Who needs French brie? Britain's best soft cheese to buy now
Stocks of them might be running low as a result; Patricia Michelson, the owner of London's La Fromagerie which specialises in fine continental cheeses, has admitted that 'at the moment, we can't supply all the lovely, soft cow's milk cheeses like Camembert and brie,' and she fears that a misunderstanding of raw-milk cheese will ultimately damage British artisan cheesemakers as well as their French counterparts.
Thankfully, this country produces a whole host of wonderful options for fans of unpasteurised cheese who argue that raw-milk options boast more complex and nuanced flavours, and better display their terroir – many of which are directly inspired by French and Italian cheeses, so you can still get your fix of gooey innards and ripe rinds. Here are some of the best to try.
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The Independent
2 hours ago
- The Independent
NHS surgeon recommends this simple three-ingredient recipe for supporting gut health and strengthening muscles
It's hard to make healthy choices nowadays. Walk into the supermarket and you're faced with an array of sweet treats; unlock your phone and there's a range of entertaining alternatives to exercise. Anything good for us seems usually seems less appealing than the prospect of sugary snacks and doomscrolling. But there are a few experts hoping to change that. NHS surgeon Dr Karan Rajan is on a mission to make healthier options more accessible for the masses. He uses his medical expertise to simplify the science of wellbeing, then provide low-cost, actionable advice people can benefit from – and his approach is working. Dr Rajan has amassed more than five million Tiktok followers and recently released his first book, This Book May Save Your Life, which contains a collection of 'everyday health hacks to worry less and live better'. He has a theory as to why his videos and the concept for this book are so popular. 'Healthcare systems in most countries have flaws,' Dr Rajan tells The Independent. 'It's harder to see a healthcare professional in some cases, particularly for chronic diseases. It's also expensive if you are going down the private route. People are realising that prevention is a cheaper, more effective longer-term solution for health than treatment when burdened with disease.' Nutrition and gut health are areas his audience are particularly interested in, Dr Rajan adds, explaining: '[Both are] often easy to action but also poorly understood.' Perhaps as a consequence of this, one of his favourite health hacks is a remarkably simple three-ingredient recipe that can support muscle maintenance and gut health. This is how to make it. How to make Dr Karan Rajan's three-ingredient gut health snack Ingredients: Raspberries, 80g Chia seeds, one tbsp Kefir yoghurt, 250g 'This is a great combo that's high in fibre, protein and the three Ps; prebiotics, probiotics and polyphenols,' says Dr Rajan. To make it, start by microwaving 80g of frozen raspberries for 30 seconds, then mashing them to your 'desired level of chunkiness'. 'A dark red colour tells you they're a rich source of the antioxidant anthocyanin,' Dr Rajan adds in the video above. 'This supports beneficial microbes in your gut, and this [amount of raspberries] also contains 5g of fibre.' Next, stir in one tablespoon of chia seeds until you achieve a consistency you're happy with. 'Just one tablespoon of chia seeds is enough to thicken the mixture to a jam-like consistency,' Dr Rajan continues. 'It also has five grams of fibre and mucilage your gut bacteria can ferment to nourish your colon.' At this point, you can add an optional dollop of honey for extra sweetness. Then the mixture is ready to use as a jam, or a topping for yoghurt – kefir yoghurt is preferred for bonus gut health perks–to enjoy an added protein hit. Why fibre should be at the forefront of your food plans We all know that protein has played a starring role in the nutrition world for the past few years, and for good reason. This macronutrient fills a wide variety of vital functions, including building and repairing bodily tissues such as muscle. But Dr Rajan says fibre should also be a key consideration in the make-up of your plate. In fact, he goes so far as to say eating more fibre is the health hack that offers the greatest return on investment for most people. 'Both protein and fibre are essential,' he says. 'There are plenty of foods and meal combos where you can get both, but if I had to over-index on one, it would be fibre. 'I'd say the average person probably consumes enough protein and nowhere near enough fiber,' Dr Rajan continues. The recommended daily allowance for dietary fibre is 30g for adults, but most people currently manage less than 20g, seeing them miss out on plenty of health benefits. 'When it comes to human physiology, there [aren't many processes] fibre isn't involved in, either directly or indirectly. Its benefits include regulating hormones, metabolism, appetite, the gut microbiome, mood, bowels and more.'
