Introduction
Remember alcohol is still is still ‘a cheat’ in Phase 2 – no alcohol is recommended regularly while you’re still trying to lose weight. The recommendation for red wine to be the one you cheat with if you do have alcohol is because is ticks the health benefits box and is OK for insulin. Red wine has well documented antioxidant benefits (related to the polyphenol, reservatrol), although avoiding oxidants (smoking, chemicals, processed food, stress) in the first place would be a much better idea. Red wine is the only recommended fluid to consume whilst eating (even water washes away natural digestive juices and should be drunk between, not with, meals).

Below is a list of common alcoholic drinks with their carb and calorie contents and any relevant notes for The Harcombe Diet. The calorie information is only of interest, as it can give a guide as to how sweet a drink is. Other than that, calories are just fuel – we don’t care much about them. The carb information is more interesting, as this is going to indicate how much you are going to wake up your pancreas, to produce insulin, with each particular drink. For example, brandy and whisky are practically zero carb and are therefore not bad drinks at all from an insulin perspective. (Unlike beer which can have 13g of carb for a 12oz glass, stout 20g and a shot of Amaretto can have a whopping 42 grams of carbohydrate).

However, distilled sprits are much higher in alcohol content – which introduces another hormone issue. Alcohol inhibits the operation of glucagon, which is a hormone that naturally elevates blood sugar, so drinking high alcohol drinks is likely to give you the munchies. Whisky is grain based (usually barley), which won’t be great for anyone wheat intolerant and any varieties of brandy that are not distilled from wine (e.g. the fruit brandy like calvados) can be sweet. All sorts of other things need to be considered when you move away from real food.

Ingredients in common alcoholic drinks:
Beer is a fermented, hop flavoured, malt sugared liquid whose chief ingredients are water, malt, hops & yeast. (Malting is a process of bringing grain to its highest point of possible soluble starch content. This forms ‘maltose’– a sugar – which is then metabolised into alcohol by the yeast).

Lager (from the German word “lagern” which means to store) is just beer kept in a cold dark place for thirty days or more.

With beer and lager, therefore, you are risking all three conditions discussed in The Harcombe Diet. You can be feeding Candida with the sugar and yeast, feeding Food Intolerance with grains and feeding Hypoglycaemia with the carb and sugar content.

Wine is primarily made from grapes which end up in a highly concentrated form (i.e. refined fruit). White wine is made from the fermented juice of grapes stripped of their seeds and skins. Red wine is made from the fermented juice of grapes with the skin and pips included – it is less refined, therefore. It is also slightly lower in sugar content. It contains more reservatrol – a plant anti-oxidant – than white wine. Wine is one of the best drinks to cheat with on The Harcombe Diet – either the occasional glass of red wine (the drier the better) with a main meal or a white wine spritzer as a long drink if you are out socialising.

Champagne is made in the same way as wine – but then more yeast is added and it’s left to ferment in the bottle a second time, producing carbon dioxide (fizz). It’s also not too bad a cheat with The Harcombe Diet, but it can be ‘more-ish’, so do watch how much you drink.

Liqueurs are essentially highly concentrated, highly fermented drinks, where a greater proportion of the water has been removed during the fermentation process making a much denser (and more alcoholic drink). Here is an example of the making of a specific liqueur, so that you can get an idea of what happens:

How Tequila is made: The agave plant is responsible for tequila, and all tequila is made in Mexico. Agave plants are harvested as large thick trunks; the spiny leaves are hacked off with machetes, and the plants are trucked to special hot houses where they begin the fermentation process. The plants are then cut up and the juices are fermented before moving on to their final form. Tequila is sold in a variety of styles – each is dramatically different, making the different types of tequila almost totally different liquors. The longer an aged tequila stays in the barrels the darker the colour and stronger the flavour becomes.

Distilled Spirits are also highly concentrated, highly fermented drinks, where a greater proportion of the water has been removed during the fermentation process making a much denser (and more alcoholic drink). Here is an example of the making of rum:

How Rum is made:  Rum is generally made from molasses (a syrupy byproduct of the processing of sugar cane or sugar beets into sugar). However, some rums are made from raw sugarcane juice. Rum is mostly made in the Caribbean and South America, and is usually aged in wooden barrels depending on the style. Like tequila, rum can be either aged or not. And, like tequila, the longer the rum ages in the charred oak barrels, the darker and stronger the taste. Light rums are sweet and do not have much flavour, while darker rums have aged longer and have much bolder taste.

