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Cured Vs Processed Meat – there’s a world of difference.

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If you’re at all familiar with what I do, you will know that I am passionate about good quality food.This tends to mean minimally processed, wholesome and natural. However, there is a process that was developed thousands of years ago to preserve foods from spoiling, that actually enhances the nutritional benefits and digestibility of food. It’s called Fermentation and it is this ancient art (the science of which is called Zymology) that determines the critical difference between a processed meat and a cured meat – curing being a form of fermentation.

The process of fermentation is found in many foods: chocolate, tea, coffee, olives, cheese, yogurt, kefir, wine, beer, vinegar, sauerkraut, kimchi, kombucha, tempeh, miso, fish sauce and, yes, traditional salamis, pepperoni, chorizo, pancetta and many more hams and other deliciously tasty, deeply coloured, complex flavoured charcuterie, often pork based but not always.

Fermenting, or curing of meats (and fish), requires a process to halt the growth of nasty bacteria that cause food to spoil: salt (brining) being the classic method as salt draws out moisture from the food, so the bacteria can’t survive – the salt also draws moisture out of the actual bacteria too – eeek! Spices as well as salt can be added, depending on the end product, and then a special bacteria will be injected to inoculate the meat, just as a starter culture is used for yogurt, kefir, kombucha etc.

Then time does the rest, developing flavour, texture and all-round goodness, and this is the BIG difference between modern processed meats, where the process is quick and un-natural. Nitrates and nitrites artificially enhance flavour and maintain a pinkness that we have come to think of as fresh and good quality whereas well-cured meats can be almost deep purple in colour, showing age and natural flavour development. Cured meats have a dry texture and an intense, tangy flavour – that’s
the fermentation. All fermented foods should have a tang, like sour dough bread does in a way modern bread does not, as the beneficial bacteria that do the fermenting, ‘eat’ up natural sugars presntbin the food. Also, like good dark chocolate, great charcuterie packs a flavour punch that makes scoffing loads of it pretty impossible.

These are great artisan foods that should be eaten with reverence and deligh not feared as unhealthy and naughty. Processed meat has none of the beneficial qualities of a cured meat: they contain man-made chemicals for colour; preservatives to extend shelf-life; many have a very low percentage meat content, which begs the question, what else is in there and hence, consuming too much does appear to increase risk of heart disease.

This is not the same with cured meats – they get better with age naturally. Think of ‘plastic’ cheese in a tube or a triangle or the shiny, slimy stuff that is sold to put in burger buns – it’s obvious there’s nothing good about these ‘cheeses’. The same goes for perfectly square or round slices of bright pink ham, mushy, pink sausages and other such cheap, highly processed meat products wheresas aged, traditionally made cheeses and charcuterie are not only ok, but good for you.

I am not a food snob, I just want there to be some clarity around which foods are healthy and which foods are not. To lump all cheeses together or to put processed and cured meats in the same ‘deadly’ category, is a nonsense and causes confusion and the denial of these really top quality foods.

I am passionate about this, not only because I love that these ancient arts of preserving foods add a whole host of beneficial microbes to our gut. I love to eat great food and the pleasure and nourishment that comes from eating great food, generally leads people to source and stick to more of the good and less of the bad. Eat less but get better quality.

Meanwhile, I am in Mallorca and I watched in wonder as all the locals picked up their weekly stash of bacteria-ridden loveliness at the local market – a sight to behold and the copious tasters I gladly accepted. Beyond delicious ?

What Does it Mean to Detox?

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I’ve long been cynical of the hype surrounding seasonal, quick-fix detoxing. There are all sorts of supplements, courses, treatments and spa stays that sell the concept of detox support and enhancement but these things fail to address the reality of what is going on inside our bodies. Although it can make us feel like we are doing good for our health, a short, sharp detox and best will do little good and at worst can add to our toxic burden if your body cannot process and eliminate any toxins you are liberating efficiently.

