British Expat Newsletter

26 October 2005

Hello, and welcome to those who have joined up since our last newsletter.

In this issue

This week: You are what you eat
On the website
Virtual Snacks
Sponsor
Bizarre Searches
Joke and quotation

This week

One of the most interesting discussions we've had on the forum this week has been about food additives.

Do we really have to put up with all the additives that get bunged into processed foods by the manufacturer? (I'm not talking about things like bunging brick dust into spices to bulk them out, which was one of the favourite tricks of some of the more unscrupulous market stall holders in Bangladesh. Obviously no-one needs to eat brick dust, unless it's a particularly bizarre pregnant woman's craving.) Many of these are added for cosmetic or flavour-enhancing purposes - but those aren't always their only effects.

There's a much-hyped book available in the UK right now called "You Are What You Eat" by nutritionist Gillian McKeith. I must admit I haven't read the book and have no intention of doing so. I can't stand people preaching to me about how I should live my life and this woman seems as though she would be one of those odious types. Sorry if I've misjudged her, but she seems like yet another good reason to flee the UK.

Despite wanting to run a couple of thousand miles from this particular woman, I must admit she does have a point. There definitely appears to be some connection between food and behaviour. Additives, in particular, are notorious for causing behavioural changes. I'm sure a lot of you - especially parents - will be familiar with some of the more notorious additives, like tartrazine (also known as E102) or Sunset Yellow (E110), which are not recommended for use in foods for children because they cause hyperactivity, rashes and other undesirable reactions. There are all sorts of "new" syndromes for all these various hyperactive behaviour, but as yet no one has officially labelled them "too much intake of bad additives syndrome".

Now, I am not a fan of the nanny state, and I do believe that we should be able to make up our own minds about things. To do that we need information. Proper information, that is. Not a load of misleading gumf. Mind you, some people don't seem to question what they're told anyway. If some processed rubbish has the word "healthy" on it, they believe it must be healthy. "Reduced sugar" must be good, regardless of how much sugar still remains in the product. And "low fat" must be good for you even though it still has 20% fat. (Is anyone really taken in by packaging labelled "80% fat free"?)

Processed food has more additives, and often much of the content that's good for you is removed or neutralised. Dave and I don't generally eat that rubbish (although Dave's known to have the occasional sausage sandwich) - not because we're health freaks but simply because we don't like the taste of it. It's not difficult to prepare your own fresh food. But gee, I'm starting to sound like that woman I wanted to avoid.

What gets bunged into the food where you are? Do you have anything to say about this topic, or do you have some suggestions for other issues we might discuss in our weekly email? Why not tell us about it on the forum?
British Expat Forum: BE Newsletter discussion

On the Website

This week we've been busy getting ready to clear out - just a few days left now before we make our escape again. We've added a useful guide by Surrinder Ahitan to the Bulgarian property market - apparently Britons are among the keenest to take advantage of the opportunities Bulgaria offers.

The Bulgarian Property Market

All the new articles and features are listed on our What's New page:
What's New on BE?

Each week I delve into the dark cavernous interior of the BE website to see what gems I can unearth - good things you may have missed first time around. Here are my picks for this week:

Still on a food-related theme, here's Robin Lawrie's article about Colman's Mustard and why it makes him proud to be British.
Colman's Mustard

For a bit of fun, read David Stockton's Tourist Advice. Apparently this article appeared in an American magazine under the headline "Advice For Tourists". By all accounts it was taken seriously by a lot of people....
Tourist Advice

If you're looking for travel features on the site, a good place to start is our Expat World page.
Expat World

Virtual Snacks

I managed to track down an interesting book review of the McKeith book ("You Are What You Eat") by a pretty sceptical reviewer:
weightlossresources.co.uk: You Are What You Eat

And if you want to find out which foods contain the most dodgy additives, including a list of children's foods like jelly, sweets and pop, there's a wealth of information at ukfoodguide.net:
ukfoodguide.net

Here's a fun link to a piece about how we survived all the things that are banned or frowned upon these days.
Idiots-guide.org: Survivors

Sponsor

Offshore Companies House offer fast online registration of offshore companies in the British Virgin Islands, Belize, Dominica and other tax havens, as well as quick and easy setting up of multicurrrency bank accounts. OCH, through their offshore services, will provide you with the full necessary support at each stage and will always try to offer the best possible prices. They offer attractive and inexpensive offshore packages, and their reliability and quality of offshore service say even more for them than their prices. Most of their new clients - over 15,000 in the last ten years - are referred by previous satisfied customers. However, if you can get the same service, or an offshore package which is a genuinely cheaper offer, they promise to match it!
Offshore Companies House

Bizarre Searches

Some strange search terms which have led people to visit British Expat recently:

great britain s police suit
straw-like garnish
spain and toilet
coitus interruptus in china
pitchers of indian people doing sex
spotty dick pudding
euphemisms for embarrassment
russian decorating
music - performed by man in clown costume
hound dog s howlin all forlorn
what is the japanese favour food
you were made for me freddie dreamers fun dance

Till next time...
Happy surfing!

Kay
Editor
British Expat Magazine

Quotation

"A man hath no better thing under the sun than to eat, and to drink and to be merry."
- The Bible (Ecclesiastes 8:15)

Joke

An aeroplane full of a shipment of Pepsi flying over Africa has a malfunction, and goes down.

The Pepsi Company sends a rescue plane to look for the crashed aircraft. The rescue team search the area and find a tribe of cannibals. They go up to the Chief of the tribe and ask him if he knows anything about the crash.

The Chief says, "You betcha!"

When asked where the crew was, the Chief replies, "We ate the crew, and we drank the Pepsi."

The rescue crew are shocked. One man asks, "Did you eat their legs?"

The Chief replies, "We ate their legs, and we drank the Pepsi."

Another rescuer asks, "Did you eat their arms?"

The Chief replies, "We ate their arms, and we drank the Pepsi."

After looking totally horrified for a minute, a third asks, "Did you...you know...eat, their...'things'?"

The Chief says, "No."

"No?" asks the rescuer.

"No," replies the Chief, "THINGS go better with Coke."