Olwen Anderson's Blog

I wonder who it was who originally thought to grind some grains of wheat, mix them with water and bake the resulting paste on a hot stone, to create the world's first version of bread? Whoever it was began a trend in food that has brought us to the massive selection of bread available today, and the many ways we have discovered to use it.

The earliest forms of bread were so heavy – whole grains were ground between stones before water and salt were added, along with a wild yeast to produce a dough that took many hours to ferment and rise. The resulting slices would have taken a lot to chew and been very filling with all that fibre! Labour intensive to make and labour intensive to digest! But those were whole grains, full of valuable vitamins and minerals.

Fast forward to modern times: Commercial bread takes just one hour of rising to produce a light, fluffy product that requires almost no chewing, and contains lots of additives. Only the central part of the grain is used – and it doesn't contain as many nutrients as the whole grain bread did. Worse, white processed bread is high on the glycemic index, making the regulation of your blood glucose more challenging.

Some modern bread makers are returning to traditional methods, using sourdough (wild) yeasts, and whole grain breads. These are certainly better than their fluffy commercial cousins, but even so, its still possible to have too much bread in your diet.

If you've ever had to follow a grain-free diet, you'll fully appreciate how easy bread is to use. You can toast a slice to hold your breakfast egg; sandwich some meat and salad for your lunchbox. The problem is that its too easy, and bread can easily come to dominate your diet, elbowing out other, potentially more nutritious foods like protein, legumes, vegetables and fruit.

Wondering if you're eating too much bread? An easy way to find out is to stop buying bread for a week. If you find it rather challenging to locate other foods to eat, there's your answer – yes, there was too much bread in your diet.

What are you going to eat instead? For breakfast, make yourself a vegetable and egg omelette. Pack a lunch box with a colourful salad, some high quality protein like tuna or chicken. Add handful of cooked chick peas or some starchy vegetable like steamed baby potatoes, or a cooked cob of sweet corn. And a delicious dressing. Yum!

For most people, one or two slices of heavy, whole grain or multigrain bread per day is enough. Flat bread can be good too, as it is traditionally made without yeast and sugar.

And what to spread on the bread? Stop buying butter or margarine, and switch to nutrient-laden avocado, nut butters or banana. These healthier spreads will give you the creamy texture that enhances sandwiches, without the empty calories.

Hummus dip makes a great healthy snack, particularly if you eat it with carrot or other vegetable sticks rather than biscuits. It’s a high density food, containing good amounts of fibre, protein and good fats. But if you buy a tub of pre-prepared hummus from the supermarket, there's a good chance it will contain preservatives, or unnecessary 'fillers' like breadcrumbs to thicken it. Yuk!

Cook up multiple batches of chick peas at once. Each batch of hummus will use 60g dried chick peas – suggest you soak and cook at least three times this amount.

1. Soak your dried chick peas in water for eight hours
2. Rinse the peas and place in a saucepan with enough water to cover generously.
3. Bring to the boil and simmer for one hour. They should now be soft enough to squash easy between your thumb and finger.
4. Drain, reserving the cooking liquid.
5. Puree the beans. I use a masticating juicer (a Vitalmax) with the nut butter attachment in place. You could use a mortar & pestle instead, or even a masher. This is the messy part of the process, and the reason why you're cooking up a large batch.
6. Divide the pureed beans into portions by weight. (i.e if you boiled three times the quantity of chick peas, divide the mixture into three portions). Put the portions in individual tubs in your freezer and keep one to make up a fresh batch now.
7. Add 75ml (1/3 cup) tahini, preferably unhulled (more calcium!).
8. Add one large garlic clove, well crushed.
9. Add the juice of one large lemon, plus the leftover fruit pulp.
10. Add one teaspoon extra virgin olive oil.
11. Stir to mix, adding the reserved cooking liquid to create the dip consistency you want. If you have pureed the chick peas properly in step 5, the consistency will be smooth. If not, you may have to use a blender.
12. Salt to taste, add more lemon juice if you like.
13. Divide your dip mixture into 3 or 4 portion-sized containers and refrigerate. They will easily last 3 or 4 days.

Next time you want to make hummus, just retrieve another tub of pureed chick peas from the freezer, thaw, and start again at step 7.

Easy? How did you go with the process – let us know by leaving your comment below.

We’ve all heard about the childhood obesity epidemic. The statistics are alarming with approximately 25% of all Australian children already overweight or obese, and that figure is set to rise to one third by 2020.

It seems obvious that changes need to be made to the culture and attitude toward healthy living that our kids currently have, so where to start? 

The Government has brought in changes to school canteens, our primary and high schools have education built into them and there is the changing legislation regarding marketing and advertising food to children but how do you combat the fact that junk food is often just a kids favourite?

That’s where organisations and groups like Muscle Sprouts come in. Adding a new key ingredient to the healthy living recipe- Fun. Organisations like Muscle Sprouts provide opportunities for kids to take some responsibility in their lifestyle choices, rather than merely stopping or preventing kids from eating poorly or promoting one off exercise tasks. We all know when you say a firm ‘No’ to something it often only ends up making it all the more desirable, so instead of simply banning the junk food Muscle Sprouts has another tactic. 

