Pancakes – to avoid or not to avoid, that is the question!

Posted on February 21, 2012 by Claire Stone

Happy Pancake Day!

Who doesn’t like pancakes? If you are one of those people, turn away now. This isn’t going to interest you at all! For those of you that do love pancakes,but worry about the eating too much rubbish side of life, here are a couple of ideas to make them even healthier. Keep that in mind. Pancakes, which aren’t quite a health food, aren’t as bad for you as you might think, especially if you make them yourself.

Alas, I have no receipe for you. I don’t really do too well with receipes (which is a shame, but there you go). I just take a standard receipe, and make some changes depending on what I feel like. Keep the tips below in mind, and you won’t go far wrong.

Use REAL ingredients: butter, or at least not hydrogenated margarine are better than margarine which is full of stuff which you just can’t process. Organic eggs are going to be full of good stuff. Likewise organic milk is going to have milk in it, without the addition of grim growth hormones and antibiotics. If you don’t do dairy, rice milk is good in pancakes, and a bit oil and some bicarb will help the panckes rise instead of eggs and butter. Wholemeal flour is a better choice, in terms of fibre, but it can make the pancakes a tad heavy – as it’s a special treat, maybe go half and half! Or you could try spelt flour which is easier to digest!

The least healthy part of a pancake is always going to be what you put in it. Try swapping sugar for honey, chocolate spread for some melted dark chocolate, or syrup for real maple syrup.

Blige, that sounds lush. See, no reason at all to avoid pancake day.

Vitamin D – where does it come from and how do I get me some?

Posted on February 2, 2012 by Claire Stone

I was asked this great question today by the lovely @bossanovamax on twitter today!

“What can you recommend about vit d news going on. How do we get more into our kids without any sun?”

The answer is pretty simple really, and goes something like this:

Vitamin is a fat soluble vitamin, found mainly in foods from animal sources, such as liver, veal, beef, eggs, and some fish. All things kids love, eh? It is also found in dairy. Something which many kids do love. BUT, and the but is so big, I wrote it in capitals. When you take the fat out of dairy you also take out the fat soluble vitamins such as vitamin D!

So, low fat milk, yogurt, cheese etc = not much Vitamin D.

Full fat milk, yogurt, cheese etc = plenty of Vitamin D! Simple!

The question about eating too much fat when you have full fat milk, for example, isn’t really much of something to worry about, seeing as full fat milk is only about

3.5% anyway. You’d be hard pushed to call that a high fat food! If you are going to drink pints and pints on a daily basis, you might want to reassess your milk drinking choices though!

Vegans might want to consider fortified foods, especially if they aren’t out and about enough to make their own Vitamin D – huh?

Vitamin D is also referred to as the sunshine vitamin, because we are perfectly capable of making it ourselves in sunlight. But, because we are all so scared nowadays, especially for little kiddies, about getting skin cancer, we all slap on so much suncream, even when there is barely any sun, that we aren’t getting enough in the spring and summer to build up our stores to last us through the winter. The remedy for that is to not cover up in suncream for the whole day, but actually let our skin get a bit of sun (ie, before the really hot period, and definitely before we get burned!!) so that we can actually make our own Vitamin D.

Seeing as Vitamin D is called the sunshine vitamin, it makes sense that cows which have been outside in the summer (ie, organic or free range ones!) will have more Vitamin D in their milk than cows which have been inside the whole time. So, possibly, organic milk and dairy would be a better choice for Vitamin D.

So, as far as I can tell, the people who are most at risk of being deficient in Vitamin D are:

Vegans (because they don’t eat any animal source Vitamin D).

People who love low fat dairy options.

People who get very little sunshine on their skin.

People who might have trouble making Vitamin D, such as the elderly, those with fat absorption issues, or even those on statins (this last one is a very personal, unverified opinion, but as your skin needs cholesterol to make Vitamin D, anyone taking statins might theoretically have a lower ability to produce Vitamin D – like I say though, this is just me thinking out loud here.)

If you are worried, you can either get your blood Vitamin D levels tested at the Doctor (they may charge), or you could perhaps consider a Vitamin D supplement. If you are going to do this, it would be worth checking with your doctor, or with a qualified nutritional therapist (ahem) to make sure that the levels are right for you!

Lush question Max – hope this helps!

A friend called H2O

Posted on January 23, 2012 by Claire Stone

When you are being active, it is almost inevitable that at some point, somehow, you are going to be in pain. You might hurt yourself big time (remember Simon and his bike crash?) or you might just have a niggling ache from pushing yourself too hard. It is going to happen, and that’s part of the fun, surely!

When things hurt, it’s easy to head to the medicine cabinet and take some painkillers. And often, that’s a top idea. What I always remind people about though, is that even if you don’t feel the pain any more due to the amazing power of paracetomol, the injury, or sore bit is still there, and there is one excellent thing you can do to limit the damage, help recovery time, and get you moving again.

And that thing is drink water. And I don’t mean the odd sip every few hours – drink at least two litres over the course of the day. And this goes for virtually any kind of injury or soreness.

Water provides a nice bit of padding for any injuries, helping prevent more damage. Once that danger has gone, water helps to flush away all the lingering stuff that you don’t want, and brings all the goodies that you do want. Getting the bad stuff away, and the good stuff in = repair and recovery!

So even though you might feel that a beer or a coffee is the perfect antidote to sitting on the sidelines, water is, and will always be, your friend.

Out and In – Nutrition for everyone!

Featured

Posted on January 6, 2012 by Claire Stone

So, you run, race or ride something, and you want to be the very best you can be, as naturally as possible? Well, congrats. You are in the right place. It is possible, and easy, when you know how!

Have a browse, get in touch. See how nutrition and eating well can benefit your health, wellbeing and vitality – whether you want to cycle faster, lose weight or have a health issue that you want to help naturally.

Cold wintery bike rides…

Posted on January 5, 2012 by Claire Stone

This is the time of year when most people are facing a bit of a conundrum (love that word!). A likely New Year resolution is to get fit, start exercising more or loose weight, but at the same time, the weather doesn’t exactly tempt you to jumping out of the car and cycling to work instead. Nor does it make you feel like a stroll round the block instead of watching Eastenders. Continue reading →

Chocolate!

Posted on November 13, 2011 by Claire Stone

Oooooh, indeedy. There can’t be many people who don’t like chocolate, and I am so pleased to tell you that chocolate is not as bad for you as you might think!

But before you go out and chomp yourself a huge bar of the stuff, you need to bear in mind the following: When I say ‘chocolate’, I mean proper chocolate. A lump of brown coloured, chocolate flavoured vegetable fat with sweeteners does NOT count as chocolate. Continue reading →