Is brown rice better than white rice?

I often get asked whether brown is really best when it comes to food choices. White products are usually softer and more comforting, whereas their brown counterparts are more fibrous and healthy-looking (and take more chewing). 

Clients often want to hear that white rice isn’t actually that bad because they prefer the texture so much...

...but if you take away the preference for the taste, white rice starts to feel less and less appealing.  If you look at the nutritional facts, brown wins hands down.

One cup of cooked brown rice contains 3.5 grams of fibre, whereas white contains only 0.7 grams!  But why?

A grain of brown rice contains all the fibre and minerals in the bran layer.  To produce white rice, this nutritious bran layer is milled away and you are left with a less nutritious simple carbohydrate (white rice). 

Five Reasons to choose Brown Rice

1. Brown rice will sustain you for longer so it aids weight loss.

2. It will maintain your digestive tract with regular bowel movements due to its high fibre content (less toxicity in the body).

3. It contains the antioxidant selenium which could help prevent cancer.

4. It contains almost three times more zinc than white rice - 'zinc deficiency plays a role in almost every major disease' (Holford, P)

5. Brown Rice is a ''whole food' so it is a more natural choice.

Brown rice takes about twice as long to cook, which sometimes puts people off, but having some ready in the fridge at all times is a great time saver. 

Enjoy it...you might actually start to prefer it (if you are not already a convert).

Josie :)

How can I test for wheat intolerance?

It seems everyone is sensitive to something these days.  Most of the time it is not an intolerance to a food but simply a chemical imbalance in our digestive system due to poor eating habits or too much stress.  So how can you tell if you are actually sensitive to wheat?

Take a wheat challenge test!

A challenge test for wheat involves excluding it from the diet and then slowly reintroducing it and monitoring its effects carefully to detect any kind of sensitivity.

For a two week period you should remove all wheat products or foods containing wheat from the diet completely.  You need to read the labels of all pre-packaged foods and sauces for traces of wheat.  Some sauces such as soy contain wheat and you will need to be aware of this for the test being a success.

During this two week period you should keep a food diary including any supplements and medications.  This will allow you to keep a record and detect any foods which may have contained wheat and at the same time increase your own awareness of food ingredients and labelling.

At the end of the two weeks introduce wheat very slowly, starting with something very small like a wheat cracker.  Wait for four days making a note of any reactions.  If there is a reaction, wheat should be excluded for 6 months, then tested again.  A slight reaction suggests it can be tolerated in small quantities.  If there is no reaction, a larger amount can be tested.  This type of test can be very beneficial to detect wheat intolerance.

If you think you may have problems digesting wheat, give this test a go.

Josie :)

Josie's Raw Organic Sesame Truffles

Ok, so even those who want to be healthy need a sweet treat occasionally. If you have the right kind of ingredients in your cupboards then throwing together fast and delicious raw desserts is surprisingly easy. Then when you eat them you know that as well as getting your emotional fix, you are also getting your nutritional boost as well...everybody wins.

I was experimenting today and I made something I thought was worth sharing.  I apologise for my inability to measure things...but it will encourage you to experiment too! :)

Ingredients

Sesame Seeds
Honey
Raw Cacao Powder
Raw Organic Coconut Oil
Pinch of Salt

Using a small attachment to a tabletop blender, grind the seeds down to a powdery paste (I used about a cup of seeds to start off with).  Then I added a heaped tablespoon of raw cacao powder and mixed them together well.  I then added a small pinch of sea salt and a big dollop of honey and mushed it all together well. 

I then rolled the doughy mixture into balls and rolled them in  cacao powder to finish them off.  Finally I popped them in the fridge and tried very hard not to eat them all at once!!  You could also roll them in sesame seeds or ground almonds...or hmmm...the possibilities are endless.

Use your own tastebuds to decide how rich, sweet or crunchy you want the truffles to be.

Enjoy :)

Josie

How much water should I drink?

Water is actually one of the most important nutrients we have in our diet.  We would shrivel and die rather quickly without sufficient water.  Most of us are drinking enough that we are not going to perish, but what we don't realise is how much better we could feel if we drank much more of it.

Water lubricates our joints and muscles, it transports nutrients around the body, it keeps every cell of our body functioning.  Our body is about 65% water and our brain is close to 85% water.  It makes sense that we should keep topping up so that our bodies function at their optimal levels.

Our excretory organs all need water to transport toxins and by-products out of the body, so without water we become toxic and sluggish.  Our bowels become constipated, our skin becomes tired looking, our kidneys become congested and our lungs are unable to breathe out sufficient toxic wastes.  Without water we don't stand a chance.

To make sure you are drinking enough check your urine throughout the day.  I know it sounds gross, but it is the best way of knowing.  We all have different water requirements and live in different climates with different activity levels so eight glasses a day is far too vague.  You want your urine to be pale in colour and almost completely clear twice a day.  Don't forget food is full of water too, especially if you are eating lots of fresh fruits and vegetables.

Get Hydrated!!

