Sensible Eating in the Modern Era

Practically everyone knows that for good health, you need to start with the basics: put good food in, move your body daily, drink water, and get sleep.

In practice, it seems that everything else in our lives takes priority. Work, kids, relationships, caring for family, hobbies and any other pressing obligations. It's a bit of a recipe for disaster. You've heard the saying that 'you can't pour from an empty cup'? Well, we'll give you another one now: 'the body keeps the score'. This means that for everything you miss, overlook, put off, or procrastinate on in relation to keeping the only vessel you'll ever have to live in healthy and running well, it will absolutely soldier on the best it can, whilst keeping a running scorebook for you.

Self-care is not optional if you want to be able to look after others, have any capacity left for fun outside of your obligations, even if you want to be effective and capable in the workplace. There is a tendency to over-fluff the term 'self-care' too. Whilst it can absolutely be a massage, a long hot bath, a new pair of trainers or a small treat, if you aren't starting with the foundational part of physically looking after your body, a bath, however lovely and relaxing, isn't going to halt the march towards diabetes, high blood pressure, postural difficulties from never being away from your desk, your digestive system throwing its metaphorical toys out of the pram or stop you from waking up feeling like you've been hit by a bus every morning.

The term 'sensible eating' means a lot of different things to different people, and there is a large element of what era you've been informed by, shaping your view of it. Those who were around in the 1980's saw the demonisation of fat and the arrival of fat-free options everywhere. Later it was sugar, again with the sugar-free options. The millennial generation saw the demonisation of food in general, with 'heroin chic' portrayed everywhere from the runway to the media at large, throughout the late 1990's and 2000's (it's once again an alarming growing online trend, so yay for comebacks...!?). There's a wild amount of conflicting information available, even now (with everything from vegan, through carnivore, paleo, fruitarian, keto, and so much more out there with advocates claiming that their way will mend all your ills). So this is our no-nonsense, one size fits most* advice for 'sensible eating' in today's world:

Prioritise protein but don't obsess over the macros. You get protein from nearly all the food you consume, but obviously there are some sources richer than others. Good quality meats (keep red meat in smaller quantity in your diet, but there's no health reason for most people to exclude it completely), fish, dairy, eggs, beans, pulses, legumes, nuts and seeds are all your best options here. For those of a vegan or vegetarian persuasion, include lots of quinoa, hemp seeds (aka hemp hearts), chia seeds, spirulina and nutritional yeast are all complete sources of protein, and never discount seitan, tofu, tempeh or feto (fermented tofu).

Fruits and vegetables should be a foundational part of your day. The current advice has jumped from 5 a day closer to 10, and the reality is that more is always better, along with variety! They are much easier to sneak into your meals and snacks than you might think, and variety is important too. Bananas, apples, pears, figs, stoned fruits and oranges make great portable snacks (as long as you include a couple of nuts...). Berries are easy to throw in a smoothie with myriad other fruits and vegetables, chuck them in your yoghurts, on your porridge, dried in your trail mix, in your salad (thinking more along the pomegranate seed lines here but get creative, no one put apple in salad before the Waldorf was popularised!).

With your veggies, try to find one thing each week that you've not had for ages or have never tried before. Visit farmers' markets for less obvious options than are on repeat in the supermarkets. Box services like Abel & Cole and Riverford have wonderful veggies (and so much more) available right to your door. There are loads of other subscriptions for whole recipe deliveries with step by step instructions on cooking if you're in the mood to widen your repertoire but lacking inspiration and/or time.

Fruits and vegetables are full of fibre, vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, polyphenols, bioflavonoids, etc. These are all highly important for our health and wellbeing, so a good daily supply is essential to us.

Keep your grains and carbohydrates to unprocessed whole foods at moderate amounts. We've found that lots of people rely heavily on grains through bread, pasta, flours, etc., as a reliable and cheap bulk for their meals. Whilst this isn't too much of a problem once or twice a week, it does push out the veggies and, in many cases, protein when you have carbohydrate-based meals regularly. If you have pasta one night, something rice-based the next, keep the leftovers for lunches, and pizza another night, you can see how the lack of other major food groups could begin to become a problem. You end up missing out on large swathes of the micronutrients you need for your wellbeing. Not to mention, your energy will become an exciting rollercoaster with regular crashes where you can end up feeling tired after eating, never making it to the next meal without getting hangry and needing a snack or a nap and find yourself relying on caffeine to get you through the day.

Avoid foods with added sugar. Might seem fairly obvious, but it can be really hard to kick the sugar habit. It's also hidden in so many different products that it can be a real challenge to identify where you're still consuming it! It's in crisp flavourings, meat cuts, flavoured yoghurts, lots of drinks, including ones you wouldn't necessarily suspect, such as fruit juice options and tins of tea (think flavoured matcha and more) and coffee. So even if you're avoiding the obvious sugary things like biscuits, cake and sweets, you could still be getting far more than you anticipate from cooking sauces, granola bars (and other 'healthy' snack bars),

Now that we appear to be over the mad summer of never-ending heat waves, autumn is a great time to look at your regular meals and see where you can eat more seasonally. Think hearty and warming with lots of root vegetables** and dark green leafy things**. Porridge for breakfast is always a winner on cold mornings, and you'd best believe it's a great way to start your day! With a few careful topping choices, it can be a very well-balanced meal, with everything you need to set you up for the day ahead. We love it so much we've even written a whole blog post about it, which you can read here.

Puddings aren't totally off the cards either! Stewed fruits with a little Greek yoghurt or crème fraîche, and homemade fruit crumble with a pimped crumble topping. Think oats or buckwheat, ground almonds, chia seeds, desiccated coconut (unsweetened!), flour, fat (butter, 'butter' or even coconut oil), and coconut sugar to taste. The almonds and seeds will give you a bit of a protein balance; coconut and your fat choice add to the fat content in a good way; and of course, your fruit choice will have the fibre, vitamins, minerals and, in the case of apples, pectin to support your gut health! Raspberries, blackberries**, rhubarb**, gooseberries and damsons** all make great additions to your apple. Or you could use pears as your base, or go completely rogue and make something peachy!

Or if you're feeling more cakey, why not try Angie's Carrot Cake recipe? It keeps for ages and is supremely nutritious for cake!

Eating well doesn't have to be overwhelming if you follow the basic rules of protein, fat, carbohydrate and veg/fruit each time you sit down to eat..... Though the sitting down to eat bit is a whole other point..... Which leads to a conversation about how eating on the run or at your desk, or hovering over the kids, or in the car on your way to the next thing is absolutely stopping you from getting much out of your meals! Er, let's pick that one up another time!

*our semi-tame nutritional therapist twitches every time someone says something like, 'but that would be good for everybody, right?'

**the current (autumnal) best seasonal options