Muscle Sprouts philosophy is about creating changes that will last and benefit generations of Australian kids and having fun while doing it, as they work in conjunction with government initiatives as well as parents towards a much needed culture shift in Australia.

Offering a range of activities and events that aim to educate and involve kids in understanding healthy living, one of their workshops is a Cooking Extravaganza Class, which teaches kids how to prepare and cook meals that are quick, healthy and can be enjoyed by the whole family. 

Sharing secrets about disguising unattractive vegetables, chefs tips on simple food preparation as well as a wealth of recipes to take home and try out, these entertaining workshops not only provide valuable information on nutrition but get kids off the couch and interested, an idea many mums will no doubt cherish.

Muscle Sprouts is a non-for profit organisation, that aims to minimize the risk of childhood diseases caused by obesity, in particular heart disease and childhood diabetes. Their workshops and seminars are open to anyone, for more information or to contact Muscle Sprouts, visit their website www.musclesprouts.com.au or call 1300 704 250.

By Emma Lovell

On behalf of Muscle Sprouts

If you ever wondered whether dropping modern foods from your diet could improve your fitness performance, take a look at this book: "The Paleo Diet For Athletes" (Note: I purchased this book).

The main thrust of the author's argument (one of the authors is a professor in health and exercise science; the other coaches endurance athletes) is that the foods our ancestors ate are the foods our genes are designed to eat; and that relatively modern foods such as sugar, grains, legumes and dairy are foreign to our bodies.

From a scientific nutritional perspective, a lot of their arguments made sense to me.

But I don't want to chase down my next meal…. Reading the book, my imagination wondered how it would have been to catch a large animal in those days, and then butcher and eat every available organ and muscle, including the brain. Yuk! I started to feel grateful for the neatly presented parcels of meat available at the supermarket!

And since I like trying out new information to see what effect it has, I've gradually cut out grains and dairy more and more. Interestingly, I find that the days where I eat no or very little grains, the next morning I wake up with a much clearer head. And my moods are more even too. I feel great, even though I didn't follow the diet precisely (I do eat one serve of grains and one serve of dairy almost every day, and I still eat legumes.)

Fibre intake wasn't a problem, surprisingly. It was actually easy to eat the minimum 25g of fibre from fruits and vegetables without feeling like I was eating like a rabbit. Surprising because high grain intake is often promoted as an ideal way to improve your fibre intake.

There were some theories presented that I wasn't convinced on, particularly the theories about legumes and peanuts: I'm sure I would have enjoyed some fresh peas (legumes) if I'd come across them, and peanuts too if I found them.

There's plenty of scientific references included if you want to venture more into the research and the data. 

So if you'd like to give the paleo (caveman) diet a try, pick up a copy of the book, give the diet a try for a couple of weeks, and then let us know what you think of it by leaving your comments below.

One of the pressing questions for the scientific community right now is the cause of the epidemic obesity and chronic lifestyle diseases like adult onset diabetes and high cholesterol. 

I've just finished reading an interesting review article in the journal 'Obesity Reviews' about how certain foods could be driving an inflammatory process in your body. The article can be found here

Inflammation is a normal, healthy biological response – its what causes your body to send in the healing mechanisms when you're wounded; to mobilise your immune cells when a viral or bacterial invader is detected. But if your body doesn't switch off the inflammation response when its supposed to, your body can develop some very unhealthy coping responses, and the result is often chronic disease.

The scientists who wrote the article proposed the question: could some of the foods we eat in modern times (which weren't eaten prior to the agricultural/industrial era) be switching on an inappropriate inflammation response in our bodies? Here are some of the foods they examined, and what they deduced:

• Alcohol in moderation
• Cocoa and dark chocolate
• Dairy (although I find if you're dairy intolerant its going to have an inflammatory effect, regardless of the evidence)
• Monounsaturated fats (e.g olive oil)
• Seafood and oily seafood
• High fibre foods
• Fruits
• Vegetables
• Herbs and spices
• Game meat
• Nuts
• Soy protein (but I'm not a fan of this myself, its too processed and concentrated. Eat the whole food instead, like tofu)
• Tea

• Too much alcohol
• Too many calories (but fasting is pro-inflammatory too!)
• Fast food
• Saturated fats
• Trans fats
• Too many omega-6 oils
• Fructose
• Sugar
• Industrially raised meat (e.g in feedlots)
• Soft drink

• Coffee

The conclusion, in my view? Modern food = modern diseases of modern society.

What do you think? Join the discussion and leave your comment below...

It was a casual snippet of conversation I overheard that reminded me: "You know, since I've been eating all those tomatoes and eggplants from our vegie harvest, my arthritis has played up dreadfully." It was then I remembered the old naturopathic theory that some vegetables can really affect some people who have arthritis.

But vegies are supposed to be good for you, right? Well, yes, but if you're sensitive to the naturally occurring chemicals in vegetables of the solanaceae family, your arthritis could indeed become worse when you eat them. Let me explain some more….

Whether its osteoarthritis or rheumatoid arthritis, the inflammation in your joint is what causes the redness, pain and swelling. Reduce the inflammation, and the pain reduces too.