Whisky & Gin are grain based (barley, oats or wheat) and generally contain sugar in addition. Vodka used to be distilled from potatoes but is more typically grain based today. Rum has sugar cane as its key ingredient.
With distilled spirits, therefore, you are risking all three conditions discussed in The Harcombe Diet. You can be feeding Candida with the sugar and grains, feeding Food Intolerance with grains (especially any with wheat) and affecting Hypoglycaemia with the carb and sugar content.

The End!

Milk is actually a poor source of B6, so the Ovaltine is the provider. But look what Ovaltine comes with:
Barley Malt Extract (45%),Skimmed Milk Concentrate, Whole Milk Powder, Fat-Reduced Cocoa Powder (6%), Vegetable Oil, Glucose Syrup, Yeast, Salt, Skimmed Milk Powder, Calcium Phosphate, Vitamins (C, E, Niacin, A, Pantothenic Acid, B12, B6, B2, B1, Folic Acid, Biotin), Magnesium Carbonate, Stabilisers (E340, E341), Sweetener (Acesulfame K), Milk Proteins, Iron, Anti-Caking Agent (E551), Flavouring.

So, the B6 is added to Ovaltine – along with a load of other things we don’t need. You may as well just take
a vitamin tablet than drink what is effectively a higher calorie version of a vitamin tablet.

Just have a bigger salmon portion and drop the Ovaltine cocktail. Or, 200g of liver would deliver all the B6 you need (and just about everything else) in one hit. Sunflower seeds are also a good source of B6 (1.3mg per 100g of seeds) but you’d need to be a Parrot or Budgerigar to get through enough for the daily allowance!

This is quite an interesting one this week to show that you need a decent amount of good food to get this essential vitamin. And, it’s a water soluble vitamin, which means the body doesn’t store it, so you need this daily.

I did notice that there is no name next to the article this week – it has gone in anonymously – good to see that no dietician or nutritionist is putting their name to this nonsense this week.

The article suggests this week: “How to get your recommended daily allowance (RDA) of 300mg magnesium”:

2 poppadums (that is how it is spelled in the article) + a 40g bowl of All Bran + 11 Brazil nuts = 300mg of magnesium.

The trouble is – that mixture also adds up to a whole load of different flours, salt and vegetable oil in the poppadums and more wheat (bran), sugar and glucose fructose syrup in the All Bran. Why not just consume the brazil nuts? You’d need 80 grams at 525 calories to get your magnesium from the nuts. Nuts are very nutritious, but they are not great for people trying to lose weight, as they are high in carbs and fat and this combination facilitates human fat tissue storage very nicely (triglyceride formation).

Another way of getting magnesium would be 92 grams of sunflower seeds at 540 calories – again seeds are highly nutritious but high in both fat and carb content – that great fat storing combination. Sunflower seeds are also the best natural source of vitamin E – which is the body’s natural antioxidant.

Lowest calorie way to get 300mg of magnesium? 380 grams of raw spinach (that’s a lot!) for 87 calories.

Sugar free cereal option for magnesium? Over 200 grams of porridge oats (that’s also a lot) for over 800 calories.

Most fun way to get 300mg of magnesium? 60 grams of natural cocoa powder for 137 calories and a great source of protein too. Get out your very dark chocolate and leave the wheat and sugar concoctions alone.

Here is the Daily Mail article from 19 April 2010. Olive oil can now apparently switch off genes and previous articles have told us that olive oil cures depression, saves lives and makes people live to over 100 and dance around tables in adverts for margarine.

Now for some common sense – olive oil is oil squeezed out of mashed olives (we do the same with avocados and make avocado oil – avocados must have a different PR Agency). Olive oil with acid levels below 1% can be called “extra virgin” and 1-3% acid levels can be called “virgin” (I have no idea what virginity has to do with any of this!) Non virgin olive oil is more acidic than this. And that is it!

