I went to the supermarket today to get some root vegetables for a fantastic hotpot recipe that I have fallen in love with-thank you waitrose magazine!-see below. I got to the till and the girl pointed to the turnips and asked what they were. I informed her that they were turnips at which point she shrugged, saying they don't get much of them through the tills. I said that they are really very nice and that she should buy one and give it a go to which she replied " I don't eat vegetables" I started my next sentence with "well you should....." With the plan to follow that up with some useful nutritional info with the hope of convincing her to try.I stopped at " well you should" very abruptly, making me appear quite rude. I started to wonder what the point is in explaining it to her. She struck me as an intelligent girl who can make up her own mind after listening to all available information. I then started to ponder why with all the rock hard substantial information available that a nutritious, non processed diet is of great benefit, physically and mentally- why are people still choosing to ignore this information?
Everyone seems to believes that they deserve to be able to eat anything they want. That the food products in the supermarkets/KFC or similar has to be ok for us to eat or they wouldn't be able to sell their product. That the government's job is to help us so any totally unhealthy products or dangerous food would be banned by the government-right? Sorry- wrong!
It's about money much more so than our health. The sugar industry is huge and have links or fingers in pies to so many people and industries that it's in our governments interest to keep that industry fuelled.
The marketing world is able to directly push a product to us via adverts etc stating facts about a product that may be true e.g contains iron/calcium etc etc but is able to gloss over the fact that the sugar content is so high that one small portion of their product will total half of your daily recommended sugar allowance. Again we all presume that these claims must be helpful to us and their product will be good for us-wrong again.
Thinking about it in basic terms-the least amount of processes your food goes through to get to your plate the better.
It's all about proportion. No one is suggesting that someone's love of a crunchy every now and then is going to kill them but that crunchy every now and then coupled with a daily intake of low nutrient rich food will eventually cause problems. Eating well most of the time allows you have that crunchy every now and then.
Your challenge this week is to think about every piece of food you eat and consider its nutritional benefit to you. Why eat a crunchy when you can eat a carrot? More than ever this time of year is a challenge to most. No one is suggesting being miserable because you can't eat what you want on Christmas Day but get it into proportion. Christmas Dayis one day, enjoy it and get back on it the next day.
Life is an event
Great recipe
Roasted root vegetable, chickpea and Cavolo Nero bake
1 tbsp coconut oil or avocado oil
750g mixed root vegetable-sweet potatoe, turnip, celeriac, parsnip, carrot, swede)
1-2 tbsp onion marmalade( I used red onion instead)
2 tbsp chopped fresh thyme leaves
400g can chickpeas
500ml veg stock
200g Cavolo Nero
Scrub and chop the vegetables
Fry the onion until soft
Add the vegetables and stock
Bake for 30 minutes
Add the chickpeas
Bake for 15 minutes
Add the Cavolo Nero
Return to oven for 15 minutes.