Some people with arthritis find that they're actually very sensitive to the natural food chemicals produced by the solanaceae family of foods – that's tomatoes, potatoes, capsicum, eggplant, and chillis. (Tobacco's a member of this family too - but we all know that cigarettes aren't good for you anyway!) The solanaceae family is also known as the 'deadly nightshade' family with good reason – some of its members, like the herb belladonna, are literally poisonous to humans.

All foods contain natural chemicals that have evolved over millions of years – some developed to deter people and animals from eating them.  

Although I wasn't able to locate any scientific research papers to support this old folk theory about foods of the solanaceae family and arthritis, substituting these vegetables with other vegetables for four weeks could be an easy way for you to discover whether the naturally occurring chemicals in this food family are affecting you.

If you decide to go ahead with this test, remember to be rigorous in avoiding any of the solanaceae vegetables listed above, as eating even just a little of the food during the testing period could trigger a reaction if you're sensitive. Before you start, draw a diagram and note the pain levels in each of your joints out of 10 (with 10 as the worst). Then at the end of the month pull out your original drawing and see if your pain levels have shifted while you stayed away from solanaceae foods.

Did your pain recede while you modified your diet? If so, have a chat with your health practitioner to check that you will remain well nourished even if you leave these foods out of your diet permanently.

What's been your experience? Join the discussion by leaving your comment below.

Aging too fast? Weight not coming off? Maybe its time to learn about DHEA.

That's short for dehydroepiandrosterone. But DHEA is an easier name to pronounce, don't you think?

Your adrenal glands produce many hormones, and DHEA is one of them. Soon after production your body converts this hormone to DHEA-S (dehydroepiandrosterone sulphate) and that's what's measured when you have a blood or saliva test for the presence of this hormone.

This is an important hormone because it’s the precursor for many other reproductive hormones. As you age your levels of reproductive hormones decline, thanks in part to lower levels of DHEA-S. In women this means the onset of menopause; in males this can result in andropause, a time when their testosterone levels drop enough to produce physical symptoms of aging.

And so what? I hear you say. Why should I know where my DHEA-S levels are at? Because from a functional medicine point of view, your DHEA-S level can give you valuable insights into how fast you're aging, and how healthy your adrenal glands are.

As your levels of reproductive hormones decline with age (remember that DHEA-S helps create the reproductive hormones), your body composition changes. Healthy levels of oestrogen and testosterone promote the growth of skeletal muscle in preference to fatty tissue. The more muscle tissue you have, the faster your metabolism runs, making it easier to lose weight.

Some diseases of aging and a chronic sedentary lifestyle have been associated with low levels of DHEA-S; although this hypothesis is still debated in some scientific circles.

Usually people don't discover that they have perilously low DHEA-S levels until they experience weight that just won't budge any more; or menopausal symptoms that aren't responding to treatment; or a lack of libido; or they find they're aging faster than they expect.

My clinical experience has been that the lower a person's DHEA, the less responsive their body will be to natural therapies; even more so if they don't already have a healthy lifestyle that includes resistance weight training to build muscle.

You can't prevent getting older, but you can take lots of positive action to slow the decline of your endocrine system. Ask your health practitioner (or me if you're in the Murwillumbah area) about the actions you can take to slow your own aging process.

Its easy - just make your own vanilla essence at home.

I realised that this could be done while I was in the midst of my herbal lessons. Part of that involved 'macerating' herbs to create a therapeutic product - all you have to do is put dried herb in a bottle of brandy, let it sit for a specified period of time to allow the therapeutic ingredients in the herb to leach out into solution.

It occurred to me that it must be possible to create a vanilla essence by macerating vanilla beans in brandy. My first attempts were successful - I used three whole vanilla beans, chopped them up, and covered them with 500mls of brandy. After a few months in the back of the pantry it made a very nice vanilla essence that I could be pretty liberal with because it was so cheap to make!

This week I saw a similar recipe, but the maker had used 3 vanilla beans to about 250ml of rum. That sounds good too.

Ideally, you would have one bottle macerating in the cupboard while you use the matured one, to add to fruit smoothies for an extra dose of very natural flavour!

Have you ever tried making vanilla essence? What were your experiences? Join the discussion by leaving your comment below...

As you're reading this, I'm guessing that you're pretty interested in improving your health, and you probably set down health goals for the coming year.

But so many people overlook using the one word that could make all the difference to their success. Its "why". Surprised? Well, lets look at an example. Perhaps your goal was to "lose 5kg". There must be a reason why you want to lose 5kg – to fit into a smaller size of clothes? To feel toned and shapely again? To reduce your joint pain? 

The 'why' reason adds an emotional component to your goals, and most people respond more strongly to an emotional reason to do something rather than a 'should'. (Don't know about you, but for me, being told I "should" do something just evokes a tantrum in my inner toddler!)

Revisit your health goals for 2010, and make a notation of 'why' you're chasing it. Then imagine how you'll feel when you achieve the goal – that's really going to motivate you!

What do you think? Join the discussion by leaving your comments below. And if you're feeling really generous, share your health goals with us and your own "why" for them!