The process of detoxification is constantly going on inside the body and there are many complex, cellular systems that break down toxins and allow them to be removed via the skin, urine, breath and stool. There are certainly things that we can do to enhance this process, not least, trying to avoid some of the toxin exposure, discussed below. What is important is to see this as an on-going process that never comes to an end, so employing daily, doable actions that enable your body to manage you toxin burden is really advisable.

We all have a toxic burden. No-one, however clean living, can avoid some degree of exposure. Degree of exposure, coupled with naturally ability to detox (some people are genetically more able than others), nutritional status, activity level and even state of mind can all contribute to our toxic load. Too much exposure of toxins for too long with impaired detox processes can lead to a toxic burden known to be at the route of much chronic disease, chronic fatigue, brain fog and hormonal imbalance.

This might all make a bit more sense when you take in to account the relentless level of toxin exposure the modern world throws at us. Here are just a few examples:

– Personal care products from sun-creams to moisturizer, shampoo to shower gel, make up to nail varnish remover
– Make up
– Cleaning solutions
– Pesticides and fungicides on and in our fruit and veg ( a huge subject in itself)
– Artificial flavouring and colourings in food
– Medications
– Chemicals in water
– Alcohol
– Processed oils in foods (trans fats)
– Plastics from food packaging
– Preservatives and emulsifiers in food
– That new car & carpet smell – not good
– Paint fumes
– Perfume
– Air fresheners
– Hair colourants
– Scented candles

We also manufacture our own toxins inside of all our cells, just from living, breathing, digestion and especially when exercising. So detoxification is a 24/7 process and how well me manage it comes down to a lot of factors.

Some people (including myself) have a certain genetic profile that makes detoxing less efficient. A process called methylation is hugely involved in breaking down toxins and if you don’t methylate well (me) this adds to the problem. Taking the pre-methylated B vitamins B6, B12 and folic acid can help.

Supporting your detox processes with the following guidelines is certainly prudent. Many of these recommendations are useful as they help the body’s production of Glutathione, produced by every cell, which supports your internal, processes of detoxing and helps protect the body from environmental toxins:

Lifestyle Factors
Sweat: getting hot and sweaty regularly encourages release of toxins. Saunas can be good for this too.
Skin brushing: Use a natural bristle brush and always brush on dry skin, up towards the heart.
Eat sulphur-based foods: eggs, broccoli, kale, cauliflower, onions and garlic. Sulphur not only supports liver detox processes, it is also a key ingredient for making glutathione.
Eat 4 -5 Brazil nuts daily to get a good dose of selenium, a mineal key to your body’s production of Glutathione.
Keep well hydrated

Supplements to Enhance Your Detox Processes
Milk Thistle: a medicinal herb that supports liver processes and glutathione production
N-Acetyl-Cysteine: a precursor to glutathione
B vitamins (look for the ‘methylated’ form)

and do what you can to use natural skin care and home care products and where possible eat organic fruit and veg. To find out more about the cleanest and dirtiest products and produce, this is a great website.

The ABC of Omega 3

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A lot of questions have come in lately about the essential fatty acid omega 3 and how to ensure we are getting enough of this ‘essential’ nutrient. Omega 3 is known as an essential fatty acid or EFA because it is essential to healthy function but cannot be made by the body so it is essential that we get it from food. The same applies to omega 6, but that’s for another day.

EFAs are known as super poly-unsaturated oils. This means they are extremely vulnerable to damage. Exposure to heat, light and oxygen will rapidly turn the precious fats rancid. Hence, when you extract and EFA for its source food, think fish oil from the fish or flax oil from the flax seed, the oil immediately starts to spoil. This makes treatment of foods that contain omega 3 a really important issue and crucially the making of supplements too.

Omega 3 fatty acids are found in precious few food sources. Oily fish such as mackerel, sardines, herring, anchovies, tuna and wild salmon along with a little omega 3 in the meat of animals fed exclusively on grass and some free range organic eggs have a little too. When you understand how many bodily functions require omega 3, the issue of getting enough become clear:

Omega 3 is very anti-inflammatory, which helps with healing and general function; it is important in the regulation of many hormones; supports healthy brain function including improving mood regulation; eye heath requires large amounts of omega 3; immune regulation; body fat management; joint health; heart health and reduction in blood pressure are just some of the benefits.

