don't. And even the people who do, I doubt that they do long-term without taking the supplements. So I think it's an unhealthy diet to push on people. Some people do better eating more vegetarian style and less meat, and some people do better having more meat, less whatever. That's fine. We need to work out what works for us, but it's just the whole moral thing with it being pushed on people that I have an issue with, and also being pushed on people as in it's the only healthy way to eat, when it's just simply not true.

Fiona Kane: 9:33

So the other thing that I was just looking up through the science news today and they were saying that with lab-grown meat. They've found that morals are a key to consumer views on lab-grown meat. So they've done this study at the University of Edinburgh and this is in July 2024, so it's just recent, just now and they said people's moral values could limit their uptake of lab-grown meat. A study suggests people who say living a natural life is morally important to them are more likely to reject lab-grown meat, also known as cultured or cultivated meat, than those who do not. So apparently, if you have people with moral values don't want to have the meat, I don't blame them. Look honestly if you think of like. I always just try to talk about the fact that nature provides right, and in nature there is meat, there are cows, there are sheep, there are eggs that are very healthy and very good for you.

Fiona Kane: 10:34

So the lab-grown thing I just can't. I don't see the attraction in it and the thing is too, what it's doing is ultimately they're pushing people sort of like well, I don't know if I should name people, but just rich, very rich tech people have these business interests in growing things like lab-grown meat and these kind of beyond burgers and things like that and they want to and they're buying up farmland and they kind of. There's a lot of. There's a lot of a push, especially with things like with environmental stuff as well and health stuff. There's a lot of push basically to put farmers out of business and to take farms away and for farms to be held by certain few kind of billionaires and for people to grow our food all in factories and labs and things like that. And I have a big concern around that.

Fiona Kane: 11:37

I think, having you know, I live in the Hawkesbury in Sydney and we have farms around here and actually been able to meet the farmers and been able to eat stuff that you know was grown and produced locally and it's real food and it's the way nature made it, and I think nature makes it a certain way for a reason. So, yeah, I have a real problem with this whole idea of moving away from eating real food and thinking that we can do it better and we can make it better in a factory. Then you know, yeah, I just have a real problem with that and I know that there may be environmental issues there, but I think I personally believe that they are being overblown and I think it's about the way it's produced and sort of obviously some mass-produced issues with um, with meat and that can be an issue, but I just think the story is a little bit bigger than that. And moving away from eating food that's just naturally, just getting back to the nutrition of it naturally healthy. You know, protein is so animal protein is so easily available and easy to like to our bodies, easy to absorb, easy to use, and going away from that to sort of have these foods, these things that are produced in kind of labs and factories no, not for me. I don't like that idea at all.

Fiona Kane: 12:56

The other interesting thing that popped up in my news feed this week was a study about crickets and other bugs. You know the whole kind of because it's some of the same billionaires that want us to eat bugs and the steak's bad for you. Eat bugs because bugs are apparently healthy. And look, I know that I've certainly been to Cambodia and Vietnam and places like that where they regularly eat bugs because they don't have a lot of other food, a lot of other protein and, you know, as a snack or things like that. You know it might be a good thing for some people if they choose to. However, it's interesting because they're actually looking at the allergens in regards to insects and they are noticing that there is quite a high allergen rate for people, and particularly people who already have an issue with things like shellfish. People with shellfish allergies can have a real problem with some of these sort of cricket flowers and cricket meal and stuff like that. So it's interesting.

Fiona Kane: 14:00

Yeah, so they're trying to sort of get people to eat their bugs and not their meat and that doesn't come with. It's not a perfect solution. You have to get a lot of bugs to get the nutrition you need from them, and this sort of allergy profile issue seems to be an issue as well. So, again, it might be something that can be useful to a certain degree, but just trying to stop people from eating meat and just thinking that eating crickets is going to solve that. I think a lot of these issues, they're complicated issues and they need to be looked at in the same way that they need to be looked at thoroughly, with all of the aspects, and not just kind of oh, we can just replace beef with bugs.

Fiona Kane: 14:49

It's not quite that, and it's funny that people do vote with their feet because, like I said, the Olympics, you know they're all about the vegetarian foods and it seems that people wanted the eggs, which are classed as vegetarian as well, of course. But they wanted the eggs and they wanted the chicken, and so they've run out of those within a few days already and had to get the stalls in. So, yeah, people vote with their feet. People know what they want. But also, from a nutritional point of view, these are the foods that have the high nutrition profile that are very easy for our bodies to use, to absorb and use all of the nutrients from. So there is actually there is a wisdom to it, there is a nutrition wisdom to it that these foods are high in nutrients and that is why people want to have them. So you know, they're trying to encourage us to get rid of the farmers and bring in the bugs and bring in this lab-grown meat. And you know, I think it's okay to say no to this if you don't want to have those things, if you do good on you, but not everyone wants to have them. So that's quite okay that you can choose not to. So some of the other.

