Restaurant Review - Finnstown Castle Hotel

Finnstown Castle Hotel (formally Finnstown House) is situated just west of Dublin city, in Lucan.  Set on 45 acres of grounds, the drive into the hotel alone is beautiful.  The house retains its Georgian charm, with original ceilings and appropriately matched décor. 

The hotel has various dining options, where they promise to cater to every taste bud.  From afternoon tea, to relaxed bar food, and a more formal dining room on offer, it would seem that this should be the case. 

We dined here for a celebratory family dinner and so booked into their formal dining room, the Peacock restaurant.  On booking, we informed the restaurant that one diner was vegan.  The restaurant offers a set menu of 4 courses for €39.50, so in order to be able to cater for us, we thought this would be the fairest approach. 

When we were given the menus, we asked what the vegan options for the evening would be.  The waiter returned to tell us for starters it was butternut squash soup, and mains would be a vegetable stir fry.  This all sounded simple, but adequate. 

The soup was tasty, filling and comforting, but lacking any imagination.  The other diners all opted for a smoked salmon parcel, which was stuffed with prawns and served with some marie rose sauce, and they were all suitably impressed with the flavours.  No complaints so far.

When it came to the main course, however, the kitchen showed themselves up.  All the other diners were served first, including pork, duck and hake.  Again, all dishes were well presented, with simple, clean plates and generous portion sizes.  The vegan option was the last to be served, and it was literally a bowl of stir fried vegetables.  No rice was included.  You would be forgiven for thinking that it would be hard to go wrong with a vegetable stir fry, but they did.  And royally so.  

The sauce was bitter, with a pungent taste of chilli and ginger, and completely overpowering.  Needless to say, the dish was sent straight back to the kitchen.  We were later informed that the chefs tried the dish themselves and agreed that it was not palatable.  Why this wasn’t done beforehand though, is questionable.

In order to reconcile their mistake, they offered to make another dish.  In fairness, they should probably have admitted defeat at that point, as second round was as basic as you would expect from trainee chefs.  Two plates of roast vegetables.  Period.

Considering it was a set menu, all of the other diners then chose their sweet of choice, but their vegan option was “fresh fruit”, which was respectfully declined.  They did, however, have a soya milk option so coffee was chosen instead.

Whilst it’s fair to say they were aware of their failings as the vegan meal was charged for, this entire experience shows how far we still have to come in changing our food and restaurant industry.  Why is it that when people think of catering for non-meat, dairy and fish eaters, they fail to consider the abundance of other options that could be offered other than plain vegetables and fruits? As standard, why don’t we have heart healthy options that include legumes, beans and nuts? Why isn’t there show stopping salads, in place of the fillet steaks? Not just for vegans, but to offer alternatives for people’s health? It’s nice to have a break from the kitchen and to soak up some atmosphere in good restaurant, but another few experiences like this one, and I’d certainly rather stay at home.

A child's diet predicts their future health outcomes: it's a worthwhile reason to feed them well

A well-known and respected American physician, Joel Fuhrman, M.D., states in this book “Disease Proof Your Child” that “the modern diet that most children are eating today creates a fertile cellular environment for cancer to emerge at a later age”.  Seems a fairly harsh statement, but give yourself a minute to think about it, and what that actually means.  It’s a scary thought.

Being a mother to a now five year old, I’ve already seen the impact that the school system has on a child’s diet.  Before my son went to school, I restricted his intake of any processed foods, and shielded him from the lures of clever food marketing.  He had never tasted a jelly, and would shun even the idea of chocolate.  He looked at it, saw brown food, didn’t think it looked appealing, so happily refused if it was offered to him.  That’s not to say he was a kale and wakame eating child either, he just ate whole foods wherever possible, with very little sugar.  Enter the school system and suddenly he is offered a jelly every Friday leaving school and chocolate cake at least once a week to celebrate whichever child’s birthday it happened to be.  Fast forward nine months and at the end of the academic year I had a child who would happily eat a packet of jellies and would even request chocolate cookies if the chance arose. 