Omega 3, along with omega 6, is also found in small amounts in some nuts and seeds, ,flax seeds and chia seeds being particularly rich in omega 3, as are walnuts (ever eaten some walnuts and noticed a sour smell and taste – this is the precious oils turning rancid). However, and this is really critical, there is NO EPA or DHA in these sources of omega 3. What does this mean? Plant source of omega 3 are not biologically available. The body has to covert plant omega 3 (short chain fatty acid) to active omega 3 (long chain), which comes in 2 forms, EPA and DHA. DHA is especially rich and required in the brain, and EPA is highly anti-inflammatory and nourishing for the body. To convert plant omega 3 to active is partly a genetic predisposition but also a matter of health. This conversion is difficult and minimal. Even in a really healthy body, only 2- 4% of the omega 3 gets converted to activated omega 3, so masses would have to be consumed. But many people are simply not able to make the conversion at all due to poor gut health.

Getting enough omega 3, due to the few foods that contain it, can be tough. It is suggested that oily fish should be consumed 3 – 5 times a week. As farmed salmon, the vast majority of salmon in the supermarkets, has very little omega 3 due to the way they are farmed and tuna should be limited to once or twice a month due to the mercury levels in big sea fish, this means eating small, deep water fish, the fishy ones! Very few people do this.

So where do omega 3 supplements fit in? Well, the jury is out. I don’t think there is any doubt that getting nutrients from whole foods is always preferable to using supplements, but if we are not getting what we need from our diet, are supplements a good option? Some people are allergic to fish, many people don’t like oily fish, there’s the vegetarians and vegans who won’t eat fish, so this makes supplements are really the only option.

Your choice of supplemental omega 3 in a readily absorbable form are, fish oils, krill oil and omega 3 from algae. That’s because we eat fish that contain omega 3, fish eat krill for omega 3 and krill eat algae. So there is a very specific algae that has recently become widely available in supplement form that is the only non-animal source of EPA and DHA.

In my experience, many fish oil capsules are rancid. If you get nasty fishy burps, don’t consume them. Krill oil, a lovely deep red colour, is generally better absorbed and has the added bonus of containing a very potent anti-oxidant called astaxanthin, which is good for you and prevents krill oil turning rancid. Krill will be more expensive than fish oil capsules but you need far less as its higher absorption rate requires only small amounts to be taken. Always check that the krill is sustainably sourced as krill is a massively important food source for fish, birds and wales. Krill and fish contain more EPA to DHA, EPA being essential for managing inflammation. Algae has a higher amount of DHA, brain food. Taken with food, these precious oils should be well absorbed, but quality is really important, so you generally get what you pay for and always check that the bottles are opaque and kept cool so avoid light and heat damage.

Although there are questions about the benefits of omega 3 taken as a supplement, considering its crucial role in our health and its lack in our foods, it is probably a good strategy. I take an algae and a krill daily as well eating whole, fresh nuts and seeds and I use freshly ground and soaked flax seeds for their numerous benefits. My genetics suggest I am not a good converter, but there are many other benefits to freshly ground flax seeds and just maybe, due to my high fibre diet with lots of fermented foods, my gut is in good enough shape to convert some flax omega 3 in to these super-helpful long-chains. I eat oily fish whenever possible, but in reality it is once a week and not more. I eat really good eggs, probably 6 -8 a week and grass-fed meat once a week to once a fortnight.

I hope that helps with your questions on omega 3s. Let me know what else you need some help with. Here’s to health and happiness.

Rev up the healing power of your garlic

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Super-charge the extraordinary healing powers of garlic by chopping, crushing or grating & leave exposed to the air for at least 10 minutes. The allicin, the active compound that revs up immunity, helps protect from cancer, lowers blood pressure, improves cholesterol management, is anti-bacterial, anti-fungal & anti-viral becomes 100x more potent when you break open the cells of the garlic & expose to the air. Even better, the garlic retains its potency even during cooking if you do this. So prep your garlic before you do anything else and then add it to your dish after at least 10 minutes. Get garlicking everyone!

