I’m not sure if this is every weekend but I’m going to a concert at the Royal Festival Hall tonight so it might be a good opportunity to pick up one or two items to supplement the organic vegetable boxes
Real Food Market | Southbank Centre.
The Real Food Market has become a real food lover’s destination. Take a wander round and it’s easy to see why, with fresh produce, tasty treats and gourmet delights every weekend.
(via Instapaper)
via posterous
Here it is, the research results that could well launch the beginning of drinking being regarded in much the same way as smoking, a major public health concern. Are you going to stop drinking or greatly cut back now, or will you carry on enjoying alcohol in whatever passes for moderation and blissful denial?
This article titled “Alcohol to blame for 13,000 cancer cases a year in UK” was written by Sarah Boseley, health editor, for The Guardian on Thursday 7th April 2011 23.01 UTC
At least 13,000 cancers in the UK every year are the result of people’s drinking habits, according to one of the largest studies ever carried out into diet and cancer.
The research, carried out across eight European countries including the UK, has found that thousands of cancers could be prevented if men had the equivalent of no more than two drinks a day and women had no more than one.
Nearly half of the alcohol-related cancers in the UK – nearly 6,000 – were related to the mouth and throat. Alcohol is a key cause of cancer of the mouth, oesophagus, voicebox and pharynx.
But alcohol also causes more than 3,000 colorectal cancers and about 2,500 breast cancers every year, according to Cancer Research UK, which cofunded the study.
The full extent of the damage is revealed by the Epic study (European prospective investigation into cancer and nutrition), which is monitoring the links between diet and cancer in the UK, France, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, Greece, Germany and Denmark. It finds that 10% of men’s cancers and 3% of women’s cancers in western Europe are caused by drinking.
Doctors and health groups are already concerned about the rise in liver disease. The British Liver Trust said the study should trigger a Europe-wide effort at preventing alcohol-related harm.
“Once again we are seeing the impact alcohol can have in all areas of health,” said the trust’s campaigns manager, Sarah Matthews. “While alcohol damage is often linked to the liver, this study highlights the impact alcohol has on the rest of the organs in the body.
“The results are not a surprise as we feel we haven’t touched the tip of the iceberg in preventing alcohol health harms in the UK. Substantive measures, such as setting a minimum pricing at an effective level, have been ignored and we continue to employ a half-hearted attempt in protecting the health of society. This study should form the basis of EU action to tackle the four Ps of alcohol marketing – price, promotion, placement and product. Only then will we see a change in how alcohol is viewed and consumed.”
The study looked at the past and present drinking habits of nearly 364,000 men and women, mostly aged between 35 and 70 at the time of recruitment in the mid-1990s. They completed a detailed questionnaire on diet and lifestyle when they joined the study. Alcohol consumption was measured by specific questions on the amount, frequency and type of drink.
The study, published by the British Medical Journal, found that thousands of cancers could have been avoided if people had consumed no more than one drink a day for women or two for men.
In 2008, current and former alcohol consumption by men was responsible for about 57,600 cases of cancer of the upper digestive tract, colorectum and liver in Denmark, Greece, Germany, Italy, Spain, and Britain. More than half of these cases (33,000) were caused by drinking more than two alcoholic drinks per day.
There were about 21,500 cases of cancer of the upper digestive tract, liver, colorectum and breast in women in the eight countries in 2008, the study found. Most – 17,400 cases, or 80% – were due to consumption of more than one drink of beer, wine or spirits a day, the researchers say.
Madlen Schütze, first author of the study and epidemiologist at the German Institute of Human Nutrition in Potsdam-Rehbrücke, said: “Many cancer cases could have been avoided if alcohol consumption is limited to two drinks per day in men and one drink per day in women, which are the recommendations of many health organisations. And even more cancer cases would be prevented if people reduced their alcohol intake to below recommended guidelines or stopped drinking alcohol at all.”
Naomi Allen, a Cancer Research UK-funded epidemiologist based at Oxford University, who was involved with the Epic study, said: “This research supports existing evidence that alcohol causes cancer and that the risk increases even with drinking moderate amounts.”
