“No artificial colours, flavours or preservatives” is the banner headline at the top of the page. At the bottom of the page we have the Nestle company stamp with the slogan “good food, good life.” The Fizzy Bottles packet boasts “25% fruit juice” and the Fruit Bottle Blasts has “soft centres with 50% fruit”. “Bottles full of fun!” is the final message that we are given.

Fruit juice in sweets mums? Surely these are OK for the most precious little people in your lives?

Here’s what Nestle didn’t tell you – they probably didn’t have room on the whole page advert to tell you the full extent of the nasties in these products.

The Fizzy Bottle ingredients are not easy to find on line. The Fruit Bottle Blasts contain (http://www.tesco.com/groceries/Product/Details/?id=276580264)

Glucose Syrup,Sugar ,Gelling Agents (Gelatine and Pectins) ,Citrus Fruit Flavour Filling (4.2%) [contains Fruit Juices and Purées from Concentrates (50%): Orange, Lemon, Mandarin; Glucose Syrup, Sugar, Humectant: Glycerol; Water, Stabiliser: Carrageenan; Acidity Regulator: Sodium Citrates; Citric Acid, Vegetable Concentrates: Nettle, Spinach; Natural Flavouring) ,Berry Fruit Flavour Filling (4.2%) [contains Fruit Juices and Purées from Concentrates (50%): Blueberry, Strawberry, Raspberry; Sugar, Glucose Syrup, Water, Stabiliser: Carrageenan; Acidity Regulator: Sodium Citrates; Black Carrot Concentrate, Citric Acid, Natural Flavouring] ,Acids [Tartaric Acid, Malic Acid, Citric Acid] ,Natural Flavourings ,Glaze (Palm Kernel Oil, Coconut Oil, Glazing Agent: Carnauba Wax) ,Antioxidant (Sodium Ascorbate) ,Fruit and Vegetable Concentrates (Paprika, Black Carrot, Carrot, Hibiscus) ,Colour (Carotenes)

Do you really hate your child that much?!

We’ve also supplied Amazon with some stock that includes a number of signed books with a special code. If you receive one of these signed books, we have a special prize for you. Details are included within the books. We’ll then draw one winner from those who received a special code who will win a personal consultation with Zoe.

All you need to do to enter is pre-order a copy of Why do you overeat? When all you want is to be slim with Amazon before 1 January 2013 (Amazon.co.uk only).

To claim your free eBooks, just forward your pre-order receipt from Amazon to wdyo@theharcombediet.com and we’ll email you back with the download links.

For the next two weeks, the Kindle version is also available at half-price. You can download your kindle version direct from the Kindle store using this link for Amazon.co.uk and this one for Amazon.com

Following our previous blog, we’ve had a few requests for a veggie version of our Eatwell Plate, so here it is: A 3-egger omelette, loaded with cherry tomatoes, red onion, green pepper and cheese and cooked in butter. Served with home made coleslaw. Delicious at any time of the day.

Forget all the complex segments of the UK eatwell plate, filled with processed and sugary junk and affectionately known to Harcomber’s as ‘The Eatbadly Plate’, this photo is all the visual guidance you need. Get a large plate, half fill it with meat and half fill it with greens and devour until satiated.

If you have a great Harcombe friendly recipe that you’d like to share with others, we’d love to hear from you. You can submit your recipe through this form or send an email to clubadmin@theharcombedietclub.com. Check out the ‘Zingy Fishcakes’, created by Jos, in this newsletter. With the new recipe section now live in the club, we’ll be working to add new members recipes as soon as we can.

New blog posts

Traffic Light Labelling – how does it work?
UK food retailers have apparently bowed to pressure and are on the verge of introducing the traffic lights food labelling system, which a number of campaigners have been demanding for a few years.
With Sainsbury’s long on board and Aldi, Tesco and Lidl having been announced as recent joiners, Morrisons and Iceland are the retailers continuing to oppose the introduction of the Food Standards Agency (FSA) preferred system.. Read More..

Conflicted nutritionists defend bread.
“Not a grain of truth: Bread has been ‘demonised by TV nutritionists and is a vital part of our daily diet‘” screamed the Daily Mail headline on Friday 14th September.
I was pretty disgusted by this on a number of levels: Read More…

Members Recipe – Zingy Fishcakes

Ingredients:
400 g Halibut ( or other white fish )
2 large eggs
Thumb sized piece of fresh ginger.
A handful of the green part ofspring onion leaves.
4 bird’s eye chillies ( I like food spicy, less if you like mild )
2 tbsps of fresh oregano leaves ( I read that these are great for candida )
1 lime.
Butter for frying.
Salt and pepper. ( to your taste )

Method:
1.Blend the ginger, chillies ( I include the seeds ) spring onion greens, salt, pepper and the grated zest of one lime until it forms a smooth paste.If you find the mixture too thick to blend add a little olive oil to loosen.
2.Add both the eggs and the fish ( with out skin ) to the blender and blend again until all the ingredients are well combined.
3.Heat a frying pan and add the butter to it.
4.Use a table spoon to make quinelles ( pretty oval spoon shapes ) of the mix and put it into the pan, flatten the shapes with the back of the spoon as you go. This is easier than trying to make patties with your hands as without carbohydrates the mixture is looser than a fish cake mix would usually be.
5. After a few minutes on a medium heat when golden brown on the first side down, turn and cook for the same on the other side.
6.When cooked through, serve, I added my home made spicy ketchup but I think that a homemade mayo with fresh lime and coriander would also be fantastic.

