Fresh off the vine

One look inside a shopping trolley will show you how varied our food tastes are.  One trolley might be full of fruit and vegetables and another might be groaning under the weight of processed items such as snack foods, confectionery and the like. There are a number of factors at play when we choose food, most of which we are completely unaware.

Income – people of lower socioeconomic status are more likely to choose processed foods that are high in fat, sugar and salt and are at greater risk of being overweight.

Age – younger age groups choose more processed and junk food, whereas older age groups purchase less processed food and tend to make healthier choices.

Education – as your level of education increases so does the likelihood of choosing healthy food. Lower levels of education affect food choice negatively across all food groups.

Time – in today’s fast paced world, we are all impacted by time crunch, which can often negatively affect food choice.  With more working parents than ever, convenience foods are playing a significant role in our diets and our fat, sugar and salt intakes increase accordingly.

History – what did your parents do? If you were raised on a healthy diet, it is more likely that you will continue to do this as an adult.

I recently interviewed Maggie Beer, Cook, Author and Gourmet Food Producer and she is a passionate advocate of choosing and preparing food that is fresh, healthy, sustainable and home grown where possible. The beauty of this philosophy is that these types of foods are usually whole foods. Whole foods are those that are minimally processed and include wholegrain cereals and breads, vegetables, legumes and soy foods, nuts and seeds, fruit, dairy and lean meat, chicken and fish.

Protecting your health

Highly processed foods usually bring a couple of friends with them in the form of refined sugar, fat and salt which are not naturally present in the ingredients before they are processed. A regular and excess intake of these leads to weight gain and increases the risk of every lifestyle disease.

Grow your own

Whether you have as little space as a balcony in an apartment, a suburban backyard or acreage, the principles and basic needs of growing vegetables remain the same with only minor variations. Planting tomatoes in a pot, growing herbs on a windowsill or integrating silver beet amongst a flowerbed are just a few ideas to get you started. The taste of homegrown food is sensational and is a great way to educate kids on where real food comes from and how it grows.

Make it yourself

Wherever possible, use fresh produce and cook it from scratch. For example, homemade tomato pasta sauce can be made with much less salt and more taste than commercial varieties. It might seem convenient to buy prepared custard but making your own is significantly less expensive, contains less sugar and takes only three minutes to prepare in the microwave. If you have children make sure you involve them in the cooking to develop essential skills for their well-being as an adult.

Save your wallet

Whole foods are generally associated with plainer packaging and minimal intervention whereas the opposite is true of processed foods.  Looking at supermarket shelves, it often seems like a competition to see who can have the biggest, brightest packaging with the most persuasive marketing – all of which you pay a premium for.

Road Miles

While we are fortunate that many foods are now available year round, this is only possible because the food is imported. There is a distinct disadvantage in purchasing out-of-season produce, as it is usually more expensive due to storage and transportation across long distances. Buying produce locally is cheaper, in-season and more likely to be fresher and of higher quality.

Helping the environment

Being less processed, the production of whole foods requires less energy. Packaging is often minimal (think fruit and vegetables) and contributes less to landfill. In-season produce grown locally has travelled less distance, resulting in less greenhouse gas emissions.  Check out your local weekend growers market for a fantastic range of fresh food that hasn’t travelled far to get there at affordable prices.

Various dictionaries define happiness as “the state of well-being that is characterized by contentment through to intense joy.” Of course, this will differ between individuals.

It is possible that the pursuit of happiness is fraught with danger, as results are never guaranteed and you never know what will be found along the way or at the end of the journey. There are always classic times in life that we remember and feel clear moments of happiness like finishing high school, earning your first dollar, doing fun stuff with your friends, getting married or the birth of children.  For me, some of my happiest moments include sitting on the back lawn as a kid with my parents and siblings in summer eating watermelon with the juice running down my chin; riding the waves on my first surf mat and spotting a dolphin when running along the river. Being happy doesn’t need to be complicated, achieved or completed. Very often it can be found hiding in the simplest things.

There are a number of global ‘experts’ on happiness and, while there are various schools of thought, most agree that the following aspects can significantly influence our happiness.

The Life Juggle  - for most of us, having many balls in the air including work, home, play and relationships, is a relentless challenge. It can be difficult to feel happy and at peace when you are stressed and trying to keep a balance in your life. It is often difficult to say no to others but before you say yes to someone else, check first that you are not saying no to yourself.