The Independent
2 hours ago
- The Independent
Everyone is talking about calisthenics – here's a 4-week strength training plan (no gym membership required)
To many, strength training is an intimidating term, conjuring up images of muscle-bound bodybuilders and sweat-scented gyms. But as ever-more research reinforces the practice's many benefits, for those of all ages and fitness levels, a growing number of people are looking to try it out. If you fall into this camp, calisthenics – a kit-free training method which leverages your own body weight as resistance – is an accessible option you can do from the comfort of your living room. And we have a four-week plan for absolute beginners to help you get started. 'Calisthenics helps people get stronger in more planes of movement, and uses movement patterns that are more relevant to everyday life,' says Dr Athalie Redwood-Brown, a senior lecturer in performance analysis of sport at Nottingham Trent University, who also owns a gym and has founded the FiiT For Life charity. Every time you sit in a chair, you're performing a squat of sorts. Bending down to tie your shoelaces is tantamount to a lunge, and the process of picking yourself up from the floor often starts with a form of press-up. For this reason, Redwood-Brown says calisthenics training can allow people to 'live life better'. 'You're creating all of these lovely neurological pathways which then allow us to do everyday activities better,' she continues. This strengthens the body, leaving it less prone to injury, while also improving balance and coordination. It can also help combat sarcopenia – the age-related loss of strength, muscle and function in the body. If these attributes sound enticing, read on for a beginner calisthenics programme from Redwood-Brown, as well as her top tips on how to get started. A four-week beginner calisthenics plan Perform each of the three workouts below once per week – a schedule placing day one on a Monday, day two on a Wednesday and day three on a Friday often works well. Repeat this cycle for four weeks in total, using the progression options below to gradually increase the difficulty of the workouts week-on-week. Redwood-Brown adds that working with an experienced trainer is the best way to get started, but this is a good system for beginners to introduce their body to regular movement and lay solid foundations of strength and mobility. If you already have some training experience, you might want to consider introducing weights into your workouts for an added challenge with this experienced strength coach's weekly workouts. Day one Day two Exercise Sets Reps Rest between sets Chair squat (sit in a chair in a controlled manner, then stand back up) 3 12 60 seconds Standing calf raise (come on to your toes, then lower your heels back to the floor) 3 15 60 seconds Standing hip circles 2 10 in each direction 60 seconds Forward fold with arm swings (hinge at the hips to let your arms hang towards the floor, then sway them gently from side to side – only lower as far as you feel comfortable) 1 60 seconds 60 seconds Day three Exercise Sets Reps Rest between sets Marching in place (high knees optional) 1 60 seconds 60 seconds Wall sit (place your back against a wall and slide your hips down as far as is comfortable – the lower your hips, up to 90 degrees, the more challenging the exercise) 3 20 seconds 60 seconds Side lunge (assume a wide stance, shift your weight to one side while bending that knee, then return to standing – hold a chair for support if needed ) 3 6 each side 60 seconds Bird dog (start on all fours, extend your right arm and left leg until they are parallel with the floor, return to all fours, then repeat on the other side) 3 10 in total 60 seconds How to progress these workouts The body reacts to better handle the challenges we consistently set it, so calisthenics can make our body function better both internally and externally; think improved heart health, lower risk of chronic diseases, more robust joints and increased physical capacity. However, this also means that if you want to see continued positive adaptations from exercise, you need to progress the difficulty of your workouts over time in line with your increasing fitness levels. Luckily, Redwood-Brown's instructions cover this. 'To keep improving, you can use simple tweaks,' she says. 'Each week, you can increase the reps by two or three for each exercise, or add one extra set per move – for example, doing four sets of incline press-ups rather than three. 'You can also increase the amount of time you hold the planks and wall-sits by five to 10 seconds each week.' The final option is to increase the resistance. For the incline press-ups, this can be achieved by lowering your hands from a wall to a kitchen counter to a table or bench – the lower the hands, the more challenging the exercise. You can also add light resistance bands, or even use tins of beans as makeshift dumbbells, to make exercises such as the glute bridges, squats and side lunges more challenging. How to get the most out of calisthenics training The term calisthenics stems from the ancient Greek words kallos, meaning beauty, and sthenos, meaning strength. The name roughly means 'beautiful strength', and for the practice to be successful, there has to be an emphasis on moving well. 'The fundamental [of strength training] is to move well,' Redwood-Brown says. 'Then you can move well with load, and then you can move well with load faster.' To practise this, she recommends considering the quality of your movements in everyday life. 'When you sit down on the sofa, I want you to think about how you move,' says Redwood-Brown. 