In this newsletter, we’re pulling together some of the most important blogs posts, articles and resources on why cholesterol is so utterly life critical and should not be messed about with, so that you have them readily available in one place.

We’ve also published one of Zoe’s most extraordinary blogs ‘Cholesterol & heart disease – there is a relationship but it’s not what you think‘ as a special report so that you can email it to or print and share with your friends, colleagues and medical professionals. You can download it here, feel free to share it.

When you know the facts about cholesterol and the truth behind cholesterol lowering drugs like statins, you can make educated decisions regarding your own levels and the impact on your health as well as have an enlightened debate with the usual doubters.

Thanks for your support

Zoë & Andy Harcombe

Posts & articles by Zoë

We have got cholesterol completely wrong
Here are six things that we need to know about cholesterol:
i) It is virtually impossible to explain how vital cholesterol is to the human body. If you had no cholesterol in your body you would be dead. No cells, no bone structure, no muscles, no hormones, no sex, no reproductive system, no digestion, no brain function, no memory, no nerve endings, no movement, no human life – nothing without cholesterol. It is utterly vital and we die instantly without it. Read More

We die instantly without cholesterol so why do we try to stop the body making it?
On May 8th 2012, we woke up to the headline:”Shot in the arm for fight against heart attacks: The fortnightly jab that could unclog your arteries.”
The article opens by saying “A fortnightly jab that slashes levels of ‘bad’ cholesterol could dramatically reduce the death toll from heart attacks and strokes. The injection has been shown to wipe out nearly three-quarters of the body’s low-density-lipoprotein (LDL) – the harmful form of cholesterol that leads to clogged arteries and heart disease.” Read More..

Cholesterol & heart disease – there is a relationship, but it’s not what you think
DOWNLOAD SPECIAL REPORT (PDF)
This is a copy of possibly one of the most serious Diet & Health Today articles that I may do. It is dedicated to Anne (Annem in the club) who asked me a great question about cholesterol. It made me do what I had been meaning to do ever since I read Dr Malcolm Kendrick’s The Great Cholesterol Con…. Read More..

Cholesterol – what does the cholesterol test actually measure (technical)
The world is obsessed with cholesterol levels. The UK and Australia work in mmol/l and the USA works in mg/dl. Americans are told to have a total cholesterol level below 200 mg/dl and LDL below 100 mg/dl. The guidelines, issued by the National Cholesterol Education Programme, actually call LDL ‘cholesterol’, which is ignorant as we will see shortly. Read More..

Forget Cholesterol and statins – here’s how you really avoid heart disease.
Would it surprise you to know that it absolutely has NOT been proven that saturated fat consumption causes heart disease (and it would be completely nonsensical if this were the case, as any fat occurring naturally in real food would have killed us off hundreds of thousands of years ago if it were responsible for a killer disease.) Read More…

Why hasn’t my healthy diet cut my cholesterol?
On Tuesday 26th June 2012, Susan Bence emailed in to say:
“Twelve months ago, I had a cholesterol test that indicated a higher than acceptable cholesterol level of 5.5.
I took immediate action, lost one-and-a-half stone in weight, began walking 30 to 40 miles a week and completely changed my diet.
I now no longer eat red meat, sausage, bacon, cheese or chocolate, and have increased the amount of fruit, fibre and oily fish I consume.
However, a test last week showed that my cholesterol level remains slightly high at 5.5. Read More…

Other very useful resources

The International Network of Cholesterol Skeptics

Dr Malcolm Kendrick’s Blog

Dr Uffe Ravnskov’s blog/newsletter (technical)

Dr. Duane Graveline, MD, MPH (Spacedoc)

Statin Nation (DVD and streamed video)

You can download a copy of the slide here

After collecting the items we wanted, we had to walk past two isles of complete and utter junk (see the pic) to get to the checkout where the assistant tried to ‘upsell’ us even more sugary junk.

On a similar point, we noticed at Bristol airport that that WH Smith bookshop had swopped some valuable book shelf space for sugary snacks and confectionery.

Britain is often referred to as the ‘snackfood nation of Europe’. With temptations like these and continuous upsell’s, it’s little wonder we’re a nation battling with our weight and health…

Here’s the audio file only..

You can also listen and download it from iTunes here

Or in a new tab and download here (It’s a big file!)

And you can download the slides from the presentation here

THE OBESITY EPIDEMIC – HARDBACK. SPECIAL OFFER – LIMITED QUANTITIES