Getting started

This blog is not a place to preach. Its not a place to make you feel guilty or to put me on a superfood soapbox. This is my place to share my experience of learning to cook with natural foods. It is a place where I can share recipes that have helped me heal my body and where I can show how to make that leap to eating a clean diet.

There is a lot of room for improvement in most European diets. Whilst we imagine that obesity is an American phenomenan I was shocked this year to learn that there are now more people who are obese that there are people who are starving. People are eating food that bears no resemblance to its natural state. Foods that are full of highly refined sugars and oils. Foods that keep for years unaffected. Foods stuffed with grains stripped of their nutrition and animal products of dubious origins. Many of these foods contain high levels of hormones and antibiotics. They have been sprayed, shipped, processed and packaged. Vitamins and minerals removed, additives and flavour enhancers added. They are addictive, mood altering and dangerous. The good news is that switching to a clean natural diet is actually an easy and delicious process.

Food to me should nourish. It should provide us with the nutrients we need to function at our best. It should boost performance, energy and mood. It should leave us satiated and satisfied. It should make us feel calm and happy. It should be grown, sold and shared. It should be cooked and transformed in your kitchen rather than a processing plant. Olives become olive oil, oats are ground to oatmeal, chocolate is separated into cocoa and cocoa butter, legumes are dried and fruit is picked.

You dont need to become a crazy person. You dont need to rip that chocolate from your childs hand as you frantically run through the kitchen with a bin bag. Don’t start making rules. Im not obsessed. Im living and in life there are always moments for cake…and whiskey. It is however a  shift, and as you make the changes your tastebuds will change too. Your body will function better, your skin will glow and your will crave new things. Foods that before were off limits and exciting will give way to new tastes and flavours to be savoured.

The first step. My first step was throwing away the white food. Chuck out the white flour and white sugar, the white rice and white pasta. Replace them with ancient grains that can be cooked and eaten in much the same way but that are full of fiber and minerals. You could try wild rice, quinoa pizza bases and spelt pasta. In baking you could try out nut flours and new sweeteners like honey, maple syrup or coconut sugar. After you have made the initial switch you’ll see that this was a quick and easy way to make world of difference.

My starting steps to better health

1) Cook it yourself – making your own sauces, stocks and stews is a great place to start

2) Eat colour at every meal – the colours in fruit and vegetables are what gives us the most powerful antioxidants and vitamins. Use them.

3) Drink water – simple but the best

4) Shop at markets – at markets you can have a relationship with the stall holder. You can ask questions about the produce, its origins and how  its best cooked or eaten