I note now that Conscious Foods have launched a Digestive Mix and that it is now available from Natural Dispensary along with lots of their wheat and dairy free crackers, some of which I have found yummy.

Here are the details of the mix for you:

DIGESTIVE MIX

Best-selling product which helps enhance digestion and quality of life

Conscious Food’s Digestive Mix is our proprietary ancient, Ayurvedic blend of herbs, seeds and spices that has been specifically formulated to help enhance digestion and your quality of life and took several years to develop. 

An aromatic crunchy mix made to a traditional Indian recipe packed full of nutrients it will freshen your breath, aid your digestion beautifully, soothe your system and revitalise your spirit.  It may also help to ease digestive disorders such as bloating, acid reflux, constipation, Crohn’s and IBS.  It can be taken if you are on other medication. 

The dosage is ½ a teaspoon chewed after each meal, one jar contains a month’s supply.

Why it works:

Every single digestive problem, including, Crohn’s, IBS, colitis, diverticulitis, acid, diarrhoea, constipation, etc is the result of your body’s inability to digest food properly. Our ayurvedic digestive mix naturally aids your digestive process restoring your normal bodily functions. The moment you start chewing our Digestive Mix, you activate its ingredients which, in turn, start releasing digestive enzymes that govern your digestion and, as it travels down, it strengthens and tones your entire digestive system thus, over time, restoring it to its original, healthy state thus curing the problem.

Ingredients: Fennel seed, peppermint, liquorice, jaggery, dhania dal, ajwain, flax seeds

What a good idea. I note too that Conscious Foods do a version of this as a tea. Bit costly but may be worth it if you need to digest better and calm your tummy down. I’m not sure ND has it online but ask them and I’m sure they would get it for you.

Have a go.

This recipe has been adapted from one courtesy of Goodness Foods. Very low glycaemic load and therefore great for belly-fat loss, chana dal is one of the best foods for balancing blood sugar. The pancakes can be eaten as a quick snack with some pickles, with a curry or served with rice and/or a salad. They are vegan (so milk and egg-free), wheat-free, low in fat, high in protein and fibre and are really easy to make.

Ingredients (makes about 15 small ones)

200g chana dal (Yellow split peas. Available from supermarkets often in the Asian or world foods section)

2 tsp whole cumin seeds

2 tsp ground coriander

1 red chilli pepper – chopped

Salt to taste

Olive oil

Wash the chana then leave to soak in plenty of water for at least six hours (or overnight). Drain and place the chana into a food processor along with all the other ingredients. Whizz for about 30 seconds until generally chopped up. Then keep whizzing while adding cold water until you get a ‘sloppy porridge’ consistency.

Put enough oil for shallow frying into a large frying pan and heat using a medium flame. When hot, start frying the pancakes by putting in 1 tablespoon of the mixture at a time (you can usually get four or five pancakes in at one time). Cook for about 2-3 minutes then turn over using a spatula and cook for a further 2-3 minutes. Drain on some kitchen towel. They’re great hot or cold and any left over can be frozen, wrapped in foil. Just pop them in a medium oven for 15 minutes to warm through.

TIP: You can make a thinner pancake than this that is great to use as a wrap. Simply use 225g gram (chickpea) flour and a tsp of baking powder instead.

This recipe is taken from my wheat and dairy free recipe book How To Eat Well.

Make some porridge with rice flakes or oats. It’s nice and creamy made with soya milk or less unctuous and sweeter with rice milk. If I’m feeling really naughty and cold or I’ve got guests, I might even add a dash of soya cream to make it extra rich and special!

