For readers of the April Sherborne Times…

Whether you're reading this because my April Sherborne Times article left you wanting to know more, or you landed straight here, you are welcome! There are a few thoughts that I wanted to take time to explore in a little more depth. One is the emotional aspect to food and the other is the importance of supporting the microbiome. It is useful to know that true hunger tends to build slowly and gradually and that by contrast emotional hunger reveals itself by tending to be more urgent. I want to offer breathing exercises as an incredibly powerful way to help manage all kinds of aspects of emotional gut-related issues. Such exercises are best done regularly as well as in moments of anxiety or upset. There is a super-highway of connections between brain and the gut via nerves. We used to think that the communication was mainly in one direction only: brain to gut. Now we know that the gut transmits a LOT...
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Snack attack!

There are certain moments in a parent’s day that can feel quite stressful! Hungry, tired children arriving home from school may be one of them. Home they come, throwing off their need to reign everything in all day, along with their school bags and shoes. The breadth of their vocabulary may be reduced to moody groans as they communicate the difficulties they’ve encountered at school. We may sense a kind of familiarity with this behaviour. As adults, our control may be better than that which our children can muster at times, but we can probably all relate to feeling hungry, in need of something before making it to the next meal and more inclined to reach for something convenient (possibly also indulgent) rather than healthy. Choosing to meet ourselves and others where we are at, rather than where we’d like to be, is so important. Goals to educate and not shame are significant too. I believe these things help foster healthy attitudes...
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Think Fast

Here we are in Lent, traditionally a time of fasting. Alongside emerging research, an interest in fasting for health has been on the rise, and you may well have heard about it. Michael Mosley first brought this to our attention through an episode of Horizon in 2012 (available on iPlayer entitled “Eat, Fast and Live Longer”) which I might re-watch for old times’ sake and to remind myself of where it all began for me. This was my first significant introduction to fasting for health and, at the time, seemed revolutionary. I was drawn in by the compelling scientific evidence presented and felt I must adjust my ‘eat regularly’ maxim as a result. I even had a go myself. I had been very successful in losing baby weight with Slimming World but developed an irrepressible desire to eat some healthy fats in the form of nuts and was not able to shift the last pounds. I felt stuck. I embarked...
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Making the connection

Making the connection

I still remember the moment, nearly 20 years ago now, when I was stood in a supermarket aisle locked in indecision…about chocolate! I was comparing prices of standard with fairtrade, organic bars where the latter cost considerably more than the former. Eventually, I decided it came down to whether I begrudged some poorly-paid chocolate farmer in a far-off hot country a decent wage or would I be prepared to spend more on my chocolate purchase and have less of it to make our shopping budget work? Since then I have learnt more about the pesticides that typically lurk in chocolate which is not grown organically. Chocolate can joyously be considered a health food due to its high polyphenol content. It saddens me that the pesticides in conventionally-farmed products detract from these wholesome credentials. I am also concerned for the farmers who must handle the pesticides used on the chocolate bean crops. And what of intensive farming methods which reduce the fertility...
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Go to work on an egg

“Go to work on an egg” was the phrase that came to my mind when discussing a school-morning breakfast with my daughter the other day. Being a baby of the 70s I felt sure YouTube would find me a garish, 70s-style advert which would rekindle faint memories for me, but no. Instead, I discovered that the Egg Marketing Board had used the phrase mostly in the 50s and 60s, and promoted the idea of eating eggs for breakfast, with the help of people such as Tony Hancock, in black and white adverts made well before my time. Nevertheless, this phrase was a part of my childhood and had clearly stuck in our collective memory…at least for a time. Apparently the notion of dunking toast soldiers into runny egg yolks may have also come from this influential advertising campaign. What was prevalent during my childhood was the emergence of conflicting advice in regard to our egg consumption. Concerns regarding the cholesterol content...
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COVID-19

This article is intended to be a discussion of our current situation, taken from my personal and professional perspective. Any specific recommendations are meant for educational purposes only and are entirely in keeping with my level of qualification. Please seek medical advice to make medical decisions but incorporate what you've learnt here to inform your discussions with other professionals! Like many of you when I first realised how serious this thing was becoming for us in the UK I wondered why the government wasn't doing more and if I should keep my children at home ahead of them being sent home. Having been brought up to date by the UK Chief Medical Officer and the epidemiologists from the WHO I now have a different view. I'm going to assume that you've made your peace with the idea that this thing is coming, that there can be no vaccine as yet and that we are relying heavily on basic but effective strategies...
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Cassava flour scones

These are something between a scone and a roll. I've used them for a cream tea as well as to go with soup. It all depends what you put on them! Cassava flour has a fairly plain taste and creates a good texture so works well as a flour substitute for these reasons. Ingredients 4 eggs 50g extra virgin olive oil 100g cassava flour 45g arrowroot 2 tbsp psyllium husk fibre 1 tsp cream of tartar 1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda 1/2 tsp sea salt Turn on the oven to 190 °C. If you have a reasonably high powered food processor then you might be able to do as I do and put all of the ingredients in together and whizz and scrape until it's all well mixed. To mix by hand I would mix wet ingredients together into one bowl and then sieve all the dry ingredients together in another bowl. Then adding the wet to the dry, beat until thoroughly incorporated. In either...
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Kale Crips

Kale Crips

Kale crisps are, without doubt, my absolute number 1 way to eat kale. Given how they cook down you can eat quite a lot of its green, leafy goodness this way too. This recipe is inspired by the kale crisps I came across in Pret. Basically I looked at the list of ingredients on the packet and started making my own for much cheaper! As always, I use compromises which allow me to make them more quickly. One shortcut is that I use baby kale rather than normal (adult?!) kale because it takes a long time to separate all the tough stalks from the leaves of your usual kale which must be done to get good results. Sadly I've been known to have kale go to waste on more than one occasion because I never got round to finding a slot of time long enough to do this essential preparation job. Instead of risking this happening again I found I could...
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Nutri-Brex Bites

Nutri-Brex Bites

Before I get going let me just say that neither Nutri-Brex nor the Bites that I've made using them are foods that I'd recommend anyone eat in large quantities. They are a compromise but they are also kind of useful and make a delicious little treat that doesn't break the health bank too badly. Nutri-Brex are very similar to Weetabix but made from the gluten-free, low lectin, high resistant starch, ancient grain, sorghum. Yes, the sorghum is no longer in its truly whole grain form, which is where they fall down on the optimum food stakes but I'll forgive them that because, 1. my children like them and I know these are better for them than pretty much any cereal I can think of and 2. they are useful for making these little treats which are shockingly easy to prepare. They are quite widely available in supermarkets too. What you see here, from left to right, are Chocolate Bites, Apricot and Almond Bites and...
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