In reality it doesn’t need to be like that, and as adults, we are responsible for the realities of what this might mean for the future health of our children.  I have heard it said over and over again that children should not be rewarded with food, as this creates an association with food and success or praise.  Food is, and should be, functional.  We should enjoy what we eat, of course, but we should certainly not be trained to reward ourselves by eating sugary foods in order to boost our self-esteem.  Party food should be restricted to parties.  But if this is the case, why is it still acceptable that in a schooling system, the end of the week is signified with the offering of a jelly? Cheap, artificial and damaging to our children’s health.  A gold star would be just as rewarding for a young child.

When you think about the fundamentals of what is happening in this situation, you can start to understand how these reward pathways are set in our brains.  We want to feel good, we reward ourselves with food.  We want to spoil our children to show them we love them – we let them eat what they want.  That will make them happy, won’t it? In the short term, perhaps.  But long term, this is extremely damaging.  So instead of rewarding with food, could we not reward with our time? To stop the cycle of eating junk food because we think it might make us happy?

Children are actually more clued in when it comes to nutrition then we realise and it’s a wonderful time in their lives to introduce the associations between diet and health.  There are a few ways that I have approached this with my son, and to be honest, he is like a sponge – he laps it all up and loves to talk about the role that food plays in his own health.  We spend some meal times talking about how the food we are eating is going to help our bodies.  So, if we’re eating carrots and we talk about how they help us see, if we’re eating broccoli we talk about our bones, beetroot, we talk about our blood, nuts we talk about our brains.  You get the idea – and it is very simple notions but ones that children can understand and can empower them to want to eat the right foods for the right reasons.

Another way I’ve opened discussions about food with my son is to incorporate his love of superheroes.  I’ll start by asking him what his favourite food is – he will, without fail, say either pasta or avocado.   He is 5 after all.  So then I’ll ask him what he thinks Superman’s favourite food is.  I’ll usually say something like “I bet it’s sweet potato, because he needs lots of energy to chase bad guys” but we have different foods for different reasons for different super heroes, and it can be a fun game to play. 

Other days we play the colour game.  We will try to make a meal with all the colours of the rainbow included, or we have colour armies, and each colour has a different job to do when we eat it.  White foods might protect our bones, green foods for our tummies, brown foods for our hair.  It changes all the time, but the point is, it opens the conversation and makes meal times more fun.  You don’t have to have the right answers, it just allows children to begin to make associations between what they are eating and their own health and well-being.  And don’t underestimate the power this can have on a small child. 

Obesity levels in children is increasing, as is the incidence of type 2 diabetes and heart disease.  Malnutrition caused by poor dietary choices is a real and present issue in Western diets, and it is said that the current generation of children will be the first ones to die before their parents due to diet related diseases.  This is a story that can be easily changed.  We can spend our money on bad food and doctor’s bills, or we can invest every single day in our children’s health with nutritious food.  It’s time to start thinking outside the box when to comes to feeding children.  Don’t be led by marketing or convenience.  At the end of the day, our children don’t know better until they are told.  It’s our job as parents to guide them in the right direction, and to take responsibility for the food they eat.  Until they are old enough to understand the implications of eating highly-processed foods, we should act on their behalf by assuming they want to make the right choices. 

It won’t always be easy, we won’t always get it right, be we can definitely try.

Is sugar making you fat?

For a very long time, dietary fat has been associated with excessive weight gain, and many people avoid fat in an effort to maintain a healthy body weight.  Ironically, however, at the same time that consumers became aware of fat content in foods, and the food industry responded by providing “fat free” processed foods, we saw the obesity problem rise to epidemic proportions.  This is not just a coincidence. 

In order to continue to make food taste appealing, the food industry had to replace the fat content with something else.  And they turned to sugar.  However, increased consumption of added sugars, in particular sucrose and high-fructose corn syrup, correlate closely with the rise in obesity, diabetes and metabolic syndromes over the last 100 years.  The physiological response to fructose, in particular, causes a stress on the body which stimulates fat accumulation, regardless of whether there was a simultaneous excessive intake of calories.  So this means that even where there is a calorie controlled diet in place, due to the way that our bodies process fructose digestion, fat cells can still be created and stored, leading to obesity. 

