Olwen Anderson's Blog

Fresh Fruit: Just Two Pieces A Day Is Enough

Wednesday, July 14, 2010

We all know how healthy fruit is – packed with vitamins, minerals, fibre. But its important to make sure your fruit intake is a balanced part of your nutrition, not elbowing other important components out of the way. And the way you eat that fruit is important too. Here’s why:

Fruit is full of natural sugars. Sometimes it can be surprising just how much sugar you’re getting! Ideally, restrict your total sugar intake for the day to 10% of your calories, or 25g. Here is the sugar content of common fruits:

Banana: 13g sugar in one medium banana
Apple: 14g sugar in one medium apple
Strawberries: 7g sugar in one cup of strawberries
Oranges: 21g sugar in one medium orange
Grapes: 19g sugar in 22 green grapes

You can see how just two pieces of fruit is enough, even without sugar that you get from other sources during your day.

Be especially rigorous with monitoring your fruit intake if you tend to suffer from thrush, candida infections, or skin fungal infections (fungal infections just love to feed on sugar!)

Fruit is full of fibre, especially soluble fibre, which will help keep your bowels healthy and lower your cholesterol – but if you juice the fruit you’ll miss out. Fruit juice is actually a very sugary drink, without the fibre to slow down the sugar absorption. So wherever possible, choose to eat a piece of whole raw fruit rather than juicing it.

Eat fruit in season. We are truly blessed with the massive range of fresh fruit available to us, and it changes all year round. Even better, the fruit that’s in season will be cheaper. So don’t feel compelled to stick to the same fruit selection week in week out!

When eaten as a snack, add in some protein food like low fat yoghurt or raw nuts. The protein will help slow the absorption of the sugar in the fruit, giving you a steadier blood sugar level.

Dried fruit is really concentrated, making it too easy to eat a lot. So always eat dried fruit with other food to avoid a blood sugar ‘spike’.

Use your fruit before your fitness training for a carbohydrate boost. Especially important if you do your training before breakfast. After an hour’s training you will need another fruit boost.

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Fibre boost for 'rice on the side'

Thursday, July 16, 2009

Many people use boiled rice as a starchy 'side dish' in place of potatoes. You can give that boiled rice a flavour, nutrition and texture boost with…… legumes! Here are some ideas, using legumes that tend to hold their shape well with cooking, and add good textural and visual interest to your dish.

Chick peas (or garbanzo beans):

Soak in water overnight (or during the day while you're at work), simmer in salted water for 40 minutes or so until tender, drain, and stir through your cooked rice just before serving. Start with a proportion of one part chick peas to three parts rice.

I find chick peas to be the least flatulence-inducing of the legume family.

Remember that cooked chick peas can be frozen successfully, so cook double the quantity and freeze the rest in portion-sized containers. Then you can thaw a portion quickly to sprinkle over a salad, or add to a soup.

Black eyed beans (also known as cowpeas):

Soak for a couple of hours then simmer in salted water for only 30 minutes or so. If you cook them for too long they will tend to fall apart, so taste test from time to time after 20 minutes cooking. They should be firm to bite, but not crisp, and certainly never mushy. Because black eyed beans have a softer texture than chick peas, you could easily use 1/3 beans to 2/3 cooked rice.

Black eyed beans don't freeze well, however you could certainly cook a little extra, refrigerate, and sprinkle over tomorrow's salad.

Shopping tips:

The best place to buy dried legumes is in a health food store; They generally have a higher turnover of legumes than the supermarkets, and you can often buy just a small quantity to try them out.

Nutrition snippets:

- Legumes are naturally high in fibre, with about 4g of fibre in one cup of cooked chick peas. Cooked black eyed beans have a massive 9g of protein in every 100g.

- Legumes contain lots of vitamins and minerals too.

- Legumes are a good source of complex carbohydrates, with a low GI number.

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Fibre: A dieter's best friend

Friday, March 13, 2009

Imagine dieting without feeling deprived. Without that dreaded 'empty' feeling that often comes when you restrict your calorie intake. You can enlist the help of mother nature to fill up your tummy without filling it up with calories too. The key ingredient is fibre. Here's how to use it to your advantage.

There are several different kinds of fibre but only two main categories: those that just pass through your body, and those that absorb fats and toxins so they can be carried out of your body. Both kinds will give you a feeling of fullness without calories.

Its remarkably easy to tweak your diet and add the 25-35g of fibre you need every day. (Most people, when they analyse their diet carefully, find they're falling well short of this target.)

BOOSTER BREAKFAST

Choose a high fibre cereal like oatmeal to start your day. Even better, top it with high fibre fruit like banana, or create a bircher style muesli by mixing half a cup of rolled oats with yoghourt and a grated apple, then soaking overnight in the fridge. This will give you a whopping 7g of fibre and keep you feeling full for hours. Now you can walk past the bakery without feeling desperately hungry!

Oatmeal and fruit both contain soluble fibre, effectively absorbing fat and toxins from your body.

HIGH FIBRE, LOW CALORIE SNACKING

A strategy shared by many effective dieters is to keep a bowl of mixed raw vegetable pieces in a prominent position in the fridge. As soon as you open the door there they are, looking colourful, crisp and delicious. If you tend to snack while watching TV, this strategy is ideal for you. Raw vegetables take longer to chew, so it will be well after the show before you get through the entire bowl! Each 100g of raw veg will supply around 2g of fibre. (P.S. Remember to add some protein to your breakfast too, like a boiled egg. You'll still have lots of energy by mid afternoon!)

