Natural Nutrition
See how food nourishes the body and soul. We round up fresh, organic foods and seasonal favorites. Get the nutritional lowdown, recipes, and practical cooking advice. Discover our Juicing Column and Chef’s Corner.
An Appropriate Diabetes Diet
Diabetes is not a stand-alone illness as it is the cause of several conditions, some of which are life-threatening, including heart disease, kidney failure, Alzheimer's disease and cancer. Many people who have diabetes do not know they have it. This article by Patrick Holford gives dietary advice on how best to control diabetes.
The Best Dietary Choices for IBS
Living with IBS often turns food choices into a fatiguing challenge. New information on FODMAPs may help IBS sufferers select the foods that work best for them, while avoiding those that aggravate symptoms.
Kefir – a probiotic boost!
Wholefoods provide us with all the necessary nutrients to maintain good health, and fermented kefir is no exception. This cultured, natural probiotic is tasty and fun to make in the comfort of your own home.
Berry Healthy!
Berries are not only beautiful to behold, but they just taste so good and are literally bursting with health benefits.
Avocado – pure green goodness
In our household avocado, both the fresh pears and the rich green oil, rules supreme – whether eaten with a spoon and some Herbamare salt, straight from the skin, or included in luscious, unctuous salads, or mashed with soy sauce and spread on hot toast, or in a spicy guacamole, or simply smeared all over my face!
What we feed our children
Children must have good nutrition at crucial, developmental stages of their lives in order to promote early brain development, ward off childhood obesity and build up a strong immune system to fight illness.
Chocolate – for the love of it
Some people think chocolate is in its own separate food group. I personally think, as do many others, that it is an ‘essential’ superfood and that life would just not be the same without it. Chocolate, derived from cocoa beans, has a long and interesting history. The word cacao has changed over the years to cocoa, and was taken originally from the Mayan and Aztec languages.
Grow your Own
Mankind is a relative newcomer on this earth, yet in a short period of time has achieved remarkable things. As a result of our successes, however, we have lost touch with many simple pleasures – such as working with Mother Nature to provide food from our gardens. Natalie Becker aims to empower you to feed yourself from your own backyard!
Mediterranean Diet linked to slower Mental Decline
People who eat and drink like the Greeks may think a little more clearly into old age, hints a study published in the Journal of Clinical Nutrition. The findings add to a handful of evidence that a Mediterranean-style diet may be as good for the brain as it is for the rest of the body.
A Balanced Diet
Nutrient density means how many nutrients you get from a food, given the number of calories it contains. Nutrient-dense foods give you the most nutrients for the fewest number of calories. No principle is more likely to support healthy eating than that of nutrient density, because it gives you concentrated amounts of valuable nutrients such as vitamins, minerals, fibre, essential fatty acids and phytonutrients, to name just a few.
Time for a Pantry Clean-Out
Every now and then we need to get rid of everything in the kitchen that could wreak havoc with our health. Restock with nutritious foods, beverages and snacks. If you don’t have forbidden products in your kitchen, you won’t be tempted to eat them in moments of weakness.
Get your FATS Straight
People are often confused about exactly what an EFA is, what it does, and why it is (or they are) important in the human diet. Then, just to add to the puzzle, there’s the often contentious debate about which fatty acids are actually ‘essential’. Sandi Nye takes a look at these fascinating molecules.
Which Milk?
A recent conversation threw an interesting light on a preconceived idea. A colleague and I were chatting about cow’s milk as part of a human diet, and I expressed the opinion that this milk was meant for cows, not for people. My stance echoed what I had read and learned about milk from both scientific literature and so-called conventional wisdom on milk in the modern diet.
Genes to Plate – nutrition made personal
If you haven’t ever thought about genetics and nutrition together, there’s a fascinating interaction that can affect health and disease.
Salad Jars – the perfect lunch box snack
Here is a recipe on how to make salad jars – the perfect lunch box snack. Use butternut balls, falafels and other fresh ingredients side by side, with a bit of room in between each ball.
Benefits of Coconut Milk, Water and Oil
Coconuts are synonymous with island life – palm trees with huge coconuts swaying in a light breeze along a sandy coastline. Today, however, more and more people are associating coconuts with superfood status, and are talking about the health and skincare benefits of coconut water, milk and oil.
Paleo vs Plant – a comprehensive response to an ongoing debate
Genetic adaptation occurs over many generations, whereas we only have a single lifetime to get it right. Rather than trying to adjust our genes to a diet that might be inherently wrong for us, why not adapt our diet to our own genetics? The end question when considering the article Paleo vs Plant is whether you should be restricting wholegrains, starchy veg and fruit (as Noakes believes) or if you should be restricting animal proteins (as Shearer believes).
Optimal Nutrition for Hair, Nails and Skin
Healthy hair, skin and nails are an outward sign of health and vitality, and their poor condition may reflect many biochemical imbalances in the body. Hair and nails indicate the health of the body 2 to 6 months previously. This means that much of what is going on inside you will quickly be reflected in this organ system, collectively known as the integumentary system.
The Sunfood Diet
As the sun is necessary for all life forms it makes perfect sense that a diet based on raw food plants warmed and grown beneath its benevolent rays will fill you with energy, cleanse your body and clear your mind.
Is Gluten Really the Cause?
Symptoms of wheat or gluten intolerance overlap with just about every other chronic illness from A to Z. Food allergies are immediately obvious when expressed as rashes, respiratory problems, excessive mucus or headaches. But gluten intolerance lurks in the background with a more delayed, if not subtle action, causing anaemia, asthma, attention deficit disorder, cancer, autoimmune diseases and even miscarriages.