Zoë's Food Blog

Hey there,  So last week I graduated! Can't quite believe University is over, but it was such a great experience.  I ended up doing my dissertation on the effect of Instagram as a platform for a health intervention, looking at how it could change the knowledge of the link between diet and cancer, in 18-30 year olds. It was a tough project as there wasn't loads of previous studies that were similar so I had to role with it!  I used a public survey with true and false statements (similar to the Cancer Awareness Measure) by which people had to rate the certainty of their answer, as an indication of how confident they were of their response. I had different dietary sections to the survey including Alcohol; Fibre, fruit, vegetables and processed food; Red and processed meat; and Food preparation and salt. The responses to the first survey were interesting and generally positive, however it was also interesting to see some people commented some doubts about my statemen...

Hey Hey Excuse my ignorance as I should probably know the difference between from concentrate and not from concentrate but it always something that niggles on my mind when choosing juice at the supermarket and I always forget to research it. I am aware that 'not from concentrate' is meant to be better for you but why? So first of all I have found out that both types outline the way the juice is processed. Both types are pasteurized in order to kill off any harmful microorganisms in order to prolong shelf life and ensure the product if safe for human consumption. 'Not from concentrate' - this means the juice is obtained straight from the fruit then pasteurized and that is it, it's ready to go. 'From concentrate' - however this means that the juice obtained from the fruit is filtered in order to extract the water from the juice. This is so the juice will take up less space when it's transported. Once it has been transported the water is added back int...

Something that happened earlier this year has intrigued me about allergies and how your body works when you are allergic to something, how this develops and whether you can become allergic to something you've had lots of before. I also want to relate this specifically to food :) Firstly in regards to the science of what happens when you are allergic to something. An allergy is an immune response to a substance that is generally harmless to most people, this can be food, medicines, commonly bee/wasp stings, pollen or penicillin. It is the body's release of certain chemicals that results in the discomfort, tissue damage or even severe reactions in some cases such as anaphylactic shock. Allergies produce certain hypersensitivity reactions depending on the substance and the symptoms, It is described that there are 4 classifications of hypersensitivities based on how quickly the reaction presents itself. Type 1-2 presents the reaction within minutes to hours after exposure, wherea...

New great recipe! Just got back from a run and fancied something healthy to keep me going, try this smoothie. Handful of pomegranate juice pods Half a carrot 1 satsuma Handful of frozen blackcuurents and raspberries Splash of orange juice Chia seeds Yum! Using a proper blender mine was a bit chunky 😞

Hi, so I haven't posted in a while and since starting my second year at university studying Food With Nutrition I want to try and post more often! Recently at uni we were set a piece of work where we've had to write an abstract for an article and the article I was assigned was about how the substances (or polyphenols) in pomegranate were linked to lowering blood glucose levels. Their study conducted research where 3 groups consumed a type of pomegranate substance (juice, supplement or acid solution equivalent to the acids in a pomegranate) after a small meal, this was only a piece of bread. The study didn't produce many significant findings in regards to the in-depth effect pomegranate could have on things like glucose transport but as an overall finding they did produce significant results in that the juice itself showed to have a positive effect in reducing blood glucose levels. I mean obviously there were flaws with this study, as there always is, but it made me think o...

It doesn't make any sense that governments are always bringing out new health programs for schools, changing the health guidelines (apparently we're now meant to eat 7 portions of fruit and veg a day) and preaching about how we all need to do more exercise when actually this is all quite hard when healthy food costs an arm and a leg! It's ok for the portion of the population who have stable full-times jobs as they can afford organic, nutrient rich and unprocessed foods but even then that doesn't always work out as often their jobs are stressful enough that it resorts to binging on fast food diets. In reality, the other part of the population- those who are unemployed or don't have the qualifications to get a well paid job don't have the chance to eat healthily all time, especially when there are fatty and sugary foods for half the price. So here we are getting fatter and fatter. But hang on it doesn't look like we're completely doomed; there'...