Fiona Kane: 16:06

There was another thing I saw in the nutrition news today. I'm just looking to see where I saw it. Okay, that's. The other thing I saw is ultra-processed foods. They make up almost two-thirds of the calorie intake of UK adolescents. So ultra-processed food taking up almost two-thirds of the calorie, that's huge. I just put this paper down.

Fiona Kane: 16:31

When I've looked at studies over the last few years and if you go to informedhealthcomau, I've written articles about them. If you just type in ultra processed foods on my website you'll find them, and there's a lot of studies that have come out over the last few years. Looking at ultra processed foods and ultra processed foods is it's like okay, processing is normal. There's a certain amount of processing in food. I mean, even when you just cut up an apple, that's a level of processing right, but it's still fairly close to its regular state and the more you do to it, the more it's processed. And essentially ultra-processed foods are the kind of foods that you couldn't make in your own kitchen. They're the sort of things that are made in factories. So it's not about processing altogether. We do eat processed foods and it is normal to process foods to a certain extent. So the ultra processed foods so many things are done to it. By the time you get it, it's been through a lot of different stages and a lot has been interfered with a lot and ultra-processed foods are. Now we know they're associated with so many health conditions and heart disease and all sorts of inflammation and dementia and all sorts of health issues.

Fiona Kane: 17:45

So to see that two-thirds of the calorie intake of UK adolescents is ultra-processed foods, that's just shocking. I'm just having a look here at the study. It sort of says that, yeah, so this is a study done in the universities of Cambridge and Bristol and the ultra-processed food consumption was highest amongst adolescents from deprived backgrounds and it was higher amongst white kids as well. So those are the kids who don't necessarily get as many broad foods introduced to their diet for various reasons for cultural reasons, for lack of education, for lack of money and that kind of thing. They said that, yeah, ultra-processed foods that are manufactured from industrial substances and contain additives such as preservatives, sweeteners, colourings, flavourings and emulsifiers. They vary greatly but they tend to indicate poor dietary quality, with higher levels of added sugars, sodium, that kind of thing, and they're usually lacking in protein and fiber and all of the vitamins and minerals and things. And they say they've been suggested as one of the key drivers of global rise in obesity, type 2 diabetes and cancer. So this is a major issue that so many of these kids are eating these foods.

Fiona Kane: 19:13

A study was published today in the European Journal of Nutrition and the researchers found that 66% of adolescents' energy intake came from ultra-processed foods. And okay, okay, yeah, so just going through just checking to see what else it says yeah, it's just saying that it's a falls everything off, just said that, uh, if they're eating these foods, they're not eating enough healthy food with good nutrition and it's going to be it's a major issue. So, uh, that's really, um, quite frightening and I imagine that it would be similar in a lot of in the US and in Australia. There'd be places where those numbers were quite similar. And if that's the sort of diet and I imagine for many of us like, obviously, when children, when they become adolescents and they are a bit more freer, they're outside of the home throughout the day and they can, you know, if they've got the money or they've just got friends, they can even get food off friends. And if they've got the money or if they've just got friends, they can even get food off friends, or if they've got the money to go and buy food, obviously, at that age, children start making more choices themselves around food. Still, ultimately, their parents are responsible for their nutrition and they can have a big influence on them. And you hope with these kids that that wasn't their diet all along.

Fiona Kane: 20:33

But, knowing what I do about the diet, the British diet for some people and just in general, that kind of diet for people who do have the lack of money, lack of education and lack of variety of food available to them and possibly, in in some cases, these are people who maybe don't have a car or maybe can't travel too far to get food. Uh, these people, uh, you know, in the uk I know it's really popular for them to just get food from their local chippy, uh, which is basically they're just getting these sort of hot chips and potato based things and, um, and if they are eating meat, it's kind of like a donut kebab type thing, lots of barbecue sauce and all that kind of stuff. So basically, lots of sugar and lots of soft drink mixed with poor quality meat and lots of fried up potatoes and things like that. That's the kind of thing that these people are eating and yeah, that's really that is a real problem. So, yeah, so that's a bit of a look around, a bit of news around nutrition at the moment, anyway, what's going on in the Olympics and what's going on with eating bugs and potential allergens associated with that.

Fiona Kane: 21:42

And then, just, yeah, just there, looking at the issue we have with ultra processed foods, we need to be eating more of the real foods. Go the eggs, go the meat, go the vegetables. And that's again why I just try to always just go back to just eat real food. The balance of all of that for the individual might look different for different people, but the more we're eating real food, the better off we will be. So I'm always going to go back to encouraging people to just eat real food and get that lovely nutrition and don't get too caught up on ideological ideas of diet.

Fiona Kane: 22:17

Just look at nutrition itself, look at what where the nutrition is and eat in a way that works for you. And the closer to real food it is, the closer to nature it is, the better it is in my opinion, even if that is me having a moral opinion or whatever. Of course people with some morals kind of say we don't want to eat stuff that's made in a lab, we want to eat real food. Of course they do. Anyway, please like, subscribe and share. That's sort of the latest in nutrition news this week some interesting things that are happening in the world of nutrition, and if you're on Rumble or YouTube, you can also comment if you would like to, and I'll see you next week. Thanks, bye.