LEGUMES ARE A DIETERS BEST FRIEND

There are so many ways you can add these delicious morsels into your diet and boost your fibre intake. Mediterranean and Spanish recipe books will show you many ways to make legumes delicious – after all, they've been cooking them for hundreds of years. Garbanzo beans, for example, have 6g of fibre in every 100g.

Even the humble canned baked beans are a great choice, with 5g of fibre in 100g. Try them on a bed of wilted spinach leaves for breakfast, or on whole grain toast.

FLAVOURFUL FRUIT

Fresh fruit will fill you up with 2-3g fibre in every piece; but even better, it has a sweet taste, relieving your sweet cravings! The best fruit for dieters is organic; fresh, flavourful and crisp.

As you boost your fibre intake you can legitimately feel virtuous! You're filling your tummy, restricting your calorie intake, and gently cleaning toxins out of your system with every mouthful. Not only that, but every mouthful of high fibre food contains hardly any calories. You'll lose weight without feeling deprived. Diet? What diet?

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Fast Fibre Find

Friday, November 28, 2008

Here's a quick reference list you can use to get 5g of fibre in your diet today. We all need 25-35g of fibre every day.

Grains:

1 cup cooked rolled oats

1 cob of sweet corn

3 slices bread (check the label for an accurate fibre count)

1 slice essene (sprouted grain) bread (but check the label for an accurate fibre count)

1/3 cup oat bran (not for IBS sufferers!!!

1/4 cup natural bran (not for IBS sufferers!!!)

1 3/4 cups booked brown rice

Legumes:

1/2 cup cooked mixed beans

1/2 cup cooked peas

1/2 cup baked beans

Nuts and Seeds:

45g almonds

1/2 cup peanuts

50g pistachio nuts

Breakfast cereals: (but check the label)

3 weetbix or vita brits

1 cup Kellogs Just Right

30g Uncle Toby's crunchy oat bran cereal

50g Uncle Toby's muesli flakes

Vegetables

1.5 cups steamed mixed vegetables

1 cup cooked carrots

1 cup cooked cabbage

1.5 cups cooked broccoli

1/2 cup steamed spinach

1 cup cooked sweet potato

1-2 medium steamed potatoes with skin

Fruit

2 large apples

2 oranges

50g dried figs

5 dried apricots

2 large bananas

1 passionfruit

200g blueberrries

2 kiwi fruit, peeled

3-4 nectarines

2 large pears

10g prunes

Supplements:

1 tablespoon of psyllium husks (but do yourself a favour and use real food instead)

Look for other blog entries on this site tagged 'fibre' for more information on the importance of fibre.

Happy eating!

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How Can I Eat All That? Easy Ways To Get The Fibre You Need

Monday, November 17, 2008

Talk about ‘enough’ fibre in your diet, and many people imagine struggling through mounds of chaff-like grains, and unappetising quantities of beans and vegetables. In reality its easy to maintain a good intake of fibre, and enjoy the benefits.

The presence of fibre in food enhances your well being in many ways. It helps form soft, bulky stools, which are easier for the intestines to move along and pass out of the body without strain. By slowing down bowel transit time, nutrients like vitamins and minerals have a better chance of being absorbed into the bloodstream.

The bulkiness of foods that are naturally high in fibre makes them more satisfying, so you don’t have to eat so much to feel full. You’re less likely to snack on high fat, sugary foods if you’re feeling quite satisfied from your last meal.

There’s basically two different kinds of fibre in food; ‘insoluble’ and ‘soluble’. Insoluble fibre passes through the gut mostly unchanged, just absorbing water as it travels along. Humans don’t possess the digestive enzymes to be able to break these tough fibres down, so its main role is to create bulk.

Soluble fibre forms a soft gel-like substance during digestion. This variety of fibre has the ability to slow down the absorption of cholesterol and glucose, so is of particular interest to people interested in managing their cholesterol and blood sugar levels.

You need 25-35g of fibre in your diet every day. The best sources are whole grains such as oats, legumes and fruit. To check, look at what you ate in the last 24 hours. Did you choose whole grains or white, processed grains? Did you eat at least two pieces of fresh fruit? Your bowels will show you too – a person with adequate fibre intake has large, bulky stools, and daily bowel motions.

It might seem easier to just reach for a fibre supplement, but there’s not much in them beyond fibre. By eating whole foods, you get the benefit of the vitamins and minerals in the food as well.

Any one of these food choices will supply you with 20% of your minimum daily fibre intake: Four vita brits or weetbix; 50g popcorn; 100g canned baked beans; two large apples; 150g carrots; 50g almonds.

For example, a diet with a high fibre cereal or baked beans for breakfast, some nuts, three pieces of fresh fruit every day, plus a salad will see you well on the way to an adequate fibre intake.

Remember that drinking water is essential – aim for two litres of pure water every day.

If you want to improve the amount of fibre in your diet, start slowly and increase gradually over a week or so. A ‘bloated’ feeling or pain may indicate an underlying food intolerance. Increased levels of flatulence may indicate too much bad bacteria in your bowel. If increasing your fibre consumption causes discomfort or pain, you should consult with your health professional.

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Olwen Anderson's Blog

Fresh Fruit: Just Two Pieces A Day Is Enough

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Fibre boost for 'rice on the side'

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Fibre: A dieter's best friend

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Fast Fibre Find

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How Can I Eat All That? Easy Ways To Get The Fibre You Need

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