In terms of composition, olive oil is pure fat (water and fat can’t mix so oil is always 100% fat). In 100g of olive oil there are 75g of mono unsaturated fat, 14g of saturated fat and 11g of polyunsaturated fat. In 100g of pork chop (the USDA example called “Pork chop boneless, raw, lean AND FAT” – I deliberately chose a piece of meat with no bone and still with fat on), there are 75g of water, 21g of protein and 4g of fat (slightly under 4g actually). Of this fat – 1.5g is saturated, 1.8g is mono unsaturated and 0.5g is poly unsaturated. So 60% of our ‘lethal/red meat pork chop” is the unsaturated fat, which apparently is going to save the world! (And remember how low the fat is in the first place).

This is how I can say olive oil has 6 times the saturated fat of pork – in this example it actually has 9 times (14g per 100g vs 1.5g per 100g). In another super extra fatty pork example, olive oil still has 6 times the saturated fat – I try to be fair!

So let’s look at the nutritional content of olive oil. There are 2 very useful measures of nutrition and the US Department of Agriculture has some really useful analysis of food products against these:
1) is the amino acid score. Anything over 100 indicates a “complete” food from an amino acid perspective i.e. it delivers all the 22 standard amino acids used by a human;
2) is an overall nutrition score weighing up vitamins, minerals etc delivered in the product. This one is measured out of 100 – where 100 is the ‘perfect’ nutritious food – can’t find any with 100!

Sugar scores zero on both measures – no protein, so no amino acids and no nutrients, so no score.

Our Pork chop with 4g of fat above scores 151 on the amino acid score. I keep a database of real food and I have nothing higher than this on my list of 50 standard products. The same pork chop scores 39 on the nutrition scale. The maximum is 100 and the highest I have on my list is broccoli at 92 (there will be a nutrient density thing in the calculation, so broccoli has huge nutritional value to energy/calorie level).

Olive oil (get ready) scores 0 on the amino acid score – it has no protein so it cannot score anything other than zero. It then scores 5 on the nutrient scale (5 out of 100). Olives themselves score 25 on the nutrient scale – so we’re better off eating olives (of course we are – we are always better off eating food in nature’s most natural form).

A whole egg, by the way, scores 136 on amino acids and 50 on nutrition. Egg yolk on its own scores 146 on amino acids and 50 on nutrition – so that’s where the nutrition is in the egg – the bit that Californians throw away!

Please use any of this as ammunition the next time you see a claim made about olive oil. It’s a useful food – good for salad dressing; butter and lard are better for cooking (saturated fats are chemically more stable) – but that’s it. Unless we can run power stations on olive oil, it’s not going to save the planet!

p.s. Please note – We’ve now got a club forum for all questions – please post at The Harcombe Diet Club – it will appear instantly after you sign up – no moderator necessary!

Many thanks – Zoe x

How to get every word possible to tempt a dieter to eat stuff that they should be avoiding?! And, of course, as people who eat Special K are Queens of calorie counting, the 99 calories a bag is going to appeal.  99 calories of what, however? This is the full ingredients list from the Kellogg’s web site:

Cereals (Rice, Wheat Flour, Whole Oats, Wholewheat, Rice Flour), Sugar, Vegetable Oil, Chocolate (5%)(Sugar, Cocoa Mass, Cocoa Powder), Wheat Gluten, Glucose Syrup, Defatted Wheatgerm, Dried Skimmed Milk, Partially Inverted Sugar Syrup, Salt, Oat Fibre, Barley Malt Flavouring, Raising Agents (E500, E450a), Flavourings, Emulsifier (Soy Lecithin), Antioxidant (E320), Vitamin C, Niacin, Iron, Vitamin B6, Riboflavin (B2), Thiamin (B1), Folic Acid, Vitamin B12.

Ignore the vitamins added to give this product a false impression of containing nutrients and you have sugar in the form of sugar (twice), glucose syrup, partially inverted sugar syrup and the flavourings are no doubt sweet ones. Then you have wheat flour, whole wheat, wheat gluten and defatted wheat germ. Ever wondered how we end up eating more sugar and wheat than any other ingredients out there?!

- 100g of this product is 72g of carbohydrate and 414 calories.

- 100g of pork chop is 0g of carbohydrate and 123 calories!

- 100 of apple is 14g of carbohydrate and 52 calories.

- 100g of porridge oats (dry oats, no water) is 69g carbohydrate and 379 calories.

Even if you care about calories – there are far better ways to consume calories than to eat 100g of this frightening selection of ingredients.