Josie Was this useful?  Like My facebook page... :)

Are chemicals in food bad for you?

I like to keep a level head with feet firmly planted in the ground so I try be realistic and steer away from telling people to cut things out completely.  However, chemical food additives are a bit scary really.  We are basically all lab rats in the governments badly executed attempt to create a well balanced economy with food companies/pharmaceutical companies and the rats.


For decades food companies have been testing all sorts of chemicals to make food look nicer or last longer.  Some foods are pretty much made of nothing but chemicals and sugar (coke/sweets).  There is such limited knowledge about the long term affects of the chemicals that are put in packaged foods to preserve them and make them taste more pleasurable.  Due to these distortions in the diet we are getting an increase in metabolic syndrome which is an umbrella term for a group of symptoms that lead to diabetes, strokes, heart disease and other degenerative illnesses. 


The chemicals in the foods we eat make us want to eat more than we would normally, and they could distort the way our body absorbs nutrients and block certain pathways in the body... look at the health of the societies we live in now for the proof.  Trans-fats and sugar loaded diets can actually change the way our genes are expressed, so who knows what the chemical additives are doing long term?

The thing is, how can we possibly know yet what these chemicals are doing to us at a metabolic level?  They simply have not been around long enough to know.  It is clear that there is so much going wrong in our bodies so it is wise for us to do something about it with the freewill we have.  Making the best choice about what we put in our own body is crucial, even more so if you are pregnant. 


The other factor is mood.  These chemicals that are infiltrating our systems are bound to have an affect on our state of mind and decision making; the way we view the world.  It makes total sense to avoid these chemical packed foods which are usually loaded with sugar and trans-fats to add insult to injury.



Food is great without chemicals, there is an abundance of wonderful food out there.  Make the best decision you can and if you cannot realistically cut out chemical foods completely, just try and avoid them when you can. 


Check out these websites for more information about specific chemical additives:


http://www.cspinet.org/reports/chemcuisine.htm


http://www.gaianaturopathic.com/docs/Food_Additives.pdf


Josie.

How to make guacamole.

I absolutely love avocado so one of my favourite raw recipes is guacamole with vegetable sticks.  Avocado has over twenty nutrients so combined with carrot sticks and cucumber sticks it becomes a completely brilliant snack!

Avocado is rich in vitamin E which is fantastic for your skin and generally disarming free radicals that are running wild in the body.  It is also a good source of B vitamins which keep our nervous system healthy and our brains functioning as best as they possibly can - in my case? Still rather slowly :)

The best thing about this wonderful raw snack is the simplicity of it and the speed in which you can pull it off.  Instead of reaching for something packed and fried, do your body a favour and throw this quick snack together.

Yummy Guacamole

1 or 2 ripe avocados

Garlic to taste

chilli to taste

Onion to taste

Pinch of salt


Basically you are going to mash this lot together in no particular order and make it in to a lovely green mud pie kind of thing.  I am lazy so I put all the ingredients except the avocado in the small attachment on my blender, then follow with the avocado.  However, if you do it by hand you get a much more chunky homemade feel to the whole thing and it can taste even better.  I decide dependant on my mood.  You can cut up any kind of vegetable to dip it in or even just massage it in to a load of green leaves and use it as a salad dressing...creamy and delicious!

Enjoy!

Josie

Why should we detox? What are 'toxins'?

Our bodies are fantastic machines that are finely tuned for splendid results across the board.  We can run, jump, sing (badly in my case), breathe, eat, communicate, process thought and generally make an awful lot of mischief. But what happens when our body is out of balance?

Our main elimination organs are the lungs, skin, bowel and the kidneys.  These organs expel by-products from natural bodily processes and also deal with the chemical load of anything we take into our system. 

When we talk about 'toxins' in nutritional therapy, we refer to the substances that exist in the body that are treated as toxic and disarmed and eliminated through the excretory organs.  These organs silently do their jobs so religiously throughout the day that we are barely aware they exist.

Everything we breathe in, put on our skin or ingest is dealt with by these organs.  All substances we need are utilised and everything we don't need is excreted; a finely tuned system we rely on for good health.

The problem is that as we breathe in pollution, eat chemically loaded foods, lather our bodies with chemically laden cosmetics at the same time as naturally creating chemical by-products from our bodies own functions, our elimination organs start to tire.  When one organ tires the others take on the load and we end up in a constant state of toxicity with little chance of processing it all.

Our intestines and colons are loaded with undigested rubbish due to low fibre, low water diets.  The waste sits in our bodies and putrefies whilst the new food we eat passes by it slowly and gets expelled at a sluggish rate.  Instead of only absorbing the new fresh food, we are also constantly absorbing the putrefied matter and it is sent directly to our liver for processing all the time.  This continual process is called auto-intoxication and it leaves us feeling rubbish!

