Only trouble is they can be heavily processed, contain ingredients that don’t make our bodies thrive and be heavy in sugar, salt and fat.

The fat generally comes from vegetable oil, but we don’t know what kind of vegetable oil as labeling laws don’t always stipulate.  Often times ‘vegetable oil’ will be palm oil which food manufacturers use in baked and biscuit products as it’s cheap, but it is 50% saturated fat and shouldn’t be included in a healthy diet.

Processed crackers will often say ‘baked not fried’ to imply they have less fat that fried foods, but that isn’t usually the case.

If you have a food dehydrator you can make these yummy Chi’a seed crackers at home ‘to put stuff on’.

Click here for the recipe.

An easy thing to start with is peanut butter, well almond butter actually.

Peanut butter in the supermarket is about 85% peanuts.  What is the other 15% you ask?  Stuff your body doesn’t need, but the product needs to remain fresh on the supermarket shelf and also to ensure the oil from the nuts doesn’t separate and make the consumer antsy, ooh and sugar and salt – we can’t sell anything without those two ingredients.  If you make your own nut butters, it will be 100% nuts.

Here’s how.

Grab one of your children and give them a bag of insecticide free almonds (you can get these at the supermarket – see supermarkets can be your friend), give them an oven tray, a food processor, a clean jar and a spatula.

Leave them to it.

If they spread the almonds thinly on a clean oven tray, and bake for 10 minutes in a hot oven (200 degrees Celsius), then remove and let cool completely before putting in a food processor and processing until one big glob of almond butter is slowly moving around the bowl – then you’ll have your own fresh almond butter!  Have them spoon into a clean jar and store in the fridge.  If you want extra smooth, add a teaspoon of coconut oil to the blending at the very end, or if you want crunchy, add some crunchy nuts at the very end.

NO added sugar

NO added salt

NO added vegetable oils (never too sure which vegetable oil food manufacturers are referring to here and our labeling laws don’t require them to differentiate)

NO preservatives

NO butylated hydroxyanisole (320)

Be careful when reading marketing spiel about products, sometimes the food manufacturer can spout the health benefits of the main ingredient, for example ‘peanuts are low GI’ – which they are, but the product ‘peanut butter’ that has sugar, salt and fats added to it … isn’t. (peanuts have a GI of 14 – almonds GI 15 – anything under GI 55 is considered low).

Juice some carrots and fresh ginger.  Make some Brazil nut milk.

Add juice and milk to blender with a 1 tablespoon of organic natural yoghurt, 1 tablespoon chi’a seeds, 4 frozen banana’s, 2 fresh peaches.

Blend.

Linda Wells

We have put together a series of short (45 minute duration) healthy burst courses designed to be run at your workplace during lunchtime.  We come to your workplace and run one Healthy Burst per day over five days, during your lunchtime.  Your employees can pick and choose which topics are of interest to them and attend, while eating their lunch.  Each healthy burst covers one topic and is designed to give a short boost to motivation for your staff.  Topics covered include:

1. Risks To Health

2. Code Breaker (understanding ingredients)

3. DNA is not my Destiny

4. Top 10 Causes of Death in Australia

5. MeasureUp

Click here for a Course Outline and contact us at info@itsuptoyou.com.au or call 0400 649 960 for a quote based on your location and numbers of staff.

If you are new to Raw Food or are simply interested in adding more whole foods to your diet, you can now come away for a couple of days and enjoy the raw food lifestyle on the beautiful NSW mid north coast.

Accommodation is a queen room with mini kitchen (however, all meals are created in the main house kitchen), an ensuite bathroom, outside decking with views through the melaleuca forest to the sea.

Packages

Here is a suggestion of what is on offer:

1. B&B – accommodation and raw food breakfast each morning
2. Accommodation and raw food breakfast, lunch and dinner, including morning tea, afternoon tea and juices provided to your room.
3. Accommodation and you help in the preparation of all raw food meals, including learning dehydration techniques, juicing, sprouting, main meals, breakfasts, treats, cakes, crackers etc.
4. A mixture of all of the above to suit your requirements.

Things to do

Our B&B is located in Valla Beach, a small seaside village half way between Sydney and Brisbane, with the closest airport being Coffs Harbour.  We are located on a headland with our own track to the beach located at the rear of our small property. We are in a street of other houses, but it remains quiet and private.  You can go for long walks on the beach, go swimming in the ocean or at deep creek, organise a massage to come to your room, there is even a new gym in the village, plus kayak hire in a safe waterway.  Regular pilates classes are held in the village or the trainer can be arranged to come onsite for personal classes or fitness training.  For those interested fishing tours can be arranged but must be booked prior to ensure availability of Peter.