Mind Your Oats!

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Whenever I mention in my health talks that oats aren’t ‘all that’, people are often shocked and horrified. ‘But oats are really healthy aren’t they?…’ I hear over and over again.

Well, yes and no. There is something useful, even healthful in oats; a very specific type of soluble fibre called Beta Glucan. It has been well studied and thought to help manage levels of fat in the blood.

Some products like yogurts, spreads and those expensive, sweet yogurty drinks proudly include beta glucan, making the product a ‘Functional Food’ that apparently does you good. The reality is, we need very high levels of beta glucan on a daily basis to have any bearing on blood fats. The amount would challenge even the most ardent porridge fan, so the reality is that most people are in no way eating the levels required to have any real effect on cholesterol… and just to confuse further, there is still a huge amount of debate regarding the merit of lowering blood cholesterol levels any way – low does not necessarily mean healthy (that’s a different blog!). So to be doggedly eating oats for their cholesterol-lowering benefits and certainly choosing to eat those highly processed ‘functional foods’ that are full of nasties, in the belief you will help your health, I think you need to re-think.

So, why not have oats anyway? Surely a daily dose of oats, a big steaming bowl of creamy, warming, filling porridge sweetened with a big spoon of honey, must be doing some good, right? Well, it all depends. If you have been working the land for a few hours before breakfast or chopping down trees, or have been training for a marathon, then yes, your body would welcome the massive hit of carbohydrate (read: energy for your body to replenish what you’ve burnt up from working the body hard) that the oats and honey (or any sugar) will offer and as a bonus, there will be a decent dose of fibre to help with digestive function and feed your beneficial bacteria. Fibre is extremely important and often lacking in the diet, so yes, go for fibre-rich foods, but they come in may shapes and forms and diversity is absolutely key.

But, and it’s a big one, if you are making yourself a big bowl of porridge, cooked in water or skimmed milk (aka sugar water) for breakfast and then spending the day in a fairly sedentary way, then there’s a huge amount of fuel in your body that is not being put to good use, so will be stored for later – as body fat.

Oats are grains. Grains are seeds of grasses. That means every single oat, or grain of rice, wheat, rye, barley, corn (they are all grains) is a seed that can grow in to a plant. That means there is a lot of energy stored in that seed to feed that plant as it grows. Think how many grains are in your breakfast bowl… that’s a huge amount of energy going in to you and there’s only so much your body can burn before storing it away for later use – that’s body fat.

If you really want your oats, here are a few must dos:

• Use whole / jumbo oats. These are minimally processed. Porridge oats or flaked oats are whole oats that have been cut up to cook more quickly and make a smoother porridge. That means less chewing and digestion is required from you and the energy in the oats is therefore released more quickly. This results in a more detrimental effect on blood sugar, triggering a quicker response to turning the energy from the oats in to energy stored as fat. Especially undesirable are the sachets of quick cook oats. They are highly processed, pre-cooked and are almost always laced with sugar and artificial flavorings.

• My mantra for health eating is to focus on FAT, FIBRE & PROTEIN. The carbs come effortlessly in our food these days in the form of fruits, veg, grains, starchy veg and sweet foods, so no-one I ever meet struggles to get enough of the carbs. Instead think, ‘where’s my healthy fat, where’s my fibre, where’s my protein?’… In oats, you’ve got some nice fibre, as I’ve said, but virtually no protein and no fat. To make a balanced breakfast, have a small amount of whole oats, ideally soaked overnight in water (super-charges the fibre). Cook slowly with some whole organic milk, or full-fat coconut milk (it won’t need much cooking if pre-soaked) and then add in more fat and some protein with some organic full-fat natural yogurt / coconut yogurt and mix in a range of nuts, seeds and a little fruit, or follow with a couple of eggs. Now you have a balanced, highly nutritious, blood sugar balancing breakfast that offers a great range of fats, fibre and protein and ensures the energy in the oats are released slowly in to the bloodstream to provide your body with long-term energy rather than adding to your waistline.

