Western Daily Press (Saturday)
‘Spare a thought for your bones, I whisper...’
Look no further than dairy for some good-quality protein, writes Wiltshire farmer Ro Collingborn
WHAT has happened to Covid? When restrictions were relaxed, we all thought we were nearing the end of it. Without masks and distancing being observed, we are finding that Covid is now endemic in the population to the extent that nearly everyone seems to be getting it, and it’s rife throughout our schools.
This was brought home to me last week when I decided it would now be OK to invite some friends, two couples, to supper. The first couple phoned me at nine in the morning of my little supper party, to say they’d just tested positive, and the second cancelled after lunch to say they had Covid too!
Mainly patients are now coming into hospitals for treatments and bringing Covid with them, making life extremely difficult for our overworked and exhausted hospital staff.
As we get older and are out chatting with friends (now that it’s allowed), it’s significant how often the conversation features health, and once started, everyone wants to chime in with their aches, pains and worse. Go back 50 or 60 years, and the talk would all have been of girlfriends and boyfriends with no thought whatsoever of illness or death.
Although looking after bone mass is extremely important for younger people, particularly teenagers, it’s a very important issue throughout our lives. Bone is a living tissue and needs to be fed with calcium and protein. Recent research is showing just how much older people still have this need, and how supplying it is very significant for their ongoing health and peace of mind.
There’s just been a dairy conference featuring nutrition issues in older age with international speakers, the title of the conference was Dairy – Keeping Older Adults Stronger for Longer. Dr Juliano, from Melbourne University, presented a recent trial featuring 7,000 residents in 60 care homes over a 24-month period. Thirty homes were used as the control, i.e. no interventions, and the diet of the other 30 were given three and a half portions of dairy a day – milk, cheese and yoghurt. This is a section of the population which is at high risk of deficiencies and with a lower appetite – every mouthful has to count; nutrient-rich foods like dairy score highly in this regard. It was seen to be as very important that there was good ongoing compliance. Cheese-based sauces were found to be useful .
The results of the trial showed that adding three and a half portions of dairy a day were significant. There was a relative risk reduction of 33% for all fractures and 46% for hip fractures, compared to the control. Bone loss was slowed in this group and there was an 11% reduction in falls. This is very significant as all but one of the bone breakages came from falls; very often a fall in an older person can lead to a loss of life.
Another speaker outlined research into muscle deterioration, which can contribute to decreased life quality and lifespan. Many of us feel we have lost strength as we grow older. There
are clear benefits of higher protein intakes for aging muscles. Older adults have a greater need of goodquality protein, and this is best obtained from dairy, rather than plant sources which can be deficient in essential amino acids. Dairy provides a high-quality protein which is also the easiest for older people to digest and is recommended to preserve muscle mass and strength in older adults.
I find it hard to keep quiet when I’m in a queue in the coffee shop and the young girl in front of me orders hers with soya milk. “Think of your bones,” I would like to say.
The other thorny issue is the environment and agriculture. The increasing popularity of soya for
human foodstuffs will only lead to the loss of more rainforests, even as agriculture here in the UK is looking for alternative proteins. Across the world there are many bad agricultural practices, particularly in feedlots for beef containing thousands of animals. However, recent comments by Greenpeace refer to no difference between our grassland farms here in the South West, where the grazing fields are sequestering large amounts of carbon, and the carbon negative feedlots in countries like Australia, US and Brazil.
I think the most attractive thing you can wear is a smile, and you could save money. People are far more likely to respond to a nice smile than lots of makeup. Unfortunately
two years of mask wearing during Covid and all the uncertainties now in our current lives, haven’t made people smile. It’s not easy to convey a smiling face when most of it is covered up, unless you have very expressive eyes. Surely now, most of the population have given up masks, it’s time to smile at each other? A smile is very warming, as is a wave of a driver’s hand to say thank you. Driving is stressful too.