Even in cases where the consumption of fructose does not have the effect of fat accumulation, it may cause other metabolic syndromes.  A diet which includes high sucrose consumption, even with calorie restriction, has been shown to lead to fatty liver, hypertriglyceridemia (high levels of fat in the blood, leading to heart disease) and insulin resistance (Type 2 diabetes). 

Due to the reality of the modern diet, we are now at a greater risk of developing non-communicable diseases such as heart disease, cancer and diabetes than we are of contracting infectious diseases, and these non-communicable diseases contribute to 35 million deaths each year.  Even normal weight people are at risk, in a situation often referred to as “skinny-fat”. 

The only real way to avoid this is to remove processed, sugar-laden foods from our diets.  Consuming whole foods, lots of fruits, vegetables and grains and avoiding all sugar-sweetened beverages is the best known protection against metabolic syndrome.  The next time you are in the supermarket and you see products promoting their “fat-free” status, take a minute to look at the ingredients.  Just because they don’t contain any fat, does not mean that they are not making you fat, either in your liver or just in general.  

Raising vegan children - it's possible and thankfully, for now, still legal!

Earlier this month, a bill was proposed by an Italian politician, Elvira Savino, to prevent Italian parents from enforcing a vegan diet on their children.  Savino claims that this is due to the fact that a vegan diet is “reckless and dangerous eating behaviour”, and is also “devoid of essential elements for healthy and balanced growth”.  Should the bill come into force, parents who do impose a vegan diet on their children could be punished by a year in jail.

To be honest, there is so much wrong with this whole proposed bill that I find it hard to know where to start.  So I’ll start with some expert opinions in the area.  Firstly, the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, the world’s largest organisation of food and nutrition experts, state that, with appropriate food choices, a vegan diet can be adequate for children at all ages. In fact, in their position paper, they go so far as to say that “appropriately planned vegetarian diets, including total vegetarian or vegan diets, are healthful, nutritionally adequate, and may provide health benefits in the prevention and treatment of certain diseases”. 

Closer to home, the British Dietetics Association are currently working on a project to bring plant-based nutrition information to every community in the UK.  It is their aim to “ensure that medical professionals and service providers know that well-planned plant-based, vegan-friendly diets can be devised to support healthy living at every age and life-stage”.

Another well respected doctor, Joel Fuhrman, M.D., who specialises in preventing and reversing disease through nutritional and natural methods, states in his book ‘Disease-Proof Your Child: Feeding Kids Right’, that “the addition of fortified soy milks and tofu, beans, and green vegetables assures complete nutrition for toddlers and children on vegetarian and vegan diets”.  Furthermore, and perhaps something the Italian parliament should give some thought to, Fuhrman also states that “the omnivorous diet most children consume today is particularly dangerous to their future health”. 

So when the experts in the field of nutrition and dietetics are supportive of a vegan diet, what is the purpose of Savino proposing a bill of this kind? Well, in my opinion, publicity.  And it has worked.  A lot of people have been talking about it, and a lot of international press has picked up on the bill and discussed some further supposed evidence to support her wide-sweeping statements about the dangers of a vegan diet.  All this does is spread fear and doubt and may even lead some people dismissing the idea of a vegan diet due to the controversy.

In reality, the point that should be made is that children’s diets, in general, should be well-planned.  So if vegan diets can support healthy living, then why should we not encourage and support parents to feed their children this diet? As long as they provide for essential vitamins and minerals such as Vitamin B12, Iodine and DHA fatty acids, which are harder (but not impossible) to obtain from plant sources, then there really are no issues?

On the other side of the coin, what happens when children don’t receive a well-planned omnivorous diet? So they eat meat and drink milk, but also suffer from childhood obesity and type-2 diabetes? They are at risk of future heart disease, strokes and other serious health issues but under this new proposed bill, Italian government would have no issues? Shameful!

