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!

How to Lose Weight Naturally by Eating a Healthy Diet

by Louise Mclean, LCCH.

There have been thousands of articles written on this subject but I would like to tell you what I did to get slim and stay slim!

When I was a teenager in the mid-1960s, there was a fashion model icon named Twiggy, who was terribly thin and we female teenagers all wanted to look like her!  Years later, I realised that being so thin was actually not at all attractive and in fact quite ugly.  It made us look as though we were suffering from malnutrition and many girls became ill on the extreme diets they went on!

These diets very often consisted of starving ourselves to achieve the impossible goal of skinniness. Unfortunately I found out that they used to do that to pigs to fatten them up.  In other words if you go on a starvation diet and lose weight very fast, you will not only put all that weight back on, but you will put on even more weight than before!  It is very foolish to do this.

I understand some people for different reasons decide to go on a fast in order to detox their bodies, where they just drink water and eat fruit.  In the short term there is nothing wrong with this, as long as it does not continue for more than a few days.  I am talking about women who want to be very thin and starve themselves to achieve this.

For many years after Twiggy was in Vogue, the fashion for thin women continued.  It was a pity to lose all those feminine curves.  For older women, this kind of diet can have an aging effect on their faces.

So on the starvation diet, I would lose weight fast and then of course my willpower would desert me, I would be really hungry and I would put all the weight back on plus more!  I also noticed that every time I did this, the weight would come off more slowly than the time before. 

Anyway, I realised that if I was going on all these starvation diets, I really needed to know which super healthy low calorie foods I should be eating.  I came across this book, Let's Get Well by Adele Davis, which is still available today.  At the back it lists every food and which vitamins and minerals they all contain.  This helped me to make sure I was getting enough of them on my low calorie diet.

It is very bad for your body to yoyo like this, as your stomach shrinks when you starve yourself and expands when you overeat.  Yet the body thrives on a regular diet with regular meal times, where the size of your stomach remains constant and you always know when you have eaten enough.  This is the first goal you need to achieve, where you never overeat and you have no desire to do so.  Try eating more slowly, as this will help and also is much better for your digestion.

Eventually after years of dieting and counting calories (!) one day I realised that all I had to do if I wanted to be slim, was to simply eat Natural Foods.  This means no synthetic or processed foods whatsoever.  

So you can eat meat, fish, seafood, eggs, all cheeses, all vegetables including potatoes, all salad foods, all fruits, all nuts.  (This is not a Keto diet!)  For people who want to eat bread, yes, you can.  Just eat sourdough bread which is very digestible and more healthy than other breads.  If you buy organic whole wheat flour, you can maybe make your own bread.  I only eat butter and have never eaten margarine, which I do not recommend.

In addition, you can have chocolate but only the very dark at least 70% chocolate and I eat the Green & Black one, but I only have about 3 small squares of it after supper.  In the old days, I would want to eat the whole bar but I learnt to remind myself, that if I had a little, there would still be lots left for tomorrow!

You can also have a glass of red or white wine but only one glass or one beer.  It is horrible having to give up everything for a diet!  That's what puts people off!

If you desperately want cake, you can make one with organic whole wheat flour but without very sweet icing on it.  Refined white sugar is bad for us and I only use organic Coconut Sugar, which is great and I use it if I make a banana cake. Even brown sugar is basically just dyed white sugar!

The problem with most of our biscuits, cakes and bread is that it is made with genetically modified flour, which is not at all good for your body.  I buy organic digestive biscuits.  If you are in the UK you can get them from Waitrose made by Dove Farm.  This brand also makes spelt flour, and I still need to try making a spelt loaf, as it is delicious.  In the UK you can get Duchy whole wheat organic flour from Waitrose but you can also get these things from a good independent health shop.

Yes, I know these things are more expensive but remember you are going to be eating less! What you put in your body is so important because you literally are what you eat!

Start to seriously identify which is real food and which is not. You will find that eating these real foods will fill you up and they are healthy and good for you.  They contain vitamins and minerals necessary for your body. In the 1950s and before that, most people were slim because they all ate real food, as most of their food was anyway organic.  It was only in the 1990s that genetically modified fruits and vegetables started to be grown.

However, the point I am trying to make is that a diet doesn't mean you have to give up everything you like eating!  It always seemed that way to me in the past. You can have the things you like but just make sure you get the organic version and you do need to train yourself not to eat too much. 

Now I always make a joke that if everything in the supermarket was priced in relation to how many vitamins and minerals were in it, most of the products would be free!  Sadly our foods and drinks are full of very nasty additives, which our bodies do not know how to break down or digest and they often end up as excess fat.

Diet coke is an example.  It is full of aspartame, which is very bad for you and it does not help you to lose weight.  In fact most people I know who take it are fatter than ever, so it makes me wonder. In addition I met a diet coke addict who ended up in a wheelchair.  All the so called Soda drinks are full of sugar and unfortunately we really should not be drinking them, as sugar feeds cancer or causes diabetes.  Better to drink mineral water or pure fruit juice mixed with mineral water.  