Symptoms of toxic overload:

Fatigue
Bags or dark circles under the eyes
Low energy
Skin/complexion problems
Digestive disorders
Frequent illness
Bloating
Weak hair and nails
Bad breath/body odour
Shallow breathing

Eventually remaining in a toxic condition can lead to other more serious illnesses so addressing diet, lifestyle and doing a good detox is preventative medicine that we should all be putting into practice to remain fit and happy.

Start today by drinking more water and eating as much fresh fruit and vegetables as you can.  The road to good health is one step at a time and this seems like an easy first move to make... be kind to your liver :)

Josie

Sugar: More addictive than cocaine?

Most of us are unaware of how much sugar is in our diet everyday.  If we think about sugar in our foods we generally think about added sugar that we sprinkle on to things, or eating lots of desserts and chocolate bars.  The truth is that sugar is hidden in loads of foods that we would never think could contain it. 

Look on labels for these names which all represent sugar in a product: 

Honey

Dextrose

Fructose

Corn syrup

High-fructose corn syrup

Sorbitol

Fruit juice concentrate

Galactose

Lactose

Polydextrose

Mannitol

Sorbitol

Xylitol

Maltodextrin

Turbinado sugar

 

Foods such as bread, pasta sauces, pizzas, canned soups and even powdered soups contain sugar.  A lot of the foods we consider savoury such as crisps are actually full of hidden sugars and are increasing our addiction to sugar without us even being aware.

It has been found that refined sugar is even more addictive than cocaine. A recent study conducted found that if rats were given a choice between sugar water and cocaine then 94% them would choose sugar. Even rats that had been addicted to cocaine switched to the sugar once it was an option.

http://www.plosone.org/article/fetchArticle.action?articleURI=info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0000698

Sugar cravings are physically pulling people out of the house and to the shop to buy foods which make them crave even more sugar.  This overload of sugary foods is one of the main reasons we have an epidemic of diabetes and obesity in the western world.  Although having said this, it is not just westerners who are susceptible to sugar addiction.  Living in Thailand I realise that the nation is heavily addicted to sugar.  Spoonfulls of sugar are ladled into every dish, sugary drinks are consumed all day. 

So, keep an eye on your sugar intake, including alcoholic drinks.  It could be what is causing your energy slumps and keeping perfect health away.

Josie

What is intuition?

A crossroad in life is always a fantastic opportunity to grow and flourish and generally get to know ourselves more completely.  But how do we know which way to go?

When people have told me in the past to go with my gut,  I have always found it vague and dismissive.  My gut?  Is this not the end of my digestive tract?  A space full of waste?  I hardly think I should trust it to make major life decisions.  It is bound to be as confused as I am.

But as time has gone by I have started to trust myself.  I realise that my 'gut' or my 'intuition' (my general inside feeling about the situation) is the one that I should rely on. 

The trouble is it can take a really long time before we are honest with ourselves.  Sometimes we try to force ourselves down a track which seems more appealing or safe.  Our inner voice gets left in the dark, it is far too hard to listen to sometimes as it means making painful change or facing our fears.

I have typed similar blogs before about decision making and paths being fluid, changing and interlinked.  But this time I want us to focus on the intuition or inner knowing that we have within us.  The voice inside that knows it is right.

We are not our thoughts.  Our thoughts can be manipulated and changed based on feelings or intention.  Feelings are not real, as they can be created and manipulated by our thoughts.  But deep behind the tricky layers of the personality is a space where we simply know what we should be doing.  I think we all know that voice, we can bury it, ignore it and pretend it is not there, but it will always find a way to resurface.

We change, we are fluid in our essence, we don't need to be what we believe we are.  There are no limits to the person you are.  We are not our past or our future.  We are all so keen to box and compartmentalise our personalities and our lives.  'I am like this.   I am like that. I like that kind of person.  I always behave like this'.  Let's stop defining ourselves and making decisions based on who we have been.  It is limiting and confusing and ultimately impossible.

So, next time you decide to bury that voice away, remind yourself that it is only a temporary fix, a saving grace, a pause, before your intuition pulls you back into alignment and you continue on the path that serves you best.  There is always something to be learnt along the way even if we hide our intuition for a while, but let's not do it too long and repeat patterns that are stopping us from being the best version of ourselves. 

We are all completely worthy of whatever it is we want to achieve, make sure that the only person standing in your way is willing to step aside once in a while and allow you to move forward (you).

Josie

Tasty salad Recipe...

I created a salad today that I thought I would share with you...

Yummy Salad

Main Salad
Two large Kale leaves
1/4 small cabbage
Handful of cooked brown rice

Dressing
4 tomatoes
1/2 small red onion
sprig of coriander
1 clove of garlic
pinch of salt

To Top off
Cayenne pepper
Dash of Cumin
Sunflower seeds
Pumpkin Seeds

I finely chopped the cabbage and kale and tossed them together with the brown rice to create a base.

I then added all the tomatoes, onion, garlic, coriander and salt into the blender to create a salsa like dressing.

I poured the salsa over the chopped base and massaged it all together.  Finally I put a shake of cayenne, cumin on the top and sprinkled with pumpkin and sunflower seeds.


Enjoy :)