We’ve come a long way in Ireland in recent years when it comes to promoting healthy living. Most schools have a no junk food policy, breastfeeding rates are slowly but steadily on the increase, and more “made from scratch” meals are being consumed.  But we still have a long way to go.  Fast food outlets such as McDonald’s should be banned from promoting their food to children, marketing of high sugar content food and drinks should not be allowed, and children should be given proper nutrition education in schools – we need to eat to survive so why shouldn’t it feature as strongly on the curriculum as geography or maths??

Whether you choose to raise your children as vegan or not, it shouldn’t matter.  What does matter is that children are given the necessary ingredients to grow to their full potential, to live a happy and healthy, disease-free life, and to prosper.  Parents who do all they can to provide a well-planned, nutritious diet should be praised and those who resort to serving everything with a long shelf life should be re-educated.  Forget about jail time, nutrition education would be more beneficial to all.

Almonds - benefits and recipe for almond butter

Nuts can get a lot of bad press due to their high calorie and fat content, but in reality, there are significant health benefits of eating nuts.  Almonds, in particular, help to control blood sugar levels, which can lower heart disease risk, and they also contain high levels of antioxidants, including phytosterols and phenols.  Almonds are rich in fibre, α-tocopherol, magnesium and copper, and the high monounsaturated fat content contributes to their hypocholesterolemic benefit.  In reality, this means that they can help to control body weight, glucose homeostasis, inflammation and oxidative stress.   

Almonds are definitely worth including in the diet of both adults and children.  For small children who may choke on nuts, almond butter can be a great way to include almonds in their diet, and to introduce the flavour from a young age.  Whilst shop bought almond butter can be very convenient, it is cheaper to make your own.  A 170g jar of ready-made almond butter retails for €4.99, whilst a 200g bag of almonds is €3.79 (price verified in Tesco 20-Aug-2016).  This means that shop bought almond butter is €1.04 more expensive per 100g, which is a considerable difference, especially given that making your own requires very little effort, apart from patience. 

When I’m making almond butter, I roast them in the oven for about 5 minutes at 100^oC, just to release some of the oil, but this isn’t necessary.  

After that, I pop them in the food processer and grind them for 1 minute at the highest speed setting until they are in crumbs.  

I then slow down the setting to a medium speed and leave them to mix for about 7-10 minutes.  Just when you get to the point where you don’t think it’s going to work, the oils from the almonds will release to bind the mixture together and voila, you now have almond butter!

You can use the butter in cooking and baking, as an alternative to dairy spreads on toast and in sandwiches, or you could spread between two slices of banana or apple for a tasty and nutritious after school snack.

Osteoporosis - what is it and what can you do to avoid it?

It is common place for the food industry to push consumption of dairy products due to their supposed preventative properties against osteoporosis.  Osteoporosis, however, has many risk factors, with calcium intake being just one of the many avoidable risk factors and there are a number of non-avoidable risk factors also. 

So what exactly is osteoporosis? In simple terms, it is a disease of the skeleton which is recognised by low bone mass, causing bone thinning and an increased susceptibility to fractures.   The bone thinning in particular can be a chronically painful experience, and can particularly affect the back, whereas bone fractures can reduce mobility and lead to a loss of independence. 

In order to reduce the risk of developing osteoporosis in later life (from 45 onwards bones start to lose their structure) it is important to have good stores of calcium in bones.  That means consuming the recommended intake of 700mg per day of calcium from various different food sources.  But it also means recognising the other risk factors involved.  Smoking, for example, significantly affects the risk of fractures in premenopausal women and in men, and similarly, excessive alcohol consumption is a risk factor.  Body weight is positively associated with bone mass, and so maintaining a healthy BMI is important.  Intentional weight loss results in an increased rate of bone loss, particularly in cases where an eating disorder is present where it leads to low oestrogen levels. 

Vitamin D is important to help the body absorb calcium, and it can be made through exposure of the skin to sunlight.  It is also present in some food sources, such as eggs, dairy, fish and fortified cereals and orange juice.  If you don’t live in a country where you get regular sun exposure (about 10-15 minutes a day, free from sunscreen), then it might be worth considering a supplement of vitamin D.