Click here to find my ‘What’s in This’ video on oatcakes.

New Year, Same You?…..

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A new year and as usual a mad frenzy of media, TV and articles on the latest must-do extreme diets; extreme exercise regimes; dubious explanations of what works, what doesn’t, ugghh! I find it so wearing and can only imagine that most other people do too? It is no wonder that this overwhelm of largely contradictory information leaves people so frustrated that they give up by mid-Jan and go straight back to previous habits, good or bad.

So I feel now is the time to remind you of my 4 Fundamentals to Good Health which, if you manage to address over time, your body will give back with bountiful energy, stabilized weight, optimal body fat levels and great balance of brain chemistry and hormones – what more could you ask for? Also, if you create the habit of these principles, whether it’s Christmas, Easter, birthday celebrations or commiserations, there will never be a need to ‘blow it’ and then have to claw back your ‘good habits’ and have that gut-clenching feeling of ‘oh no, why I did I do that to myself … here we go again’…..

So here goes with a pared down super-simple reminder of what it takes to help your body help itself and a few new little gems that I have come across since I wrote the book: ….

1/ Keep you blood glucose (the sugar in your blood) under control: You can achieve this by greatly reducing your GPS foods Grains, Potatoes / Parsnips Sugars / Sweet Foods.

Understand the significance of eating foods that significantly increase blood glucose levels:high blood glucose = insulin response = turning on your fat storage system and turning off your fat burning capacity. Depending on how many diets you’ve tried and failed on; how much greater your waist measurement is to your hip measurement; how long you have been eating GPS foods on a daily basis; how long you’ve been on a low fat diet – then you may have a degree of insulin resistance, meaning you are in a high insulin and therefore fat storage state for hours at a time. But this is not only an issue of fat burning, or not, high blood glucose levels are highly inflammatory, trigger issues throughout the body, including in the brain – hence Alzheimer’s being spoken of as type three diabetes.

2/ Nurture & nourish your beneficial gut bacteria on a daily basis: do not underestimate the power and importance of having healthy gut bacteria. From enhanced mood, sustained concentration, reduction in anxiety and better capacity to cope with stress, through to improving insulin sensitivity and fat burning, increasing energy, enhanced digestion and better balanced immune system. Our gut bacteria influence every system in the body, If you look after them, they will look after you.

This means avoiding or greatly limiting the foods that preferentially feed the nasties that are inevitably living in your gut, which funnily enough are largely GPS foods and meanwhile super-charge your beneficial bacteria by following the 3Fs:

F no.1 is Fibre-rich food for their PRE-biotic content:
Plenty of pre-biotic foods to improve the good gut cultures. Prebiotics are fibres that your good bacteria feed and thrive on and in return they produce wonderfully beneficial by-products. Diversity is key, so go for a wide range of fibre-rich foods rather than just lots of one of two kinds.

Prebiotic foods include
• A rainbow of vegetables i.e. a wide range of colours and textures. Different veg have different types of fibre that offer arrange of benefits.

• Nuts and seeds of all kinds contain lovely fibre. To super-charge the power of the fibre, soak nuts and seeds overnight inn water at room temperature with a spritz of lemon or lime juice. In soaking, you are not only make the nuts & seeds more digestible with fewer anti-nutrients, you also have swollen fibres, full of water that goes to the gut to feed your bacteria. Chia and flax seeds are especially good to soak. They attract a lot of water and then create mucilage, a lovey gloop full of gel water – highly hydrating and soothing for the gut.

• Pulses – known to be windy because of the high fiber content that can be challenging digestively if the balance of your gut bacteria favours the less than good. Some people have to limit pulses while some gut restoration goes on, but once assuming beans and lentils do not cause uncomfortable bloating or reactive bowel function, they provide great prebiotic fibres. Make sure they are really well cooked.

• Inulin-rich foods – inulin is a well researched highly soluble fibre that has many gut health benefits. Again, it can be challenging with those with IBS-type issues, so use with caution. Rich in leeks, onions & garlic, under-ripe bananas, plantain, asparagus and Jerusalem artichokes.

