When To Buy Organic.

As many of you will probably be aware, my general mantra when it comes to the food that I eat, and tell my clients to eat, is that natural is best. Whole, un modified, good quality food that has no ingredients list is the best way to eat healthily in the long term as far as I am concerned. That is what we are designed to eat and our bodies respond best to it.

As much as I can, I try and eat an organic diet as well, and I believe that the extra cost is justified by the quality, both in taste and nutrition. I will often try and get clients to try eating more organic food and the main issue is usually the price increase on the weekly shop, so this article is to help you to make wise choices with your food that will aid both your health and your bank balance.

Fruit and Veg: These are probably the most common and most affordable foods for people wanting to try eating organically. The issue with many non-organic fruit and veg is the pesticides and fertilisers used to increase growth rates and efficiency in high intensity farming operations. These agro-chemicals then end up within the actual food and you then consume it. To that end there are 2 guidelines that I will give you now. 1) The priority if you can only buy a few organic products should be the fruit and veg with highest water contents, like melons, oranges, celery and potato. The water held in the flesh of these and other watery foods is obviously straight from the soil in which it grew and is therefore going to contain chemicals in non-organic foods. 2) You should take extra care to peel or thoroughly wash any non-organic fruit or veg where you eat the outer layer or skin that will have been in contact with chemicals from crop sprayers or similar treatments.

Meat and Poultry: For the purposes of this I am not going to go on about animal welfare, just the health and nutrition side of life. Many modern intensively farmed animals are routinely fed growth hormones, anti-biotics and medicines to pre-empt disease and to make them grow faster and fatter to aid productivity. When an animal (including us) ingests these there is often a tendency for any residue from the treatments to be stored in the fat tissues under the skin, meaning that in low grade meat the fat is often full of hormones and anti-biotics. To that end, if you are buying fatty cuts of meat like steaks or lamb chops you should try and buy free range organic if at all possible, and if not then just free range.

Fish: You will often see organic salmon in the supermarket. The simple fact is that this is intensively farmed fish from a loch somewhere in Scotland and they are fed organic pellets. Wild fish is truly organic and is higher in health promoting omega 3 fatty acids as well as tasting better (in my opinion!)

Dairy: For the same reasons as meat and poultry, dairy is usually a lot better for you if it is organic as it will be a more natural product and will have better quality fats in it with a better ratio of Omega 3 to Omega 6 fatty acids. If not organic then try and get an outdoor reared, grass fed product.

That was a brief summary with some guidelines to help you make informed choices when you are shopping. I am not trying to scare monger, and any fruit and veg is better than none, and the BEST fruit and veg is local, seasonal, organic and probably available at a market near you at a cheaper price than the supermarket and not covered in plastic!

Stay Strong

Snack Attack!

I love a tasty snack. Always have and probably always will. Whilst snacks are not essential there is nothing wrong with the occasional snack if it is kept healthy and clean so here are some helpful suggestions for you to try out......

Snacks on the go:

Mixed nuts - unsalted.

Beef Jerky.

Fruit.

Small pot of yoghurt.

Leftovers like chilli or stew.

Celery with almond butter (or cashew)

Boiled egg.

Cold meat with mustard.

Olives

Vegetables dipped in salsa.

Coconut pieces.

Tin of tuna or salmon.

Pumpkin or sunflower seeds - unsalted.

Dried fruit - very high energy, to be used when training hard only.

Snacks at home:

Avocado and tuna (small meal really)

Smoothie

Home made soup

Stay Strong and post your own ideas below!

Ben

Tasty Breakfast Idea

Here is a great idea for a healthy, filling and highly nutritious breakfast especially for anybody avoiding wheat and dairy who also loves cereal!

Blueberries

Strawberries

Raw Walnuts

Raw Almonds

Cinnamon

UNSWEETENED Almond Milk

Chuck it in a bowl and off you go! Simples.

Stay Strong

Ben

Timing Your Carbs

Most modern approaches to weight loss involve some reduction or moderation of carbohydrate in the diet, and whilst this is largely correct, we can achieve even more for body composition by timing your carb intake properly.

When eating a low carb diet the body can feel a little low on energy whilst you adjust and you may feel a little drained for your training sessions, so a good time to have a small portion of carbs is about 30-60 minutes pre-training to boost your energy and to enable you to train hard. Good options include fruit and oats as they will not spike your blood sugar too dramatically.

The best window for carb intake is immediately after your training session when your muscles are at their most receptive and the carbs will be used to repair and replenish damaged muscle tissue. During this window or up to an hour, the carbs you consume are much less likely to be stored as fat, and to that end it gives you a little more freedom to have small portions of pasta,rice and bread, which you would normally be avoiding on a low carb diet.

We can also slow down the response to eating carbs by eating them with protein and or fat, therefore reducing the spike in blood sugar and the subsequent fat storage. For instance a slice of toast will spike your blood sugar, whereas a buttered slice will make the spike less dramatic due to the natural fats slowing digestion of the toast.

If you do not have a scheduled training session that day or are going to be having a pasta dinner or similar then you can do a short burst of exercise immediately prior to the meal. For instance you could perform 40 squats, or press ups to prepare your muscles to receive some of the carbs you are about to eat.

Ben

Eat Natural

I like to try and eat a natural, whole food diet as much as possible as I believe that it is the best way to eat for health, vitality, and well being. So, what is eating natural?

Eating natural is eating food in its natural state with minimal processing, human interference and packaging all of which can contaminate, alter and degrade the qualities of our food. It goes back to the old saying,
“You are what you eat.”
This statement is totally true as it is the food that we eat that is used to construct every cell and tissue in our bodies from your little toe to you left lung and everything in between. If we eat rubbish then the quality of our cells will be rubbish, and we will be less able to function healthily and properly, making us more susceptible to disease and injury. If we eat high quality food full of nutrients then we will build strong, robust and healthy bodies.

To eat a natural diet the most important thing to consider is the origin of the food. Ideally fruit and vegetables will be seasonally grown in high quality organic soil, and then sold fresh in their natural state. If we buy low quality fruit and veg that has been factory farmed and covered in pesticides and soaked in fertilizers a number of things are likely to happen to the quality of the food. Firstly traces of the chemicals used to force it to grow quickly will remain in the plant tissue and will ultimately end up in your body where you will either excrete it or store it away in your fat cells as the body is unable to cope with it properly. Secondly the actual veg has grown in low quality soil, lacking in nutrients, meaning that the end product is going to be similarly lacking in essential vitamins and minerals. There is also the environmental effect of intensive farming to consider, but that is a whole new blog post!!

The meat and poultry that we eat also has similar considerations. What was the animal fed? How did it live? If the answer is that it lived indoors its entire life, being fed a cocktail or growth hormones and antibiotics then you really need to avoid it. Unfortunately this is the case with much of the supermarket meat available to us today. Ideally you should pay a little more and get grass fed beef and lamb, and proper free range chicken and eggs that have been allowed to grow at their natural speed in a natural environment. Your local butcher should know the origin of all of his products and should be able to advise you on how the animals are reared. Animals raised and looked after properly produce higher quality meat with more nutrients that ultimately tastes better. Why aren’t antibiotics working as well as they used to? Because we eat so many traces of antibiotics day to day in the low grade supermarket meat that we buy and consume in such vast amounts!!

This is only meant as a short introduction, I could go on all day about eating whole natural foods. I just want to stimulate your own interest and get you researching and reading. In the meantime try an organic veg delivery from Abel and Cole, or Riverford, and enjoy the difference in quality and taste for only a little more money. Your body will thank you for it.

Ben