I had an eating disorder once, so I know what it is like to binge and starve and be horrible to oneself. I truly believe that putting this product in your mouth is being horrible to yourself. Be nice to yourself and eat real food! Nature makes the healthiest food – not Kellogg’s.

(The above photo is of a 1kg box of chocolates – the 1.4kg box has the batons and slabs!)

Once I’d eaten all the 85% dark batons and slabs, one does find oneself having a coffee ganache here and a hazelnut praline there – but these are mainly sugar, not mainly cocoa/cocoa butter/vanilla/cream/nuts/coffee and other natural ingredients that can make up real chocolate. The outcome was that, within about 10-14 days, I woke up in between Xmas and New Year and found myself with a slight, but distinct, craving for sugary chocolate. I was really shocked to see how quickly cravings could return. I went with it on the first day to see what happened and I had an even stronger desire for pralines etc the following day. That day I nipped it in the bud and had no more for several days. I did have the odd one here and there after that but I am happy that they are now all gone.

The moral of the experience? I reckon most of us could get ‘hooked’ on sugar again within a couple of weeks, no matter for how long we had been avoiding it. Learning 2 is not to let any cravings grow by the day (as the three conditions are ‘fed’ and can take hold again). The minute you feel yourself needing something, rather than just feeling you could take it or leave it – that’s the time to stop having the substance immediately, so that the cravings can’t take hold again.

John Yudkin likened sugar to Heroin in his book “Pure White & Deadly”. I don’t think he was far wrong.

Q) Should I have Natural Live Yoghurt with a fat meal or a carb meal?

A) This is the second most FAQ on The Harcombe Diet answered here.

Q) Do I have to eat NLY on The Harcombe Diet?

A) No! If you don’t like it, or are strongly dairy intolerant (check the FAQ on Phase 1 no dairy but NLY first), don’t eat it. It does attack Candida, but not eating carbs and processed food will have way more impact on attacking Candida. Hence it is not essential to have NLY for the diet to work. It is just a nice menu option if you like it and are not highly lactose intolerant (you would likely have had this diagnosed if this were the case).

Q) ACTIMEL – is it OK?

A) The answer on Actimel is here.

Q) ACTIVIA – is it OK?

A) The answer on Activia is here.

Q) TOTAL Greek yoghurt – is it OK?

A) The answer on TOTAL Greek yoghurt is here.

Q) ANY OTHER YOGHURT not listed – is it OK?

A) The only ingredients needed in Natural Live Yoghurt are Natural Live Yoghurt! Sometimes “live” will be called “bio” – that’s the same. Sometimes the yoghurt will say “with active cultures” or ” with live cultures” – that’s also the same. Sometimes the tub will say “yoghurt”, sometimes it will say “milk cultures” – but that’s all it needs to say. If it says anything else – keep looking for NLY!

If a yoghurt has any sweetener, sugar, anything with an ‘ose’ (fructose, dextrose, sucrose etc) , anything other than natural lactose in natural yoghurt, any ingredient that you don’t recognise – it is not OK.  Every supermarket, let alone health food shop, I have gone in to has a Natural Yoghurt. Nine times out of ten, it is also “live”, so it is perfect. If you can’t find a “live/bio” version then you can have just natural yoghurt in Phase 2, but don’t have non-live natural yoghurt in Phase 1, as we only have NLY in Phase 1 to attack Candida.

To check the ingredients yourself – in a shop, follow the guidelines above and only buy the tub that has Natural Live Yoghurt and nothing else. You can check ingredients on line. I have never bought TOTAL, Activia or Actimel. I just put “Actimel ingredients” or “Actimel nutritional information” into Google and you get the manufacturers own web site with the full product ingredients listed and nutritional information. It may take a bit of searching, but that’s what research is! You will be amazed at how much you can get in a couple of minutes on line. If you see an ingredient you don’t recognise and you don’t want to discard the option straight away, open up another window and search on that ingredient. In a few seconds you will know what it is, where it comes from etc. As a golden rule – if it doesn’t sound like a real food (vegetable oil, milk, salt etc) then don’t have it.

That must surely be it on yoghurt!!

However, I have just compared some of the yr 2000 DEFRA figs last night with some 2002 stats on the two ingredients we consume the most of – that’s flour and sugar in case you were wondering:

1) The flour advisory bureau confirms that our flour consumption was 73.3kg per person per year in 2002.