The village has a cafe within walking distance that serves great coffee and meals if you do not want raw food for every meal, we also have beauty, hair and yoga available.  We are an easy drive to the unique village of Bellingen for shopping, cafes and restaurants.  There is a cinema at Nambucca Heads and your room is packed with books to read.

You can participate in the creation of all your meals, or simply be waited on, the choice is yours.

You can do loads of things, or do nothing, the choice is yours.

We would welcome the opportunity to share our knowledge of raw foods and our experience with you.

Contact Us

I know it’s old-fashioned to have to send an inquiry, but every guest experience will be unique, so please email us  your dates and how you want to engage with us, do you want to take part or do you want to have it laid on etc.   Let’s us know what you want to do and we will work in with your requirements and quote based on your needs.

Email info@itsuptoyou.com.au

Telephone 0400 64 99 60

An average adult needs:

A general rule if a processed food is low in sugar, it will be high in fat, if it is low in fat and sugar, it will be high in sodium etc – so just watch out.  A good generic product to start analysing intently is the muesli bar, still sitting in the cereal aisle but probably should be moved to the confectionery aisle.  If you are having a muesli bar as some sort of a bridge between meals, you would do much better to have a small handful of almonds/walnuts/raisins/real cranberries (not ones with preservatives on them) or 2 fresh medjool dates and an apple.

Read this article comparing muesli bars to mars bars … but don’t get any ideas! read more

I would like to invite you now to recognise the Tick on other products in the supermarket and stop and ask the following questions:

• Regardless of the product bearing the Tick – is it healthy?
• Is there a wholefood equivalent of this?
• How many ingredients does this product contain?
• Are any of these ingredients odd to you – for example soy, corn syrup, maize?
• How many numbers does this product contain?

For example a Tick bearing product I noticed today in my local supermarket – it is called Uncle Tobys Fruit Fix and I’m looking at the Strawberry flavour.  The front of the pack shows the Tick, plus a claim that it equals 1 serve of fruit, 99% fruit ingredients.

The back of the pack advises: “When choosing a snack, we believe fresh fruit is the best choice.  We recommend you aim for two serves of fruit per day and that at least one of these is fresh fruit.  Uncle Tobys Fruit Fix provides 1 serve of fruit per snack so they can add variety and enjoyment to your day.” The box of 6 sells today for $5.98 whereas a punnet of actual strawberries was selling over in the produce section for $1.50.  I’m not saying any of the claims are untrue, I’m wanting to highlight that if you want a strawberry snack, buy a punnet of strawberries over processed food every time!

Running the Traffic Light Counter over the product, it shows Low for Fat, Low for Saturated Fat, HIGH for Sugar, and Low for Sodium.  So in essence, this isn’t a healthy snack, it’s a highly processed, sugary snack.

Pop over to the freezer section of the supermarket (a section I never go to and enjoyed the research today, just for you – I did come away with some organic frozen blueberries, though!)  Anyway, I noticed McCains frozen pizza has the Tick.  I’m looking at the Pizza singles – Ham and Pineapple.  It has 47 ingredients: base (wheat flour, water, vegetable fats and oils (antioxidant (320)), yeast, wheat flour, soy flour, emulsifiers (481, 472e), ascorbic acid, raising agent (920), enzyme (amylase)), cheese (19%) (milk solids, salt, enzyme, starter cultures), sauce (water, tomato paste, flavour (sugar, xantham gum, potassium chloride, yeast extract (wheat), vegetable oil (soy), spice extracts)), pineapple (12%) (pineapple, water, sugar), processed ham (9%) (pork, water, wheat starch, soy protein, wheat gluten, acidity regulators (450, 451), potassium chloride, flavour (soy), salt, sugar, thickener (407a), hydrolysed vegetable protein (soy), antioxidant (316), sodium nitrite, fermented rice, pork protein).  I checked all the numbers in The Chemical Maze book and they are all ok, except the jury is out on 407a (processed Euchema Seaweed).

Running the Traffic Light Counter over the product, it gets Medium for Total Fat, Medium for Saturated Fat, Medium for Sugar and Medium for Sodium.  So, it carries the Heart Foundation Tick, but is it healthy?  I say no, but I don’t say “don’t have pizza”, I say make your own.

Put 2 cups of wholemeal flour in a bowl, add 1 teaspoon of dry yeast, add 1 big tablespoon of polenta and enough cold water to make into a dough.  Turn out onto a floured surface, knead and roll out to fit a pizza tray.  Spread with organic tomato paste, top with tomato, basil, mushrooms, onions, garlic, chili, drizzle in good olive oil and pop in your bbq with the lid down for 20 minutes – in the last 5 minutes add some fresh rocket and sea salt, maybe some more olive oil and keep it in just to ‘wilt’ the greens.  Far better than the bought one!

Smarten up and ask yourself – is it healthy, is there a wholefood equivalent, could I make this myself with whole ingredients?