She added that alcohol was probably causing even more cancers than the research suggests. “The results from this study reflect the impact of people’s drinking habits about 10 years ago,” she said.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010
Published via the Guardian News Feed plugin for WordPress.
The Chinese New Year festival falls on February 14th this year, 2010 but celebrations in London’s Chinatown take place for a week or more around that time. It’s a moveable feast, also referred to as Chinese spring festival, and just as much belonging to south east Asia as China.
Gong Xi Fa Cai!
Octopus was on offer at “Buy One Get One Free” at the local Asian groceries and fish shop yesterday so I picked up two and cooked one today. I simmered the octopus in a Tom Yum broth then added it to a nice sticky tomato sauce with chunks of parsnips, carrots, onions and and beetroot. Served with potato cooked with green peppers.
They also tried to make me buy three sacks of potatoes for the price of four tomatoes but I only wanted the one and stuck to my guns.
Back in the old days, before you could do any kind of building or digging work that required a temporary closure of the pavement, it was necessary to erect a proper cordon with signs and diversions including a clearly marked safe route for pedestrians. But now we seem to get all sorts of obstacles places in the way making travel by foot an increasingly hazardous venture. It’s not like this is some American city where everybody is expected to get around by car and walkers are treated like weirdos. No this is in central London where crowds of people get about using shanks’s pony on a regular basis.
And it’s not just builders, scaffolders, road maintenance and utilities crews. Where I live, a bit further out, parked cars are often left straddling the pavement blocking the right of way for pedestrians. Other obstacles are provided by roadside businesses who decide to expand outwards from their shop front onto the pavement. Hand car wash services for example seem to use the pavement, kerb and bus lane as part of their workshop area. Then there are the tressel tables of vegetables in bowls, all at £1 each which are spreading like potato blight in front of all kinds of non-food related shops, to the extent that proper greengrocers are going out of business unless they join in the bowls system as well. So now you can’t buy two lemons you have to have five, and a bowl of tomatoes is expensive at £1 whereas three aubergines might seem like a bargain until you notice that the two underneath are going brown.
Tags: pavementclosed, no pavement, walkway obstacles, vegetable bowls, hand car wash, rant
I spotted a brand new sushi bar called Habibi Sushi which only opened last week, so we went back a couple of days later for lunch. The location is great, in the narrow Artillary Passage just a short walk from Liverpool Street station, fork left at the Seven Stars in the direction of Brick Lane or Spitalfields, so very handy for having a bite on the way home, or maybe picking up a takeaway box which looked great. Conveyor belt Sushi bars are great fun, and the original “Moshi Moshi” inside Liverpool Street station itself seems to have gone downhill a bit recently, so some competition in the local area is most welcome.
The food was very good, with some unusual variations on the usual sushi dishes, and about the right proportions of raw fish and cooked meat dishes. The only slight niggle I would have is with the stools which swivel in all directions including up, down and side to side. That might help fit everything in to a narrow shop, but it does make sitting down and staying on a bit of an effort after a while!
From their website at www.habibisushi.co.uk you can download pdfs for either the eat-in or takeaway menus, which is handy if you want to memorise the colour coding dish scheme for pricing conveyor belt choices.
Verdict: Well worth a try if in the vicinity or even making a special trip to visit. I hope Habibi Sushi keeps up the good standard and stays in business for years to come.
Cornwall Flag for St Pirans day
Today is St Pirin’s day (or St Piran’s Day) so there’ll no doubt be a proper home made Cornish pasty waiting for my tea.
Rather than the kilted Kernewek revivalists parading in Truro’s cobbled high streets, I’ll post my photo of the Giant Bolster from the St Agnes Carnival last summer.
But can you make a home made Cornish Pasty outside of Cornwall for St Piran’s day now that the EU have granted special Protected Geographical Indication status to the Cornish Pasty?
Andy Roberts is a writer who initiated DARnet. Contact me on aroberts@gmail.com or @aroberts on twitter