I often make a pot of stewed fruit compost (as we call it) or compote if you want to get it right, and add this on top as it’s lovely and warming. I sometimes buy the ready-frozen bramley apple and blackberry mix, or simply cut up whatever I have in – apples and pears mostly. Simmer them with a little water and add a teaspoon of all-spice or cinnamon, or even a luxurious dash of vanilla essence. When soft but with a tiny bit of bite, take it off the heat and pop on top of your porridge. Scatter on a few flaked almonds and linseeds, squirt a little agave syrup or honey over the top to sweeten if you need to and tuck in. That should keep you going for a while – filling, nutritious, warming and yummy. A hot water bottle for your tum!

TIP: If you haven’t had chance to make any compost, use a ready-made one either from the shops, or a dollop of Bonne Maman Cherry compote is delicious. Keep some in the fridge just in case and warm it through or have it cold.

This recipe is taken from my wheat and dairy free recipe book How To Eat Well.

Just thought I’d let you know where I was up to. However, back to clinic work for the next few days and I’ll work on it some more later in the week. In the meantime, next come two recipes from my wheat and dairy free recipe book as a mini treat. Enjoy.

Image via Wikipedia

I recently bought a set of towels from Next. When I got them home, I left them on the dining room table saving the pleasure of unwrapping them (I am a towelaholic, P reckons this is the sole reason I started out as a massage therapist and he’s probably right). When I came into the room later to, ahem, play with them, I noticed a really strong chemical smell. I left them in a bedroom for a few days to see if it would wear off, but the smell was just as strong and so I returned them unused.

Then, the other day, I saw the piece in the Daily Mail: Toxic Dyes, Lethal Logos, Cotton Drenched in Formadehyde… and it all clicked into place. Of course, cotton is the most sprayed crop on the planet and it seems many other chemicals are added to our clothing, bedding, towels, upholstery and anywhere you care to look. I have long advocated organic unbleached underwear for recurrent thrush sufferers, for example.

Have a read of the piece, and download Dirty Laundry by Greenpeace which is mentioned in the article.

Then, check the now burgeoning suppliers of organic goodies. I often use  Natural Collection who do tons of ethical stuff and have recently massively extended their organic clothing and bedding ranges.

Related articles

• Toxic chemical formaldehyde found in common personal care products (truthsupport.wordpress.com)

Meantime, put the words allergy, intolerance into the search box or click the special diet category and find tons of posts from the last few years!

Right, off to continue feverishness… luckily P is here to mop my brow, there is SO much to say!

When I trained, I was lucky to be part of the naturopathic nutrition course run by Dr Lawrence Plaskett (which took me 5 years to complete in total!). His courses gave plenty of scientific background (Dr Plaskett is a biochemist) but within a naturopathic medicine philosophy (he became a naturopathic physician later).

This way of looking at nutrition and how it can help the body is substantially different to most nutritional therapy practitioners today who have the benefit  of the science, but not the medical philosophy framework to put everything into context. That is changing, though, as we see more and more functional medicine practitioners who, to my mind, are getting back to the science and the old naturopathic principles combined, which is a good thing.

Anyway, I waffle. I have always found Nutrigold an excellent company because their supplement offering and education is based around naturopathic nutrition. Happily, they have recently launched a non-practitioner nutrition home-study course, which I think would be a fab grounding for anyone wanting to delve deeper into this subject. Add on 10 interactive webinars and you can get accreditation with the FNTP as an entry-level  nutrition adviser, so perfect for all you life coaches and personal trainers out there.

Check out details here: Nutrigold Nutrition & Health Course.

Image by sarniebill1 via Flickr

A daily dose of rosehips can reduce the risk of heart disease by almost a fifth according to a piece in yesterday’s Daily Telegraph.

Overweight patients who drank a rosehip powder drink every day for six weeks, followed by six weeks of an apple and grape drink saw their blood pressure fall by 3.4%.    LDL bad cholesterol dropped by 6%.  It is estimated it would reduce the risk of heart disease in obese patients by 17%.

Research by Lund University  and published in the ‘European Journal of Clinical Nutrition.’

