More Tips on Healthy Eating

by Louise Mclean, LCCH.

Further to my last article on MAHA and the one I wrote about how to lose weight naturally by eating real food, At the risk of repeating myself, I would like to add more information that could be helpful to people, as food is a minefield at the moment and so much of it is quite frankly rubbish.  My little joke is that if food was priced on its vitamin and mineral content, 90% of food in supermarkets would be free!

Firstly, it is very good if you can eat eggs.  Today I had three eggs fried in olive oil for my breakfast.  I don't eat toast or any carbohydrates with it and you will find the eggs keep your energy up for many hours without you being hungry. The more I hear about cholesterol, the more I am realising that it has nothing to do with heart disease and high readings are in fact very protective of the body.  We have been sold a pack of lies from Big Pharma and Big Science to get everyone on statins!

Later I will have a Dove Farm organic digestive or ginger biscuit and after that sourdough toast with good quality butter (Castle Dairies or Duchy from Waitrose) and organic honey.  As regards butter, do not buy the cheap brands.  I phoned Castle Dairies to make sure they are not using milk from cows that ate Bovaer feed.  In Denmark it ended up killing the cows and had to be stopped but it was brought in to UK farming, so you can't be too careful. 

Supper is my main meal at about 7pm.  I have been buying organic grass fed beef from Green Pasture Farms. We order every few months.  If you buy more than £80, there is no shipping cost.  Yes that sounds a lot but you can get quite a few things for that and the meat is outstanding!  You can really notice the difference!  

They also sell bones to boil for bone broth (great for making soups), organic butter and cheese, as well as every type of meat and chicken.  We normally buy the mince and I like the 20% fat one, also the diced beef for an organic onion, organic carrot and beef casserole. I am not usually a meat eater but I do feel extremely well after eating their meat. Meat fat is good for you and repairs the myelin sheaths of your nerves, which are made up of 75-80% fat.

If you boil meat or chicken bones for stock, you can make delicious vegetables soups of your choice and I sometimes make sweet potato soup or any root vegetable for winter.

I do love king prawns and also oysters if I can get them.  Our fish shop sells cooked smoked salmon and it is the wild salmon, not the farmed one, which I would definitely avoid. I also eat smoked haddock with organic brown rice.  Some people say white rice is better for you but I don't believe that.  I always feel really well after eating organic brown rice, usually with a homemade curry but I don't feel good after eating white rice.

I often eat organic pasta, which you can get from Waitrose.  It is definitely better on the digestive system than ordinary pasta.  I cook it, then add in basil and tomato pesto sauce, chopped raw basil, tomato juice, black olives and chopped cheddar which melts in. You can add a drop or two of Tabasco, as well as salt and pepper.

We also make homemade pizza.  You buy organic white flour and yeast.  Make the dough.  Then spread out the dough and put your own toppings on, such as tomato puree, cheese, mushrooms, salami slices, etc., or whatever you like, to put into the oven.  At least you know what's in it and there are no nasty preservatives or food additives.  It sounds like a fuss but once you've made the dough, is quite simple.

The truth is that most flour nowadays is genetically modified flour.  Hence any cakes, biscuits, etc., in the shops are usually made with this.  If possible, buy only organic flour, either white or wholemeal. It is a real pleasure to bake cakes and biscuits using these and at least you know they are nutritionally better to eat.

If you are a lover of salami, the best salami in the world is Hungarian salami, which is absolutely delicious!  I've found an online Hungarian shop where I can order whole salamis online.  I usually get two large whole 400g salamis and they last more than two months for all of us.  Two cost about £30 including postage but they arrive very quickly and last well because you can't eat too much of it at once!  I know people will say what about nitrates but this particular salami has been made for decades and I do trust it compared to the flabby salami in the supermarket!  I used to buy this salami in the 1970s in London and I can absolutely assure you that it is exactly the same now as then. That is not true of many foods today that have changed.