Regardless of the above, even with the greatest intentions with diet and lifestyle, some people are at a higher risk of osteoporosis than others.  These are considered the non-avoidable risk factors, the most recognisable of which is gender.  Women simply are at a greater risk of developing osteoporosis than men.  But the risks also increase with age and can be influenced by the size of the frame of the individual, with smaller frame size tending to be at higher risk of developing the disease.  If there is a family history of osteoporosis, particularly a parent or sibling, an individual is considered to be in a higher risk category, and low levels of oestrogen at any time, but particularly during menopause increases the risk also.

So whilst it is important to be aware of adequate calcium intake, it is also good to understand the other factors that influence the risk of developing the disease.  As with all health related issues, a balanced diet and an active lifestyle, free from smoking and excessive alcohol consumption, is the best defence.  Ensuring that children and adolescents, in particular, also achieve optimum bone mass and that they maintain this during early adulthood will reduce future risk of bone loss in later life.  

What are hydrogenated fats and how to look for them

When we think about how our bodies digest food, we will usually think of it as a biological process.  But there is a lot of knowledge to be gained from understanding the chemical processes involved too, particularly when it comes to understanding how our bodies deal with different types of nutrients, and why they are grouped together.  From this perspective, the three main food groups, which are differentiated based on their chemistry, are proteins, carbohydrates (literally this comes from hydrogenated (hydrogen) carbons, two chemical elements), and finally fats.  Fats can then be further broken down into saturated and unsaturated fats. 

Unsaturated fat is generally thought to be the healthier fat, but from a chemical perspective, this is identified by the fact that not all of the carbon elements in the chain are fully “saturated” by hydrogen elements.  In general, when these unsaturated fats occur in natural, the unsaturated elements will turn in a certain direction, giving them an appearance of being bent.  This is known as a cis fatty acid.  It is something that is happening at a molecular level, so not visible with the naked eye, but it will also mean that these types of fats are liquid at room temperature. 

In certain circumstances, our diets also provide us with unsaturated fats that appear to be in a kind of a straight line.  These either come from the fat in dairy and meat products, or from commercially produced partially hydrogenated fats.  When cis fats are artificially altered by the forced inclusion of hydrogen, the resulting fat is then hard at room temperature where previously it would have been liquid, and it allows for a cheaper and less perishable substitute for butter.  These fats are known as trans fats, and are extremely detrimental to our health. 

In particular, the hydrogenated fats that are found in foods like certain brands of crisps, some peanut butters, commercially prepared cakes and even fast foods such as burgers can cause serious health issues.  Our bodies cannot metabolise these fats in the normal manner, nor can they be excreted in the normal manner.  This means that they tend to remain in blood circulation.  Regular exposure of our endothelial cells to these types of trans fats has been shown to lead to inflammation and heart disease. 

The food industry recognised how dangerous consumption of these types of fats were and they responded by enforcing strict labelling guidelines on foods containing these.  Unfortunately, they only required products with a trans-fat content of 0.5% or more to specify that this fat was included in the food product.  This means that some foods may contain trans fats without having to state this on their nutritional guidelines, leading to mislead the consumer. 

Below I’ve included the ingredients from a very well-known brand of peanut butter sweet.  You can see clearly that allergens, as is required, are highlighted in bold.  Further down the list is the inclusion of the following: “Partially Hydrogenated Vegetable Oil”.  This is hydrogenated fat, and this is exactly the type of fat you want to avoid at all costs!

Milk Chocolate Flavoured Coating (65%) [Sugar*; Cocoa Butter; Cocoa Mass; Non Fat Milk Powder; Milk Fat; Lactose (Milk); Emulsifiers:Soya Lecithin*, E476], Peanut Butter Creme Centre (35%) [Peanuts; Sugar*; Dextrose*; Cocoa Butter; Partially Hydrogenated Vegetable Oil (Palm Kernel and Palm Oil); Salt; Emulsifier: E476; Antioxidant: E319], *Produced from genetically modified Sugar Beet, Corn and Soya Beans

If you do purchase processed goods in the supermarket, it is worth spending an extra few minutes looking at the label to see what exactly is included.  It is possible to find alternative brands that don’t include this type of fat, and it is most definitely worth the extra few minutes’ effort it will take to find them.