The Nutritional Institute

Last night I presented Step 5 of the 12 Steps to Wholesome Nutrition course in Johannesburg. It was all about fats - the good bad and ugly ones….. I explored a number of fat myths with the class, starting with ‘fat will make you fat’ and finishing with ‘fat will make you skinny’! That really is the extent to which many people’s thinking has changed in recent years and in many ways, it’s good because we shouldn’t be afraid of fats, but in other ways, it’s not so good, because we need to be deeply respectful of them.

If you’re lucky enough to have a healthy canteen at work, then this article won’t be for you. However, there are many of us that are not that blessed with nutritious wholesome food at work, so I’m going to share a little secret with you to keep you on track. This lunch option should keep those energy levels up until home time.

The subject of my talk this week in the 12 Steps to Wholesome Nutrition course was calories. A year or three ago, aged 24 and trying to maximise my running performance, I made very careful calculations as to my exact calorie requirements for my body and my training - I ended up guzzling down 4,000 calories every day, making sure to include a large proportion of wholegrains and starchy vegetables, while avoiding fats, as was the convention those days. As I gradually took my nutrition interest into professional practice, I sometimes did these extremely laborious calculations of calorie and macronutrient intakes for my clients, but I quickly realised that by maintaining all of my focus on numbers, I was missing the bigger picture of food quality. It was then that I started using the phrase that all of my clients know me for:

How many times have you heard that meat is bad for you - that it causes cancer, heart disease and other nasty illnesses? Red meat has consistently been given a bad reputation and we have been encouraged to drastically reduce or eliminate our meat intake, or else we will suffer the consequences of early onset disease. But, in actual fact, not only is meat a natural human food (think back to our hunter-gatherer ancestors), it’s also a rich source of life-giving nutrients, providing it’s properly produced.



Have you noticed that we are all different? It seems a silly question because you just have to look around to notice that: some of us are tall, some short, some fat and some thin. With exteriors that are all so different, is it likely that our internal physiology, including the way we respond to food, is all the same? The answer on the tip of each of your tongue’s should be “no”.