Kicking Goals – to give yourself direction, regularly set goals or plan things to look forward to. This gives your life meaning and a sense of purpose. It could be something as simple as making plans for the weekend or organizing your next holiday.

Health and Performance- there is no doubt that your health and well-being is key to your overall happiness. According to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, the most basic of needs have to be met before other aspects of your life can be addressed. If you are suffering from poor health, the issues causing this should be tackled first.

Networked: research shows that those people with a strong support and social network are happier and healthier. A sense of community and belonging is essential to our well-being.

Inner peace: reducing stress in your life is a bit like decluttering your home. Some items need kicking to the kerb, some need regifting and others remain cherished. Sometimes the same type of spring-cleaning is necessary in your own life. This may mean clearing space to do the things you truly enjoy, learning to relax through meditation or music or finding some ‘me’ time.

I recently interviewed my very own 91 year old Nan in the pursuit of uncovering her secrets to happiness. I figured she may have gathered at least a couple over the past nine decades.  Growing up in the UK during World War II and wife of a career military man has meant that she has experienced some tough times in her life but she is a tough one my Nan.

Although at 91 years she now lives with heart issues, Nan is still an avid reader (without glasses) and sharp as a tack.  This nonagenarian has lived independently until only a few months ago and has only just entered a new phase in her life, moving into a low care aged facility where she enjoys plenty of visits from her extended family of nine grandchildren and 15 great grandchildren.

I have often wondered about the secret to Nan’s longevity, health and happiness. She believes it is due to her placid and calm nature. I think it is because she has never gone looking for happiness, it found her while she was content to be in the moment.

Nan – Happy Nonagenarian

This cousin of other brassica vegetables such as broccoli, cauliflower and Brussels Sprouts is a very rich source of antioxidants such as carotenoids, Vitamin K, Vitamin C, magnesium and fibre. However, it also contains oxalates which can interfere with the absorption of any iron and calcium found in the vegetable.

Kale is a new addition to my diet and I am still experimenting but I claimed my first bunch of the curly variety last weekend and I am on the trail to perfect the delicious Caesar Salad I found in NYC. Around the world, people have been eating bunches of this green goodness since the middle ages and the most common method of cooking is braising with lemon or herbs and as an addition to potatoes. Kale chips are also doing the rounds at the moment but in all honesty, it’s not really kale that you are tasting but the deep-fried flavours added to them, and the nutritional benefits have certainly taken a back seat. Kale doesn’t need to be eaten with other foods to enhance its health value but take care when preparing it to enhance its flavour, that way it may just become a regular feature.

Chef Ryan Angulo of Buttermilk Channel in Carroll Gardens, New York started substituting romaine for Kale back in 2008 and by all accounts can be credited for the Kale Caesar Salad. However, the recipe below is the tasty, low fat Julie Meek version. Enjoy!

Kale Caesar Salad

½ bunch curly or Tuscan Kale (washed, dried and leaves trimmed off stalks)
4 slices proscuitto (fat trimmed), grilled
4 slices sourdough bread

Dressing

½ cup low fat natural yoghurt
1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
2 tablespoons chopped fresh basil
1 large garlic clove
¼ cup lemon juice
2 tablespoons fresh parmesan cheese, grated

Once trimmed, roll up kale leaves, slice finely and place in large salad bowl. Break the grilled proscuitto into small pieces and scatter over the kale leaves.

Tear the bread roughly into 1 cm pieces, place on a baking tray and spray with cooking spray.  Bake in a moderate oven for approx. 10 minutes until crispy.

For the dressing, mix all ingredients together in a shaker or jug and pour over kale leaves. Using your hands, mix the dressing through the salad and serve.

Fast forward to life as an adult and many people are literally yelling for help with their bodies. Despite the prevalence of obesity and lifestyle diseases skyrocketing, just 2% of the Australian state and federal budget is spent on preventative health with the bulk of it spent on the treatment of disease. Of course, treatment of disease is vital and often urgent but far more costly than prevention. It is interesting that this type of imbalance also occurs within our own group of friends and family. When someone that we love or care for becomes seriously unwell or incapacitated everyone mobilizes to get them better or out of hospital and this clearly is key to their recovery and the crowded hospital system.  Yet, how much time do we spend encouraging or enabling the same people to prevent sickness in the first place? The buddy system that we had as kids could be a very effective strategy to improve and maintain our health as adults.

