The Natural Food Challenge
What we consume in our bodies matters !!!
An analogy that many feel is often overused “You would not put rubbish fuel into your sportscar and expect great performance”
Good nutrition is vital to ensuring our bodies function well, prevent disease and repair our body and the best medicine to contribute to optimal health.
Go back a generation or two when Grandma used to cook food from the garden or allotment, or purchased much of the food shop from the greengrocers, the family often enjoyed a tasty home made cooked meal that stayed as pleasurable memories for many years to come.
Being part Finnish Scandinavian, my summer holidays were spent living in a country farm house where my grandmother grew much of the food we ate, grown at home from berry bushes to baby potatoes and root vegetables picked, washed and cooked on the table within an hour or two. Still to this day, with my childhood now being a distant memory, the taste of the baby potatoes or tender crunch of the carrot exploding a sensation of flavour lives with me of which I find hard to replicate no matter where I shop for my organic produce. Then adding to this, Mummo (Finnish word for Grandmother), would have a secret recipe that the whole family would ensure they come together to eat as they would not want to miss out on a comfort meal that often became one of our favourite dishes to consume. All made with natural ingredients, home made sauces and brought delight to every family member.
In modern age we are time poor, looking to opt for the quickest meal to make to fit into our busy family lives, much of what we buy in the supermarket is a pre-made sauce or meal loaded with artificial flavourings, colours and additives. From a production point of view, additives are necessary to keep the food safe, promote a longer shelf life and provide convenience to store foods at home for lengths of time.
Unfortunately however alongside these advised necessary additives, added chemicals and artificial ingredients are added to our foods, many of which are negative and sometimes toxic to our health.
Some very common additives are glucose fructose syrup, artificial sweeteners, sodium nitrite and nitrates, monosodium glutamate, brominated oils, colours and transfats are just some of the ingredients commonly found in the commercial foods we are now consuming.
We as a nation are becoming more educated and wiser to knowing the harmful effects of these ingredients, yet these are often deceptively hidden under different names or discretely noted in the ingredients listing.
Our approach is first and foremost, that we should not consume foods negative and harmful to health. This is why we are passionate about setting a standard of not wanting these in the foods ingested in our bodies and we want to get back to natural food intake returning to a holistic wellbeing.
If we can inspire you to join us in our journey of sourcing and preparing natural foods conducive to optimal health, educating our children to home grow or work with suppliers and retailers whom are willing to keep to healthier standards of living, this is our passion and from finding strategies to finding great tasting recipes, working with nutrition professionals to educate the consumer, connecting with natural farmers and distributors, we believe the health benefits will make a huge difference to population health.