I think the amounts used in this albeit small study would be pretty high, but an extra cup of rosehip a tea a day is sounding like a good idea. Rosehip has always been an old-fashioned tonic/cold remedy with rosehip syrups being given aplenty in times gone by.

Have a read of the article yourself and see previous comments on flu here. I have no doubt that anti-virals and perhaps Tamiflu can save lives, but it may turn out not be the saviour-drug it was believed to be and we may have millions of pounds worth of stocks we shouldn’t have bought. If it turns out Roche were misleading governments, I hope they will be made to refund the money and take the stock back. But I can’t see that happening anytime fast, can you?

Perhaps we can make a reasoned and educated decision on the use of Tamiflu in future – if we can get the full data. In the meantime, something doesn’t smell very nice about all this.

Related articles

• Researchers renew fight with Roche over flu drug evidence (blogs.nature.com)
• Tamiflu: Side effects and effectiveness of ‘wonder-drug’ under the microscope (dailymail.co.uk)

In the queue at the supermarket, the cashier told an older woman that she should bring her own grocery bags because plastic bags weren’t good for the environment. 

The woman apologized to him and explained, “We didn’t have the green thing back in my day.”

The clerk responded, “That’s our problem today.  Your generation did not care enough to save our environment.”

He was right — our generation didn’t have the green thing in its day.

Back then, we returned milk bottles, soda bottles and beer bottles to the shop or off license. They sent them back to the plant to be washed, sterilized and refilled and re-used. So it could use the same bottles over and over.  So they really were recycled.

But we didn’t have the green thing back in our day.

We walked up stairs, because we didn’t have lifts and escalators in every shop and office building. We walked to the local shops and didn’t climb into a 300-horsepower machine every time we had to go to a supermarket.

We bought fruit and veg loose – and washed them at home. We didn’t have to throw away bins full of plastic, foam and paper packaging that need huge recycling plants fed by monster trucks all day, everyday.

But she was right. We didn’t have the green thing in our day.
Back then, we washed the baby’s nappies because we didn’t have the throw-away kind.  We dried clothes on a line, not in an energy gobbling machine burning up KW’s — wind and solar power really did dry the clothes.

Kids got hand-me-down (mostly hand made or hand knitted)  clothes from their brothers or sisters, not always brand-new clothing shipped from the other side of the planet.

 

But that old lady is right; we didn’t have the green thing back in our day.

 

Back then shops repaired things with funny things called spare parts – we didn’t need to throw whole items away because a small part failed.

Back then, we had one TV, or radio, in the house — not a TV in every room. And the TV had a small screen the size of a handkerchief (remember them?),  not a screen the size of Wales .

In the kitchen, we blended and stirred by hand because we didn’t have electric machines to do everything for us.

When we packaged a fragile item to send in the mail, we used a wadded up old newspaper to cushion it, not Styrofoam or plastic bubble wrap.

Back then, we didn’t fire up an engine and burn petrol just to cut the lawn. We used a push mower that ran on human power and hand clippers for the hedges.

We exercised by working so we didn’t need to go to a brightly lit, air conditioned health club to run on treadmills that operate on electricity and then drink millions of bottles of that special water from those plastic bottles.

 

But she’s right; we didn’t have the green thing back then.

 

We drank from a fountain when we were thirsty instead of using a plastic cup or a plastic bottle every time we had a drink of water.

We refilled writing pens with ink instead of buying a new plastic pen, and we replaced blades in a razor instead of throwing away the whole plastic razor just because the blade got dull.

 

But we didn’t have the green thing back then.

Back then, people took the bus and kids rode their bikes to school or walked instead of turning their parents into a 24-hour taxi service.

We had one electrical outlet in a room, not an entire bank of sockets to power a dozen appliances.  And we didn’t need a computerized gadget to receive a signal beamed from satellites 2,000 miles out in space in order to find the nearest fish & chip shop.

But isn’t it sad the current generation laments how wasteful we old folks were just because we didn’t have the green thing back then?