F No. 2 is for Fermented Foods:
Certain foods contain PRObiotic i.e. live, beneficial bacteria. The devil is in the details here, so look at labels to check for unpasteurized and raw. A live food, is a fermented food and if it is still live, it will have to be in the chiller cabinet of a shop, so anything on a shelf with a long shelf life will not be live. All fermented foods should also taste sour as the fermentation removes the natural sugars in the food. Fermented food include:

• Organic natural live yogurt
• Dairy kefir (a potent fermented dairy drink)
• Coconut Kefir -a non-dairy version of the above
• Fermented raw veg like sauerkraut, Kimchi and these days there are some
fabulous raw slaws becoming more readily available.
• Kombucha -a fermented tea (watch for the sugar content)
• Mature cheeses, esp. if made from unpasteurized milk.

F No. 3 is Fasting:
By eat less, or less often, the gut bacteria get a chance to a bit of super-charging and regenerating. The power of intermittent fasting is so significant and far-reaching that it is the third of my Four Fundamentals:

3/ Regular Intermittent Fasting
Allow your body to rest and renew by regularly practicing intermittent fasting:
Throughout all of history there is evidence of peoples all around the world fasting. It may have been for religious reasons, as part of significant ceremonies, to help purify and cleanse. Today many scientific studies have shown multiple and significant health benefits to fasting on a regular basis.

Benefits are very far-reaching if practiced on a long-term, regular basis. They include:

• Helps to heal the gut wall / ‘cleans-up’ mucus lining improving absorption of
nutrients and the environment for the beneficial gut bacteria to thrive.
• Down regulates inflammation
• Encourages better immune function
• Improves hormone sensitivity esp. insulin, leptin & ghrelin
• Increases autophagy activity (the body’s cells dying off once damaged – this is
highly desirable)
• Increases production of growth hormone
• Improves ability to burn fat
• Offers many cognitive benefits including some protection from neuro-degenerative
diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease.

Intermittent fasting is a way of initiating all of the health benefits of fasting using various short-term fasting techniques that makes the process practical for the long-term. One of the most well-known the 5:2 protocol where 2, non-consecutive days a week, you eat about a quarter of your normal food intake. Based on the average female daily consumption of 2000 calories and men, 2,500 then women should aim to eat no more than 500 calories on a fasting day and 600 calories for men. The calories can be split throughout the day or eaten as one meal.

The 5:2 protocol allows your gut to rest 2 days a week as you are putting relatively little load through your system on a regular basis. Having bone broth on these days is highly recommended on fasting days as it is highly nourishing but low in calories.

The 16:8 protocol is what is known as time-restricted fasting. You do not reduce the amount you eat necessarily, but you restrict the time in which you eat. The 8 hour window when you can eat, allows for 2 good meals and a snack in the middle if necessary. The longer you practice this system of intermittent fasting, the less likely you are to need to snack in between, which will further enhance the benefits. If you feel you can exercise towards the end of your fasting period you will also enhance the benefits. Once you get good at this, try for 18:6 a couple of days a week for added benefit.

4/ Move more, exercise less:
Moving regularly, limiting long periods of sitting to no longer than 50 – 60 minutes without getting up and moving around a little. Doing some structured exercise is key, but doing lots and lots of something that is not very demanding has limited benefit.

Short intense and muscularly demanding of big muscle groups is the way to go for triggering the fat burning switch, building muscle and improving overall health. This is known as High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT). There are many ways to do it, but classic HIIT exercise include the good but grim Burpees, squat jumps, high knee sprints etc. So much good info on-line about this type of training now, but something that is key to remember is to do short, hard bursts to trigger a metabolic response that goes on for hours and days. It’s the after-effect that counts, the post-training response is where the magic happens, so doing more, more often is not the answer.

So there you go – take it gradually, work through these points and make them part of your life, not something to do like crazy and then stop and once you are comfortable and familiar with each change, then get going on something new.

Getting good sleep, managing stress and improving the quality of your down-time are also massively key to long-term good health, I’ll write more on these soon – here’s to your very best and prolonged health in 2018 onwards.