Foods (and umbrellas) that can shorten your life!

Well we have come to the end of week one on our #GrandTrainJourney. In a few hours time we travel to Veliko Tarnovo, in Bulgaria. We are there for a 3 day stopover, which is great as it’s where one of my brother’s lives and we will get a chance to spend some time with him. It is the first time that either J or I have visited the country. And it’s certainly a country with an interesting past, a past that has included having a close relationship with Russia (and communism) as well as the European Union. Both relationships, have at different times been difficult. These days Bulgaria is a member of NATO, which at least provides some protection from any Russian aggressive intent.

What I didn’t know before choosing to come here, is that Veliko Tarnovo is the largest producer of plastic bags in all of Bulgaria. It’s a great Bulgarian pub quiz answer. However, given the climate crisis, I’m not sure this is much of a claim to fame! What I did know before coming here is to be wary of folk coming towards me, carrying umbrellas. Older readers will remember that way back in 1978, the BBC World Service journalist and Bulgarian dissident, Georgi Markov, was murdered in London.

He was apparently injected with a lethal poison from the tip of an umbrella, as he was walking along the street. Much later, in 2000 he was posthumously   awarded Bulgaria’s highest award, the Order of Strat Planina, for his contribution to Bulgarian literature and his opposition to the communist authorities.

The closest I have ever been to Bulgaria before now, was actually Romania. On our visit last week, we took a trip out to Dracula’s Castle! Forget Whitby, Transylvania is where it’s at. Last week’s visit wasn’t my first, I originally went to Romania in 2013, while undertaking an EU-funded research project that involved 11 partner organisations from the Czech Republic, Hungary, Lithuania, Netherlands, Finland, UK and Romania. It was a three-year project and one of the grant conditions was that we hold at least one project meeting in each of the participating countries. This was academic tourism at its best. I know I was very privileged, and I loved it. The research project was called EmpNURS and aimed to empower the professionalisation of nurses through mentorship.

One of the great things about such a project was that once the ‘project meeting’ had been completed, usually over a day, there was always an opportunity to experience something of the country’s culture and, also, to visit local health services. It was an important element for all of us involved, as we gained a better understanding of the cultural differences and similarities across the partnership.

As J and I have crossed Europe, we haven’t really looked at each country’s healthcare system and thankfully we haven’t needed to experience any, either! However, looking through the news, (and we have been on some long train journeys) I was interested to read the latest research report published last week by the World Health Organisation. It was hard hitting. The headline news was the assertion that powerful industries across all parts of Europe were driving up ill health and early deaths by using marketing campaigns that are misleading and which cut across governments’ efforts to prevent major causes of death such as cancer, heart disease and obesity.

The report noted that smoking (tobacco), ultra-processed foods (UPFs) and alcohol kill 2.7 million people a year in Europe. That is about 7,400 deaths per day across the 53 sovereign states that make up Europe. Smoking has been the biggest bane of our trip. People smoke everywhere, even at the next table to you in a restaurant. It has been like going back pre 2007 in the UK where folk smoked wherever they liked. It won’t be different in Bulgaria. Despite a smoking ban in all public spaces being in place for several years, a staggering 38% of adults still smoke. Nearly 23,000 people a year die from smoking-related conditions. Don’t get me started. 

The other focus for me was on UPFs. It was the Brazilian nutritional scientist, Carlos Monterio, who is said to have first coined the term UPFs. However, whilst there is no agreed definition as to what UPFs are, there is much research that shows the link between UPFs and ill-health. See here for example.

I’m a long-time vegetarian, and try and avoid UPFs wherever I can. Not always possible of course. I’m addicted to cauliflower cheese, and while I can make this dish from scratch, I will often simply buy a ready-made one from M&S or Tesco. Total UPF on a plate to be sure. When I first started travelling to and across Eastern Europe, some 30 years ago, it was hard to find vegetarian meals anywhere. For example, in 1998, at my very first visit to Slovakia for a conference, upon telling the serving lady I was a vegetarian and didn’t eat meat, she simply scooped the meat off my plate and handed it back. These days whilst it can still be difficult to find good and  interesting vegetarian meals, the choice is getting better. Equally, there are UPFs meals everywhere! I’ve eaten a lot of salads these past few days for sure. Like our #GrandTrainJourney, it seems we have a way to go yet in really helping folk live healthier longer lives. Next stop for us, after Bulgaria and an overnight journey of 13 hours, is Istanbul!!