I love to exercise and while I invest time on a daily basis, I also know that I am not good left to my own devices.  Despite my best intentions, my alarm clock and I are not the best of friends. I know that for my exercise routine to run smoothly and without incident, I need to have a weekly schedule of exercise sessions locked in and matched up with a buddy.  Rachel, Belinda, Karin and Dave all have a special place in my week and they enable me to improve my fitness (hopefully I am doing the same for them too). Having an exercise buddy means increased motivation, faster progression (especially if they are faster or fitter than you), increased experimentation and knowledge, new and enhanced friendships and a good dose of fun.

Having an exercise buddy is a powerful motivator because I don’t want to let them down.  My buddies and I agreed from the outset that rain is just water and unless it is hailing or lightening is streaking across the sky, we are going.  The added bonus of kicking off at the crack of dawn is that nobody else needs us.  This is harder for those with young kids waking early but it could be an opportunity to combine strength training and cardio by pushing them in the pram.

Choosing an exercise buddy should be considered with great care. If you get the initial check right, it could be a long and healthy relationship but if not, your health and friendships could suffer.

What to look for in an exercise buddy

1. Exercise goals that match
2. Commitment – When exercising alone, it is too easy to take your foot off the pedal.  Without a buddy it is easy to tell yourself “Having one day off won’t hurt” or “I don’t feel like it, I will give it a miss”. If your exercise buddy is already on their way to meet you or is counting on you, you’re far less likely to do something like that.
3. Fitness level – It is essential that you choose someone at the same or slightly higher fitness level than you.  My exercise buddies continually push me to go faster and harder which means improved fitness, strength and flexibility
4. Time available – Ensure that you meet at a time with minimal distractions that suits both of you
5. Compatibility.

Of course, the buddy system can be easily applied to any aspect of your health that you are wanting to improve not just exercise. I have come to realize that the value of an exercise buddy lies not just in health and fitness but can be so valuable in other areas of your life.  Exercise buddies can spend a lot of time together over the journey and often talk about things other than exercise. ?Solving the issues of the world whilst enjoying the fresh air is medicine for the soul and lets not forget one of the greatest benefits, fun.

Dynamic Duo

On the first day of every year it is unbelievably tempting to lay down the New Year resolutions isnt it? It is the very first question asked by EVERYONE you stumble across in the beginnings of the new year and there is always unspoken pressure to come up with a list that is unusual, different and a cut above the rest. Isnt it curious that despite declaring grand plans for ones self, usually related to physical shape, size and well-being, beyond February no-one bothers to mention said resolutions again? The reason is simple, by the second month of the year they are a mere memory as very few people actually carry out and maintain their stated resolutions.

According to Mark Murphy, author of “Hard Goals: The Secret of Getting from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be”, people set goals all the time but 70% never end up getting carried out in any significant way. There is no doubt that most of us are aware of conventional wisdom that tells us goal setting should be SMART (specific, measurable,achievable, realistic and time limited). However, Murphy says that the key factor in sticking with resolutions isn’t that the goals aren’t clear or measurable, its that people don’t care enough about them. He does have a point when you consider that so many of our New Year resolutions are connected to our eating and exercise habits yet so few of us actually implement the desired changes on a monotonously annual basis. Mark Murphy believes that goals need to be HARD – heartfelt, animated, required and difficult to be successful. A great example of this is aiming to quit smoking because you know you should as opposed to quitting because it means you will be able to play with your kids and watch them grow up. Its all about having emotional skin in the game.

My good friend Trudy is a Deputy Principal at a busy primary school, wife and mother of two and like many of us juggles a variety of balls, some of which inevitably fall to the ground at times. In January she came up with a plan of attack for the year and designed her very own manifesto for 2013. A manifesto is defined as “A public declaration of a plan or intentions” which covers it quite nicely as Trudy has declared to all that she is simply aiming for Calm, Happiness and Balance in her life. Although a manifesto could be interpreted as a rework of goals, it can be used as an anchor to remind you of what you are trying to achieve by using a number of simple words that can be written in opportune places  (diary, phone, computer or other device, steering wheel – very important if you are choosing calm, or fridge) to remind you.

What is your personal HARD manifesto for 2013?

Only four sleeps to go!  In the spirit of giving I have some special Christmas gifts for you today.  The first is an article that I was interviewed for with the West Australian Newspaper with some tips and tricks while out partying over the festive season.

