How refreshing - an investigation into what’s good about the food we eat rather than more lazy “it’s all carcinogenic and it’s all the supermarkets’ fault” scaremongering.
In Britain’s Favourite Supermarket Foods (8pm, BBC1, 15 Feb), Cherry Healey set out to discover the superpowers possessed by the humblest food staples - and let’s just say there were a fair few Clark Kents among them.
Take tea (and believe you me I will after this). Who knew it was such a cocktail of happy chemicals, including flavonoids, which help cut our chances of heart attacks, strokes, even cancer? If only we left the bag in for at least three minutes instead of whipping it out after 40 seconds.
Then there are beans, which if served on wholemeal toast pack as much protein as a steak; eggs, which contain cholesterol but hadn’t markedly increased Healey’s after a fortnight eating four a day; and milk, which contains as much potassium in a glass as 41 bananas and help your muscles recover twice as fast from exercise as a sports drink.
I was less persuaded by the segment on chocolate, where Healey seemed to veer away from looking at health benefits to what makes it so addictive (turns out it’s not chemicals, it’s the fact it melts at body temperature and, of course, that it contains sugar and fat).
But she got things back on track with crisps, which are not as salty as we think (there’s the same amount in a bag as in six slices of bread) and contain potassium - which handily counteracts salt. Who’d have thunk it? Time for a cuppa and packet of crisps, I reckon.
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