Tomatoes.  I absolutely adore them but these days I barely eat them as they are all genetically modified.  You can see that by the tiny white fleck seeds in them, even the so called organic ones!  In the 1980s I used to buy farm tomatoes when I stayed in Bristol, which were so delicious!  The seeds inside them then were round green seeds which contributed to the gorgeous flavour!  I remember talking to a man in a fruit and vegetable stall around 1996 and he told me that tomatoes were the first thing that were genetically modified.  It made me furious!  I would give anything to taste the real tomatoes we used to have.

Broccoli is another one.  It used to be very tender and flavoursome in the 1980s and 1990s.  Now it is tough and flavourless.  When you boiled broccoli, the water would go green.  Now that doesn't happen.

Unfortunately, even in our excellent local fruit and vegetable shop I notice that a lot of things there have been genetically modified.  If you see larger than normal fruits or vegetables, you can be sure they have been genetically modified. You have to be very discerning and pick things out carefully.  If you see insects around them, you know they are okay.  Insects would not go near fake food.

I once contacted the UK Food Standards Agency to ask them if our fruit and vegetables were radiated.  I found out that yes they were!  Radiation effectively kills your food dead.  The whole point of fruit and vegetables to eat the life inside them, which is what happens if you pick them from your garden and eat them straight away.  So people who think they are being healthy eating their salads, are in fact eating effectively dead food.  

If you can, pick fresh dandelion leaves and chop them finely with some kitchen scissors into your salads.  You will feel really, really well after eating.

It is good to eat all kinds of nuts and I like cashews and brazil nuts, which we get from the fruit and vegetable shop. I also eat mangoes, which don't seem to be genetically modified and are incredibly good for you.  Also bananas and black grapes.  There have been very sweet black grapes from South Africa in the shops for the past couple of months, as it is the end of their summer.

My most important food is Avocados.  To keep feeling well, I must have at least half an avocado every couple of days!  Pick out the ones that look a bit purplish in colour on the outside and if they have some markings on the outside, they usually are very good ones.  Unfortunately the ones that look a bit yellowish are awful.

I will eat roasts but worry about halal obviously, with nice organic roast potatoes, peas, organic carrots and we make the gravy with a Kallo organic stock cube and Dove Farm organic cornflour (both from Waitrose). There are lovely flat rib roasts from Green Pastures but you have to cook them very slowly for about three hours in a 140 oven.  We put some nice flavourings on them before we roast.

I make a delicious lasagne with the mince meat from Green Pastures, with a thick vintage cheddar cheese sauce, using the Dove Farm cornflour and organic milk.  When it comes to cheese, we like the Cornish Quartz cheddar from Waitrose, which is very strong and we don't eat any processed cheese.  I also love the St. Agur blue cheese, which is great if you chop a little into your salad.

I do eat crisps but only the Tyrells ones, though now I am a bit wary they contain seed oils, so not often and not many.  Seed oils must be avoided like the plague and cause inflammation of the body.  They are in absolutely everything.  You buy sundried tomatoes in a bottle and the oil is seed oil and the same with artichokes.  I love artichokes but noticed there were unnaturally huge ones in the fruit shop.  When I cooked one, it just never cooked inside.  I am so sick of these scientists thinking they can improve on Nature!  They can't.

So cook only with Virgin Olive Oil, which should look green, not yellow, or otherwise cook with Coconut oil - perfect if you are making a curry.  Avoid all those seed oils completely, such as corn oil, rape seed oil, sunflower oil.

Fruit juice is not always very pure, so we use Cawston Apple and Elderberry juice and we also use the Cawston tomato juice which is good quality. Again from Waitrose for those in the UK.

I also eat the Duchy full fat yoghourt and Duchy cream, as well their organic vanilla ice cream.

I do like Earl Grey tea, which I have with organic whole milk and one level teaspoon of organic coconut sugar.

When it comes to chocolate, eat only dark chocolate and we eat the Hotel Chocolat or Green & Black organic ones.

Try to avoid all synthetic or processed foods completely and you will feel much better, your digestion will thank you and in addition you will keep your weight down!

