The Nutritional Institute

Vitamin D is a fat-soluble vitamin, meaning that it can be stored in our body’s fat tissues. It is also the only vitamin that our body can make itself, by converting a form of cholesterol when your skin is exposed to sunlight: this makes vitamin D more of a steroid hormone than a vitamin. Historically, vitamin D deficiency was linked to rickets in children, so it is better known for maintaining bone health by regulating calcium and phosphate levels.

This blog is an accompaniment to my appearance on Carte Blanche on the 23rd April. View the video on: https://carteblanche.dstv.com/fitspiration/

The same people who five or ten years ago would be channel surfing with a can of beer in their hand each evening, are now flooding the gyms and providing companionship to our suburban roads on ‘time trial’ evenings. There has been a very welcomed increasing trend in exercise participation recently in South Africa, one that we want to harness and encourage. But, like everything when it comes to health, there is always a tipping point when this ‘good’ thing potentially becomes a ‘bad’ thing.

Last night I expanded on chapter 7 (Soil to Plate) from our book Wholesome Nutrition. I delved into what real food actually is. Myself and the audience were horrified by how we have been manipulated with trickery by both the food manufacturers and the marketers of ‘food’ products.

With regards to foods that could potentially be detrimental to your health, there are various terms floating around that need to be explained. Food allergy is actually a pretty immediate response to a food, which can in some cases even be life threatening. The best example would be a peanut allergy, which has reached very high levels of incidence in the UK - every school teacher now has to have an epipen in their classroom in case of an anaphylactic reaction.

Based on Ian’s recent talk on good, bad and ugly fats, plus the fact that there seems to be so much uncertainty regarding canola oil, I thought I would do a little investigating to find out whether we should include it in our daily eating, or not.