The second gift is my Twelve Days of Christmas eBook for an entertaining look at managing your performance over the event we call the festive season.

Enjoy them both and wishing you all a very happy and of course healthy Christmas and a fabulous 2013.

Check out the wisdom of Dr Jenny Brockis right now.  Your brain and body will thank you.

This is a classic example of “You don’t know that you don’t know” or  Level 1 – Unconscious Incompetence on the Conscious Competence Ladder.  This ladder (attributed to many possible originators) is a popular approach to managing your feelings and behaviour during any type of learning process, sometimes dispiriting like mine right now.

When you are attempting to acquire any new skill it is fairly important to be aware of what you don’t know.  Discovering this can be incredibly depressing because you are not very good at what you are trying to do.  Of course this is understandable when you first start to learn something.

If you look at acquiring new skills in managing your health like losing weight, improving energy levels, beginning an exercise program, reducing stress levels or managing a disease,  you may discover that you have been lolling about in the “You don’t know that you don’t know” pool for a while. Unfortunately it often takes a negative health epiphany or ‘event’ like a heart attack, fatigue, collapse, continued low immunity or even no clothes that fit, to rocket us into this stage with a bang.

Once you determine what you do and don’t know, you move into Level 2 on the ladder – “You know that you don’t know” or Conscious Incompetence. Although usually it would exciting to move up a ladder of any description, I am not feeling the love with my journey of foreign language, because quite frankly it can be a shock to discover how much better or competent other people are. When you realise that your skills are limited, like I did in approximately 1 nanosecond, confidence levels can drop to an all time low and this is where you may have to don the Superman suit and sail forth. If you are trying to lower your cholesterol levels or body fat and you don’t know where excess fat and saturated fats are lurking, it makes it pretty tough to reduce them in your diet.  This is one of the toughest stages to wrangle and many warriors are lost in the battle.  Hang in there, your body will thank you.

I strive each day for Level 3 –  ”You know that you know’ or Conscious Competence.  For me that would mean having a real life conversation in Italian with the verbs and nouns conjugated correctly and although at the moment I could get myself a caffe or find out the day of the week (in the event I had amnesia), my conversation skills suitable for rapid fire pace are not developed enough.  For you this stage might mean nailing four exercise sessions in a week without rolling over when the alarm goes off.

The nirvana, Level 4 – “You don’t know that you know”or Unconscious Competence  is the lovely place where this new skill of yours is just plain easy. Your new skill has become a habit and stealthed onto you so much that you don’t need to think about it anymore plus you perform it without conscious effort.  If you are an ex-smoker and your main trigger was alcohol, this last stage would mean that you could go to a bar and  have a drink without the slightest thought about how you were going to stop yourself from having a cigarette.

I will continue to strive for this Mt Everest of skill development and behaviour change, what about you?  Do you know or don’t know?

When we got to talking about food, and the issues that affect health and well-being, the talk of the town(s) was not what I expected.  A craze had been sweeping the land.  That craze was discounted Tim Tam biscuits.  As most of you will know, Tim Tam’s are an Australian institution and are in fact modelled on the UK brand of the Penguin biscuit. The usual price of a packet of Tim Tam’s is $3.21 and on this particular week in the Wheatbelt (and beyond I believe) they were flying off shelves for $1.49.  It was creating angst amongst the community.

Brian Wansink, a leading author and psychologist and author of ‘Mindless Eating’ points to research that show we are very much influenced by in store promotions.  Through several experiments, his team found sales increased with virtually any type of promotion but the use of numbers really sealed the deal.  An offer of ’3 for $6′ sold more products that the same promotion price of ‘$2 each’.  Then there are the ‘Buy one get one free’ or ’3 for the price of 1′.  Manufacturers fund price promotions in supermarkets and get such great returns they still make a profit plus they hope that once you have tried a product, you will stick with it.  Supermarkets win too, because you are attracted to their store and will probably buy more than the item you went in there for.

The problem with the Tim Tam super duper special is that like any high fat and/or sugar food, if it is languishing in your pantry or beckoning to you from the biscuit jar, you will eat it.  Before you fall for a promotion and go sprinting toward the red flashing light aimed at encouraging you to buy in bulk, think about whether you really need to be eating more of this particular food and whether it is a true bargain for your health as well as your bank balance.