MAHA's Real Food Pyramid

 

by Louise Mclean, LCCH.

Finally, a good food guide! After all the bad advice on healthy eating, this is now being binned in the USA by head of HHS, Robert Kennedy, Jr., with his new Real Food Pyramid!  

For years people were told to eat lots of carbohydrates and avoid meat and fats.  Now high quality proteins are at the top of the pyramid and people are being advised to eat butter, ghee, tallow, lard, unrefined coconut oil and olive oil, as well as organic grass fed meat and good quality eggs.

People are obviously still advised to eat vegetables, fruit and nuts, as well as whole wheat bread. Sourdough bread is much less heavy on the digestive system.  However, I will be looking at bread making machines and will use organic whole wheat flour or spelt flour (which makes delicious bread!)

As Hippocrates, who was the 'Father of Medicine', said: "Let Food be Thy Medicine"! 

HHS has also announced that from next Autumn, doctors will finally be taught the core basis of health, which is nutrition.  Previously they only learnt a few hours of nutrition in their entire medical course and most likely learnt the old food pyramid, which dates back to the 1970s.

Eating a low fat diet is bad for your health as we need good quality fats, so feel free to eat full fat yoghourt and organic cream but ditch the seed oils from your diet, which cause inflammation in the body. Animal fats supply the body with vital nutrients such as Vitamins A, D and K and are crucial for the myelin sheaths surrounding nerve fibres. These fats also protect the body from inflammation and help absorb nutrients from our food. 

I recommend eating a protein only breakfast and I personally eat two eggs every single day with no toast or carbohydrate.  I find that eating only protein for breakfast keeps my energy up for longer and is better for the digestion.

Charlie Kirk says in fact you can live healthily by eating no carbohydrates at all but suggests 10%, certainly cutting them down anyway! 

As regards sugar, I presume that everyone knows that it is bad for us! If you must use it, then use organic coconut sugar, which is a great alternative for your tea or coffee.  We make cakes using it, along with organic whole wheat flour, good eggs and butter, and mash a banana in to make banana cake.  

It is okay to have some carbohydrates and I recommend a balanced diet but just try to eat real food.  Most flour nowadays is genetically modified flour, so buy organic if you can.  Also organic pasta is better than ordinary pasta.  Avoid pizzas unless you make your own dough and add your own fillers, as there are loads of weird additives in them.

At the moment we are making bone broth from both beef or chicken bones left over from our meals.  You simply boil the bones on a very low heat to simmer for a few hours.  Then strain off the liquid, keeping the fat in it and make a soup out of it. This is extremely beneficial for people with osteoporosis or weak bones, giving collagen and bone nutrients.

You can use any vegetables to make the soup, so winter root vegetables are good, such as potatoes, parsnips, carrots, sweet potatoes, or perhaps broccoli.  You can cut them up and boil them in the bone broth, then let it cool down and use a hand held blender to blend the vegetables and make a nice thick soup.  Add a stock cube and we use organic Kallo stock cubes, plus some salt and pepper, as well as any other flavouring you might like. 

It is quite interesting to note that in the past people with tuberculosis or people recovering from long term illness who had lost weight, were prescribed full fat milk, plenty of eggs and lots of butter and meat to build them up again!

In the UK, farmers have been treated badly by the government and the supermarkets, which give them very poor returns on their products.  So if you are in the UK, I am urging people to search online for organic farms and order direct.  Sometimes you need to order over a certain price to receive free delivery but it is worth it, as you can store the food in your freezer.

We are thrilled with the organic farm we order from and the meat is absolutely delicious, reminding me of the meat I used to eat in the 1970s in Somerset, when all meat was organic.

UK farmers are now talking about creating cooperatives, farming supermarkets that the people can buy from directly. This would cut out the middle man and give them fairer prices.  Here in the UK we should all support our farmers.

You can read more on how to eat only healthy food to lose weight and to stay slim in my article here, where I go into it in more depth.  Eventually, you will immediately recognise which foods to avoid because they are very unhealthy and quite honestly horrible for your digestion and for your health!