The Nutritional Institute

I was recently asked by the producers of the television programme Real Health to come up with an insert on eating healthily on a budget. It was one of the easiest inserts I’ve done, because eating simply is actually not expensive at all.

A recent study published in the Journal of Affective Disorders shows that vegetarian diets are associated with depressive symptoms among men. The authors speculate that this association could be explained by nutritional deficiencies.

There is a lot of talk (from me especially) to get outside and play, or to build a practice, but what of doing nothing. Not yoga, not relaxing, not meditation, not sleeping…. nothing! Affectionately called 'ballas bak' by Afrikaans communities (I'll leave the translation up to you), doing nothing is something (is it?) we often don't even consider (can we consider no thing?) doing (can you do nothing?).

“The devil’s food” - this is how carbohydrates were described in a best seller low-carb high-fat book that was part of the recent apparent paradigm shift from a low-fat ideal to one of excessive quantities of fats. I devoted a whole chapter to destroying the myths that carbs are necessarily bad for us in our book Wholesome Nutrition, so I’m not going to repeat these messages here - rather, go and buy our book!

Eating raw kale, by incorporating it in smoothies or salads, is a growing food trend, but what many people don’t realise is that kale in its raw form contains many goitrogens. These are compounds that can interfere with iodine uptake, a vital micronutrient as you’ll see below…