'Imagine you have a £50 note between your bum cheeks [and squeeze them], because that means you sit up taller, you engage your core a little bit more and you use your bum muscles a little bit more. 'For a lot of people, they don't want to go to a gym until they feel that they can actually move with confidence. All of these [calisthenics] movements are fundamentals.' Alongside moving well, the other most important factor for seeing results from your calisthenics workouts is consistency. 'People think it needs to be super hard from the start and they need to go from zero to 100 immediately,' says Redwood-Brown. 'But if you make small progressions, you'll see progress. It's not about who finishes the first week fastest, it's about consistency; showing up and doing it even when you don't want to.' This isn't to say the workouts shouldn't feel challenging. As mentioned above, the body responds to physical stress by adapting to deal with it better over time – for example, strength training can stimulate muscle growth, improvements in mobility and the strengthening of tissues around joints such as ligaments and tendons. The important thing is to find a variation of the exercises above that suits your fitness level, allowing you to move well throughout the prescribed repetitions, but still providing a worthy test for your muscles. 'You have to 'choose your hard',' says Redwood-Brown. 'You might be in a situation now where it's hard standing up or walking to the end of the road because you're out of breath, you're overweight or you're stiff. That's not going to suddenly go away. 'We can do something hard now for a little bit, like these workouts, so that in a few months, these everyday tasks feel easier. Or, if we stay where we are, they are always going to be hard.' Benefits of calisthenics training We mentioned some of the major benefits of calisthenics training in the introduction, from building full-body strength to developing more resilient joints. But by Redwood-Brown's reckoning, we barely touched the sides. 'With exercise, and specifically calisthenics, you're actually using your own body to become resilient against things like sarcopenia, osteoporosis and rheumatoid arthritis,' she says. 'We're going to improve our general health, cardiac health, lung function, mobility and posture. There's so much positivity to it, and you are just using your own body weight'
BBC News
2 hours ago
- BBC News
'My dad started spying on my mum' - the drugs causing sexual urges
When "Sarah" climbed up into the attic of her father's house - she was completely unprepared for what she would father, "James", was a modest man who worked most of his life for the same company. He retired about 20 years ago when he was diagnosed with Parkinson' had managed the tremors and balance difficulties caused by the disorder by taking a prescription drug called during the Covid-19 pandemic, Sarah had grown increasingly alarmed about her father's secrecy and wanted to see what he had been spending his time the loft, she discovered reams of handwritten notes and a dozen recording devices he had been using to bug his own writing and on tape he had documented innocent sounds his wife had made as she moved around the house, and while she slept, to try to prove she was having an affair. He had also catalogued details of numerous chat lines and porn websites he had been obsessively Sarah told her elderly mother about what she had found, she was horrified to hear that James had also been sexually coercive towards was only when Sarah took him to see his specialist nurse five years ago that she learned the medication her father was on could have such extreme side effects."Oh, he's gone down the randy route, has he?" the nurse couple are now living separately in their old age, because James poses too much of a risk to his wife, says Sarah. James lives in a specialist care home and Sarah says she has been told that he has sexually assaulted staff there."This medication has torn my family apart," says Sarah - whose name we have changed along with her father' has power of attorney for both her parents, including for their medical has carefully weighed their interests in deciding to tell her family's story, she says, but wants people to know about the impact the drugs can have. James's case is one of 50 the BBC has now been contacted about, the majority concerning men being treated for movement disorders whose behaviour changed dramatically after being prescribed medication from a specific family of drugs. Often, behaviour changed after many years of taking the medicines at increasing doses, the men told March, we revealed how women had not been warned by doctors that taking the same type of medication for restless leg syndrome (RLS) could cause them to cruise for sex and gamble compulsively - placing them at personal risk and ruining their finances, careers and of the cases we have now learned of involve the exploitation of women and children. These include: A man who was convicted of child sexual offences after abusing a childAn octogenarian who says he has become addicted to pornography including bestiality and child abuse imagesA father of three children who said the drugs left him needing to have sex up to seven times a day - and caused him to walk out on two marriages when partners could not satisfy him All three men said they had had no previous history of such sexual behaviour before taking the drugs. They also said they felt profound shame about their behaviour but believed the medication helped their men the BBC spoke to said they did not want to take themselves off the drugs because the medication had led them to discover new sexual interests - which are legal and consensual - and because they enjoyed their increased married grandfather in his 60s has begun crossdressing and has entered into online relationships with men. Another man says the drugs disinhibited homosexual feelings he had not previously records show that some of the men we spoke to tried reducing their dosage but all felt it had negatively impacted their Ropinirole that James takes belongs to a family of drugs known as dopamine agonists, which are prescribed for Parkinson's, RLS, pituitary tumours and other risk of impulsive behaviour side effects of dopamine agonist medication have long been known - but the BBC has discovered that doctors are still not warning all patients who have been prescribed the drugs for a variety of conditions. In March we revealed how British drug company GSK had found a link between Ropinirole and what it called "deviant" sexual behaviour - including paedophilia - in told the BBC it had shared these findings with health authorities, included this safety advice in medication leaflets, and conducted extensive trials for the drug which has been prescribed for 17 million warnings about such behaviour were not included in leaflets until 2007 - and, even now, only specify "altered" sexual interest and "excessive" or "increased" libido as advice about the medication's "toxic" side-effects needs to be strengthened immediately because their impact can be "devastating", according to the acting chair of the Health Select Committee, Labour MP Paulette Hamilton."Nine out of 10 people do not read what is on those leaflets," she says."And if you do read it, what does it mean by altered sexual interest? I haven't got a clue." The drugs work by mimicking the effects of dopamine, a natural chemical that helps transmit messages in the brain, such as those governing movement. Dopamine is also known as the "happy hormone" because it is activated when something is pleasurable or we feel agonists can over-stimulate such feelings - helping sufferers of some movement disorders which may be caused by low levels of dopamine. But they can also diminish the appreciation of consequences, leading to impulsive behaviour - according to medication can also actually worsen existing symptoms of restless legs - according to dozens of the people who spoke to the BBC - sometimes causing an uncontrollable urge to move in other parts of the body. This is a well-documented risk for those who take the medication over a prolonged period, and is known as augmentation. If you have more information about this story, you can reach Noel directly and securely through encrypted messaging app Signal on: +44 7809 334720, by email at external or on SecureDrop The BBC has also learned of concerns about two studies that looked at the ability of another dopamine agonist drug - Rotigotine - to tackle such exacerbation of health conditions. Both were sponsored by the drug's manufacturer, Belgian firm have been told that senior officials at the company repeatedly dismissed evidence of augmentation caused by Rotigotine, during the first study in of its authors, Dr Diego Garcia-Borreguero, says UCB staff sat-in on and discussed findings with academics. He says the interference was "subtle", but that the published results were not BBC has also discovered that eight out of nine authors of a second Rotigotine study in 2017 had been paid at some point by UCB - and that five of them were direct company paper's conclusions - that Rotigotine was effective in treating augmentation - are "ridiculous", according to Dr Andy Berkowski, a neurologist who has co-authored clinical practice guidelines for the treatment of RLS in the says data shows that more than 50% of the patients stopped taking the drug during the study largely because of adverse events or a lack of effectiveness - and more than half of those who completed it required an increase in dosage, potentially because of the worsening of their RLS says its studies were unbiased, underwent independent peer review, and that authors who were its employees, or who it had prior affiliations with, fully complied with guidelines on disclosing conflicts of said that Rotigotine's effectiveness was proven in multiple trials and most patients who completed its 2017 study experienced a significant clinical improvement. This corresponds to 37 of the 99 patients who began the study. A list of organisations in the UK offering support and information with some of the issues in this story is available at BBC Action Line. Dopamine agonist drugs were prescribed nearly 1.5 million times by GPs alone in England last year, according to published data seen by the drug, Aripiprazole - a partial dopamine agonist used to treat mental health problems - is also known to cause impulsive behaviours. It was prescribed for more than 1.7 million treatments in England alone last year, often to younger patient taking the drug told us his compulsive gambling had become so bad that he was stealing to fund his habit. The mother of another believes the medication caused her son to expose himself in UK's drug safety regulator, the MHRA, says it has no plans to change its warnings about dopamine agonist previously told the BBC that sexual impulses vary and a general warning about activities which may be harmful is Royal College of GPs said its updated curriculum - which is used to train doctors and will be published next month - will now include the monitoring of impulsive behaviour side effects for RLS, thought to affect between 6% to 17% of patients.A side effect can be considered to be "common" when it affects just 1% of the people who take the medicine, according to health guidance body Department for Health and Social Care did not comment.
