Food and Nutrition

As we all know, fruit and vegetables are the key to a healthier life style. We are what we eat and what we eat can literally kill us or make us more likely to develop chronic diseases such as coronary heart disease and some cancers.

In today's society there is no end to the number of different diets that come and go on the market, from the macrobiotic to natural hygiene, weight reduction diets such as Atkins, Cabbage, South Beach and GI to name a few more popular ones, to programmes such as Jenny Craig, Weight watchers, Slimming World and so on, the list is never ending.

Jamie Oliver, more familarly known as the ‘Naked Chef' has been credited with highlighting the issue of ‘School Dinners' in Britain recently. Because of him the government has pledged to spend £280m over the next 3 years on school meals and dinner ladies all over the country are either up in arms or ready to ditch the frozen stuff and go back to basics in the kitchen.

But it is not just about school dinners is it? “Health is wealth” and in order to properly look after ourselves we should all be paying more attention to what we eat and not just what we look like or what we wear.

In our busy lives all of us can find it difficult on occasion to eat a properly balanced diet. One of the things that we can all do to address this is to eat more fruit and vegetables.

It is well documented by the medical profession that we should aim for at least 5 portions of a variety of fruit and vegetables a day. This could be fresh, frozen, chilled, or canned. Dried fruit and vegetables count as well. If you try eating one or two portions with each meal, eating 5 portions a day becomes a lot easier to achieve.

Eating a variety of fruit and vegetables will give you plenty of vitamins and minerals. They are generally low fat, low calorie foods many of which are naturally high in folic acid, vitamin C and potassium. They are also a good source of fibre and antioxidants, all of which are important for our health.

Reduce your intake of processed foods, caffeine, sugar and saturated fats and combine your meals with food that has a low GI value, such as porridge, noodles, durum wheat pasta, sweet potatoes, beans, lentils, apples, oranges, peaches and pears.

These foods release sugar into the blood stream slowly, providing a steady supply of energy and are less likey to make you feel like grabbing a bar of chocolate or bag of crisps shortly after a meal. Try to introduce pumpkin, or sunflower seeds and nuts as an occasional healthy alternative to cakes , pastries or biscuits and see how much better you will feel and how many inches you will lose if you stick to it.

If it does not grow on a tree or come out of the ground, think twice. Be kind to yourself and watch what you eat…