Healthy living tips if you're lazy and also if you're not...

[raynman]

I seem to have spent my life trying to feed people with compromised diets, be it my daughter who was a very fussy eater or my mum who in the last years of her life, when left to her own devices, 'survived' on a diet of tiramisu and fags.
As a consequence of my experiences I’ve become quite the dab hand at preparing meals and drinks that are nutrient rich.

If you are looking for achievable, sustainable and above all affordable ways to increase the nutritional content of your family’s diet then here’s some wisdom I’d like to share with you…

Two strategies that I highly recommend if you change nothing else in your life are the purchasing of a juicer and adding dried, ground seaweed to your herb and spice collection.

On the subject of which juicer to buy my advice is simple:
Buy one that you’re going to be comfortable using and that does it in the time that you have.
I’m sure there are nutritional differences between juices coming out of a masticating juicer or a centrifugal one but a juicer you’re not using, for whatever reason, supplies no juice at all and the fact is that whatever juice you do produce will be far superior to any of those dead juices you’ll buy from the Supermarket.
It doesn't need to be an expensive juicer either, we've been juicing quite happily for the last 3 years or so with a centrifugal juicer purchased at Aldi for just under 20 quid.

The second strategy is seaweed:
Seaweed is natures very own multivitamin and along with its incredible spectrum of nutrients it also contains glutamic acid which is a natural flavour enhancer.
So just to recap: it makes your food taste better and adds a nutritional punch to every mouthful that your budding brood eat – what’s there not to love about it?
These days you can also get it in a comfortably familiar ‘herby’ form being supplied in its own spice shaker jar which is a pretty good clue as to how to use it.
In this form it’s also affordable so something that every busy, modern health conscious kitchen can benefit from.

These are my two major contributions to this subject, some smaller ones are drink more (water that is) and replace table salt with sea salt.

If you have any contributions that fit the above criteria I’d love to hear about them and in the meantime pop this very appropriate saying into your mantra box:
When diet is wrong medicine is of no use
When diet is correct medicine is of no need.

You have a fabulous body - look after it and it will last you a lifetime...

I disagree with you on the juicer. I think we need fibre in our diets and a juicer breaks that down too much. It also exposes our teeth to more of the acids. We also need to chew. That is good for us!

I also have to take issue with the seaweed to an extent. Check your iodine levels first. If you are already getting enough iodine in your diet, some seaweeds have extremely high levels of this mineral and you do have to be careful not to eat too much. while a pinch of powdered seaweed isn't going to do too much harm, it isn't going to make much difference either way. (I eat crisps made of seaweed and there is a warning on the back to say not to eat more tgan about half the bag in one day, because of the high iodine content.)

I've also had a lifetime of juggling diets, most of us here have!

Where do I start with all that?
I do see where you're coming from and in a perfect world we'd all get 5-10 a day from eating the foods that these come from.
The point being though that most of us busy beavers don't and my advice was really aimed at those with compromised diets be that through age, health or circumstance or just lack of time and opportunity although I, and this is coming from someone who's never been on a diet and juices and eats seaweed every day, do think these tips are useful for pretty much most of us.

You are right about fibre being important but in the real world it's far easier to up your fibre intake than it is to replicate the incredible nutrient content of a fresh fruit, vegetable and herb juice in which the soluble fibres are of course still intact.

As for seaweed, it is very rich in iodine but cooking reduces that.
The consensus on iodine limits these days seems to be that they're very conservative and that it is virtually impossible to overdose on seaweed and according to the World Health Organisation it's not an excess we need to worry about it's a deficiency in.
Have a read of their document entitled 'Iodine Deficiency in Europe'
www.who.int/nutrition/publications/VMNIS_Iodine_deficiency_in_Europe.pdf

We use dried, ground organic seaweed which is used like a herb during cooking, I've seen those seaweed crisps you mention and I'm not sure I would include these in a list of everyday and affordable foods.

With everything in life you need to apply some common sense and good judgement.
Most things in excess can be detrimental to health including water.

As a mater of interest have you ever included a fresh juice and seaweed for cooking into your diet?