nutrition guide

30+ PLANTS A WEEK

One of the best ways to make sure you are getting all the right nutrients is to increase the variety of plants you eat. The old ‘five a day’ is ok if it’s a different five every day for six days of the week! It might seem impossible to start, but once you begin to include different nuts, seeds, grains, pulses, fresh green herbs (dried can also count for part points). There are also new products that incorporate over 30 plants in a dried mix that is great for sprinkling on breakfast, lunch or dinner! Zoe brought out a mix and now M&S do their own version. 

GROW YOUR OWN

There are so many benefits to growing your own food. It obviously requires time and effort and a bit of space, but it can be very rewarding. Any time spent outside planting, pruning or harvesting is all good for our mental health. It gives us more appreciation and connection with our food when we eat it. It can also save on packaging and food miles, so is good for the planet. The tomatoes above were from a bumper crop we had one year.

BUY LOCAL AND IN SEASON, OR FORAGE

Growing your own obviously ticks these two boxes. But if you don’t have the time or the space it’s good to try and buy what is local and in season. We really don’t see the reason to be buying apples from New Zealand when we live in Kent! Foraging will naturally be in season, gets us outside and reduces packaging. Start with the simple stuff like blackberries and seek expert advice for things like mushrooms! You’ll be surprised at what’s out there.

COOK FROM SCRATCH

The boom in packaged meals and takeaways continues as does the decline of family meals at the table and the traditional role of the housewife. Convenience food has helped to create an environment where cooking from scratch has become too inconvenient. It’s really rewarding to go through the process and enjoying the finished product. It also enables batch cooking which can reduce costs. If you still like to eat muffins, biscuits and pizza then make your own. This will probably mean you’ll eat less of them and they’ll be much better for you!

WATCH OUT FOR MARKETING

With so many trendy diets and advice out there, it is difficult not to fall into a category that will be targeted by the clever marketing people employed by the big food corporations. These include: high fibre, high protein, gluten free, sugar free, low/reduced or no fat, natural ingredients, no artificial additives and so on. Anything like this should act as a warning sign. Turn it over and look at the ingredients, what is the main ingredient, and do you recognise all the rest? This milk has 7.5% coconut milk, the rest is made from rice and it scores a ‘0’ on Zoe.

BE CAREFUL IF EXCLUDING WHOLE FOOD GROUPS

Some diets encourage the exclusion of whole food groups. Fat free, carb free, gluten free, sugar free, meat free, dairy free etc. Although, some diets might work to achieve certain goals, there is a risk, that by excluding certain things that you also then fall short on certain nutrients and have a fairly restricted or limited diet that can have other unwanted consequences. ‘Fat free’ might contain extra sugar, and excluding fat from the diet is not a good idea, we need it! Our bodies and tastes change constantly, it’s easy to get stuck in our ways with a limited shopping basket. Just because we didn’t like spinach when we were five years old, doesn’t mean we should avoid it now. Why not try something new each week or something you haven’t had for ages. This Gluten free vegan pizza contains about 70 ingredients.

SUPPLEMENTS

A huge business ($500bn a year) and a very tricky area with a lot of ‘advice’ our there and lots of mixed messages and convincing marketing and new trends, with very little evidence that anything really works. Unless you have regular full blood tests, it’s difficult to know what you are lacking in, so taking regular supplements might be dangerous or just a waste of money. If you are dangerously low on particular nutrients then a doctor should prescribe. There are certain test kits available on the high street, but the accuracy and reliability has been questioned by a recent study by the University of Birmingham University. Supplements and ‘complete foods’ that claim to contain everything you need are another form of convenience foods and should not be a long term replacement for real food.

BUY LESS UPF - look at the ingredients

The above three paragraphs will naturally lead to a reduction in the consumption of Ultra Processed Foods (UPF’s). We look at the ingredients list on any food, or we scan it with our Zoe app, which will give it a score out of 100, part of which is influenced by how processed it is. UPF’s contain things you wouldn’t have in your cupboard (like emulsifiers, MSG, dextrose, stabilisers like gellan or xanthan gum, maltodextrin, inverted corn syrup, too many types of sugar, bad fats etc. It’s not just the obvious things like Pringles and Greggs sausage rolls, this list is from a Waitrose gluten free carrot cake.

FLATTEN THE CURVES

A lot of damage can be done by having regular spikes and crashes in our insulin levels. We signed up to the Zoe app which enabled us to watch our insulin levels in real time. We’ve learnt to ‘flatten our curves’, so we have less extreme increases and decreases in our insulin levels. These methods include quantities (eg. of protein fats, carbs), timings, (eg. spreading out the consumption of fats, proteins), changing the combinations and the order in which you eat certain foods, and having an eating ‘window’, so that you give your body plenty of time to rest and digest, which will help to improve sleep quality. Reduce consumption of foods we think are healthy like cereal, fruit juice and fruit like grapes (or raisins) and dates. And move after eating.

If we eat a big variety of plants and balance out our food groups, we should be able to get the majority of what we need from our diet. If you really listen to your body, sometimes it can tell us what we need, if we crave certain things it might be our body telling us we are lacking in it. 

If you are interested in learning more about Zoe Science & Nutrition, we’ve made a couple of videos, see below.

Links to YouTube videos

Zoe unboxing - our delivery of all the Zoe kit, what’s in the box.

Zoe Libre patch install - Putting the sensor in your arm.

Zoe test day - we eat the cookies and measure our blood fat and sugar responses.

Zoe results day - we receive our results back on our tests and gut health.

Using the Zoe app and scanner - personalised food scores.

Recipes and videos coming soon…..