2) Our sugar consumption was 38kg per person per year in the same year – 2002. (World Health Organisation statistics).

That means we were eating 730 flour calories and 416 sugar calories per person per day in 2002 (and I bet it hasn’t gone down). That’s 1150 calories per person per day with whatever nutrients are added to flour by law (fortified) and no nutrients in sugar whatsoever.

Another way of looking at this is that we eat 1.4 kilos of flour per person per week, 731 grams of sugar per person per week and just 39 grams of butter per person per week and 1.75 eggs per person per week. Does anyone really believe that the eggs and the butter are a) making us fat or b) giving us heart disease?! Or could it be this enormous quantity of refined carbohydrates that we consume, which we have had no chance to evolve to adapt to?

p.s. is it also any wonder that wheat intolerance is getting so common? This is an extraordinary amount of one ingredient being added to everything from Pizza to bread to sausages to biscuits to cakes to pies to pastries to sauces to cereals and much more.

First of all – try finding out what you’re supposed to be having on a daily basis – you’d better have some free time to do some research. This morning (16/12/09) I typed in “GDA calculator” into Google and:

- the top two sites that comes up are Kelloggs.co.uk. Good to know a sugary cereal company is top of the list to advise me on what I should be eating!

- The third option is  whatsinsideguide.com – that looks more official so I click on that one. The photos look very similar to those on the Kellogg’s site, so I look to see who runs the site and it’s the  “Food and Drink Federation on behalf of the UK food and drink manufacturing industry”. They have Google places 3 and 4. I’m not doing very well so far.

- 5th place is krafthealthyliving.co.uk (Kraft make Toblerone, Oreo cookies, Terry’s chocolate orange, Ritz crackers and many more delights that I surely should not be eating).

- Then Kellogg’s come back in and take 6th and 7th places.

- ehow.com manage to get 8th place – even on the Google page I can see a mention of Kellogg’s in this link, so I ignore that one also.

- 9th place is someone trying to flog me software (shareme.com or something). This is fair enough – you will need a computer programme to work out your GDA when the time comes!

- 10th place looks official (hoorah!). I click on gdalabel.org.uk – ORG no less – how government endorsed is that?! Well not at all actually. www.gdalabel.org is run by the food and drink federation and you can see on this link to the GDA calculator page the names of the companies keen to tell you how their products can be accommodated into the Guideline Daily Amounts: Coca-Cola; Kellogg’s; Kraft; McDonalds; Tesco and Unilever. (As two can play at this game, I’ve got www.theobesityepidemic.org so that I can offer some alternative, independent, obesity advice – not sponsored by any drug or food companies).

Harcombe Diet followers will know that I hate GDA’s even before I set out on this journey – I hate them even more after discovering this, this morning. Food manufacturers don’t fare well with The Harcombe Diet but they love GDA’s! They must also love dieticians like Nigel Denby who has even written a book about how on earth to work out your GDA’s (I have it in front of me and I still haven’t got a clue – all nonsense anyway). Food manufacturers love people having ‘a calorie allowance’ that they can ‘spend’ how they like – it drives humans down the route of getting the biggest bang for the buck and that will be a calorie counted processed cereal bar and calorie counted processed cereal and calorie counted processed biscuits and so on. Dieters rarely choose a salmon steak cooked in butter with green beans when they can have a 100 calorie muesli bar and a 100 calorie tube of long lasting sweets and a 100 calorie ‘treat’ dessert and two 50 calorie biscuits and so on. The biggest bang for the calorie buck always comes from carbs, as they are lower in calories than fats. But fats have no effect on insulin whatsoever and carbs have total impact on insulin and it is insulin, and not calories, that make us fat!

Anyway, back to trying to work out what GDA’s are.  I couldn’t easily see what all the GDAs are on the web site run by Nigel Denby (or in the book). I could however see all this info immediately on the Kellogg’s site. “GDA’s at a glance” – there it was. Let’s say I’m an average woman, I’m supposed to have 2000 calories a day, 70g of fat (only 20g of these 70g should be saturated fat, but there is nothing to say that all 70g can’t be transfats if I wanted!) I’m supposed to have 230g of carbohydrate (now do you see why food manufacturers love GDA’s?!) I’m supposed to have 90g of sugar (Kellogg’s are hardly going to distinguish between natural sugar in a carrot or in milk – they won’t mind if I have a bowl full of the white stuff in SpecialK). Finally I am to have 6g of salt and 24g of fibre. (I think it should say up to 6g of salt and up to 90g of sugar and at least 24g of fibre, but a lay person would not know that).