There are laboratories that make food flavourings, additives, preservatives, artificial sweeteners, dyes, amino acids. Many of these are not at all good to eat and bad for the body. They come in lots of products in the supermarket, especially heat up meals and jars of sauce.  Some of these additives have been created to be addictive because the food companies want you to keep buying their products! 

Be careful with crisps, as they are coated with food flavourings, which are often artificial.  Food flavouring is a growing industry used to enhance the taste and sensory experience of foods and beverages.

You can have pasta but I would avoid pizza which has lots of additives.  If you make pasta, try to buy the organic pasta and I do not eat any of the pasta sauces in bottles.  You do not know what additives are in them.  It is quite easy to make a pasta sauce using tomato juice as a base and adding tomatoes or vegetables.  I do add basil pesto to mine, as well as olives and even grated cheese.  For cheese, try to not to buy the very processed types. Of course Parmesan cheese is lovely with pasta, you don't need much and it will last for ages in the fridge.

Unfortunately if you want to eat healthily, you will need to cook things from scratch yourself, so then you know exactly what is in your meals!

Things don't always have to be expensive.  You can make an aubergine curry by frying the pieces in coconut oil and then putting the curry ingredients in.  Again, I use a good quality tomato juice for the sauce. I buy organic brown rice to eat with curry, which is very nutritious and full of vitamin B for the nerves.  

You can also make soups by boiling up vegetables, blending them, then adding salt, pepper, even a bit of organic cream!  I buy organic Kallo stock cubes.

One of my favourite health foods is avocado and I often spread it on a piece of sourdough toast with butter and a little salt. I always feel so well after eating it. Make sure your butter comes from cows with no dangerous Bovaer in their diet.  I emailed to find out and get Castle Dairies butter from Waitrose, which is delicious.

Sometimes I make a mozzarella salad with slices of avocado and slices of tomatoes.  I then chop fresh basil over it and add sundried tomatoes finely chopped.  Salt, black pepper, olive oil and a dash of balsamic vinegar make it an absolutely delicious meal!

For salt, never use table salt which contains anti-caking agent and is very bad for us.  I use Himalayan crystal salt but sea salt or Celtic salt is also good.

We are told to avoid seed oils, which are very bad for us, people use them for cooking and they come in lots of different products.  I only use a good quality olive oil for frying and cooking, except when I use coconut oil.

Yoghourt is delicious but I am very wary of the fruit yoghourts, which contain high fructose corn syrup.  I buy organic plain full fat Greek yoghourt, add a teaspoon of organic strawberry jam (or whatever jam you like best), stir it in and there is your fruit yoghourt that you know exactly what is in it.  Takes only a minute to make. I don't worry about 'full fat' products.  We need fat and it is not fattening!

If you have a party or want to make a quick dip to eat with your kettle crisps, here are some of the dips I make, which are very quick and easy. 

Put a few tablespoons of organic Greek yoghourt into a bowl, crush a couple garlic cloves in and add some fine Himalayan crystal salt.  Stir and it is delicious if you like garlic!

If you like blue cheese.  Put a few tablespoons of organic Greek yoghourt into a bowl, add blue cheese, especially St. Augur which is very soft, a tiny bit of salt and stir it well.  Absolutely divine dip!

You can make the yoghourt dip with a teaspoon of Indian Lime Pickle, using only the sauce of it, not the actual pieces of lime.  Stir the yoghourt and Lime Pickle sauce and you have a lovely curry dip!

I also make a dip with good quality cream cheese and smoked salmon cut very finely in, with a touch of salt.

None of the above are fattening, except perhaps the cream cheese, although that contains no carbohydrates. 

Also the dips you buy in supermarkets are full of nasty weird ingredients and nearly always seem to add sugar! The ones above are delicious and pure, much nicer!

As regards milk, we buy the organic whole milk containing cream.  The ordinary kind may contain hormones given to the cows.  I do like my Earl Grey tea with milk and put one small teaspoon of coconut sugar in it.

I know it is like a minefield trying to avoid dangerous foodstuffs but over time you will get good at it!  Getting the Adele Davis book above is a good start, especially if you want to know which foods contain the most vitamins and minerals!

The worst thing about dieting is feeling as though you have to go without, but later you will realise clearly that some of the things you have been eating, are horrible and bad for you.  Dieting can mean that you think of nothing else but food, which makes it more difficult. Once you are in the right habits that will stop. 

I would also recommend not weighing yourself every day but maybe once a week.  It can become obsessive.  Better to judge your weight loss by how your clothes fit! 

So the way to get slim and stay slim is basically avoid all synthetic, processed or junk food.  Eat only real food and try not to overeat. This way you will lose the kilos slowly (which is the best way to keep them off for good) and eventually reach your target weight.  You will also feel much better if you eat healthy food.  It doesn't have to be boring and you don't have to feel deprived.  Eventually, it will become a way of life and then you will always be slim!