There are also RDA’s – Recommended Dietary Allowances (I got these from a different site), which I am also supposed to take in (* means adequate intake): vitamin A = 700 (µg); vitamin C = 75 (mg); vitamin D = 5* (µg); vitamin E = 15 (mg); vitamin K = 90* (µg); thiamin = 1.1 (mg); riboflavin = 1.1 (mg); niacin = 14 (mg); vitamin B6 = 1.3 (mg); foliate = 400i (µg); vitamin B12 = 2.4 (µg); pantothenic = 5* (mg); biotin = 30* (µg); choline = 425* (mg); calcium = 1,000* (mg); chromium = 25* (µg); copper = 900 (µg); fluoride = 3* (mg); iodine = 150 (µg); iron = 18 (mg); magnesium = 320 (mg); manganese = 1.8* (mg); molybdenum = 45 (µg); phosphorus = 700 (mg); selenium = 55 (µg); zinc = 8 (mg); potassium = 4.7* (g); sodium = 1.5* (g); chloride = 2.3* (g).

Now, dear readers, you had better be very, very good at maths, as you have to get all of these variables to come together on a daily food intake basis. All the carbs and fats and the ‘right’ fats and the sugars and the salt and the fibre and all the vitamins and minerals – all within your 2000 calories a day. Don’t forget, if you’re doing a calorie controlled diet or weight watchers, you’ll be on 1000-1200 calories a day so even more luck to you! (Where’s that software link?!)

As I buy real food, I wouldn’t know where to start. My bag of porridge oats from the health food shop has a tiny label with the price and 100% organic oats and that’s all I need to know. My fish from the fish van in Chepstow has no label on it. My fruit & veg, from the local pensioner who delivers a box to us each Wednesday, has no labels whatsoever. The meat from the butchers has no label. We don’t even have a record of the weight of whatever rib of beef or chops we’ve bought. My 85% chocolate has a label (excellent!) This tells me that when I eat 100g of it each day, I have an impressive 46g of fat and 28g of this is saturated. Good to know that cocoa is such a natural food! So that would be my day blown on 2/3 of a bar of dark chocolate. A bowl of Kellogg’s cereal and a few Kraft Ritz crackers and no doubt I’d get gold stars from the GDA devotees. This is little short of criminal given the state of the obesity epidemic.

Seriously – you can either try and work out your GDA’s and RDA’s and make Kellogg’s and Kraft’s day or you can just eat real food, as nature intends us to eat it, and make your day.

Mincemeat (40%), wheat flour, butter (15%), sugar, whey powder, salt, raising agents (sodium phosphate, sodium carbonate).The mincemeat contains: sultanas, sugar, apple, glucose syrup, currants, orange peel, sunflower oil, COURVOISIER VS Cognac (contains colour (plain caramel)), almonds, brandy, acidity regulators (acetic acid, citric acid), lemon peel, corn starch, mixed spice, walnuts, glucose-fructose syrup, malted barley extract, vegetable oil, modified maize starch, preservative (potassium sorbate), orange oil.

Per 100g of product there are 58.5g of carbohydrate and 16g of fat. There are also 400 calories per 100g – remember calories are just fuel – but this is not the most nutritious fuel.

What would The Harcombe Diet say about this product?

1) If it is a real favourite food of yours then have it as a ‘cheat’ (checking all the tips for cheating), but if you could take it or leave it – leave it!

2) It is full of sugar, dried fruit (which the body sees as much the same as sugar) and wheat, so it is going to feed Candida, Food Intolerance and Hypoglycaemia.

3) Like most processed food, it mixes fats and carbs. The fats are actually good fats – butter, sunflower oil, walnuts etc. The carbs are not so good. Here are all the sugars – in case you missed any – sugar listed separately, sugar listed again under mincemeat, glucose syrup, caramel and glucose-fructose syrup. It is common for food manufacturers nowadays to list out all the sugars separately – if they lumped them altogether, sugar would invariably be the top ingredient.

4) Much better cheats would be dark chocolate, winter berries and cream, a glass of red wine, Haagen Dazs vanilla ice cream etc.