Food to eat for better health, great advice from the Medicinal Chef

WHEN I asked people if they had any health-related questions for Dale Pinnock, the Medicinal Chef, I was swamped with replies – so thank you to everyone. Dale’s working with us to guide you on food to eat for better health and specifically advise on food which will help you lose weight and/or help to heal any underlying conditions which may be preventing weight loss.

This week I had an hour-long video call with Dale when he answered the first of your questions about food to eat for better health!  Here’s the video, which provides some fascinating insights into how our bodies work and what we should be eating.

Dale also has some great advice on little treats like a piece of cake every now and then!

I’ll be interviewing Dale again next week and if you want to ask any questions or add comments about food to eat for better health then please do that below the blog.  Enjoy!

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Healthy chicken stew is the perfect winter comfort food, says Dale

FANCY a healthy chicken stew? I do! Since I teamed up with the Medicinal Chef, Dale Pinnock, I’ve been getting lots of lovely comments and feedback about his recipes.  Several people have asked if he could share a “healthy comfort food” recipe.  So your wish is my command and this week he’s produced his fantastic chicken stew recipe just as the weather is getting a little colder here in the UK!  Perfect timing!

Dale will be recording a Q&A session with me next week which I’ll be sharing with you. We’ve had lots of questions already, which is very helpful, so if you have any further questions on specific food to eat to improve any health conditions you may have, please do let me know in the comments below and I’ll chat it through with him.  Enjoy the recipe!

Dale tells me: “This dish is winter time comfort food, done healthy, at its very best. Why not have an enjoyable culinary experience and do ourselves some good at the same time?

“There’s no reason at all why we can’t tick both boxes. This particular dish proved very popular on my TV series Eat Shop Save and if you try it, you’ll see why.

“From a nutritional point of view healthy chicken stew ticks a lot of boxes. Low glycaemic, high fibre, high protein, keeps you full for HOURS and is rich in many micronutrients like zinc and B vitamins.”

Dale’s healthy Chicken Stew recipe

Ingredients for healthy chicken stew

1 Large red onion, finely chopped

3 Garlic cloves, finely chopped

Olive oil

2 X 400g cans of cannellini beans, 1 drained, 1 with liquid retained

4 Chicken breasts, diced,

200ml vegetable stock

1 tablespoon grated Parmesan cheese

1 teaspoon mixed fresh herbs

Salt

Cooked greens or salad to serve

Method for healthy chicken stew

In a pan, sauté the onion and garlic in a little olive oil, along with a good pinch of salt, until the onion has softened.

Add the beans, including the retained liquid. Simmer for 7–8 minutes, stirring often.

Add the chicken and the vegetable stock. Allow to simmer for around 20 minutes, stirring regularly. Add a little water if it starts to dry up.

At the point where the sauce has thickened to a delicious creamy texture and the chicken has cooked, take off the heat.

Add the grated Parmesan and mixed herbs and stir well.

Serve with cooked greens or a salad.

 

Dale’s book Healthy Every Day is packed with yummy recipes that are bursting with healthy ingredients. You might also like this recipe from Dale: Healthy whole wheat spag bol

Please let me know how much you liked Dale’s healthy chicken stew recipe by leaving a comment below. And please leave your questions for Dale here, too.

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Change one thing at a time for major wellness benefits, says Dale

AS I excitedly announced a couple of days ago, we’ve teamed up with the Medicinal Chef, Dale Pinnock, the leading nutritionist, author of 14 books and a TV regular. When I met Dale at a conference in the States a couple of weeks ago, it was obvious our values were aligned.

We’re both passionate about helping people live healthier lives and I knew instantly that if he agreed to partner up, it would be a match made in heaven!  He did and it is!

One of the most important things that makes lifestyle change sustainable is doing it in small steps.  This is a core principle of the Slimpod programme.  And as you’re about to see, it’s what Dale advocates on the food side of things, too.

I said a couple of days ago that Medicinal Chef Dale would be giving you a series of challenges to help you drop a size and get into your party gear for Christmas.

Here’s Dale’s first challenge – please let me know how you get on with it by leaving a comment below. And if you’re part of our Slimpod community I look forward to seeing pictures of the dish you’ve cooked up!

Over to you, Dale:

“One of the big issues so many people have when they begin to eat healthier is that they try to change everything all at once. They try to do a complete overhaul of their habits in one go and shift themselves into a whole new way of eating overnight.

“Now for 99.9 per cent of us that just isn’t the way forward at all. In fact, it’s the road to ruin. They key for real long-term change, as you know, is by changing your habits, and the way that you eat is a series of habits all built one on top of the other.

“We need to change things bit by bit to completely shift our lifestyle over time. This is why I always use the rule of ‘change one thing’.

“As the name suggests, this means finding one single thing that you can change straight away – then change just that.

“Keep this up for a few weeks until it is a habit, then make another goal and make that simple change. Keep this up and after six to 12 months your lifestyle will be drastically different.

“So where to start? Well, that’s up to you but one of the most fun things is to ‘give your favourites a facelift’. Start with what you already enjoy eating and your favourite foods.

“Learn how to give them a bit of a facelift. You like pizza? Amazing! Have a go at making one yourself.

“Use a multigrain bread mix to make the crust. Top it with loads of vibrant veggies like spinach, red onion, fresh garlic, artichokes, maybe some goat’s cheese or feta on there.

“Why this change? The multigrain bread base is much higher in fibre and will keep you feeling fuller for much longer and stabilise your blood sugar levels. which in turn will reduce your desire to snack, reduce overall calorie intake, and majorly improve gut health.

Small simple swap, major benefit

“The toppings deliver far more micronutrients, antioxidants, and beneficial phytochemicals. Small simple swap, major benefit.

“You like spag bol? Excellent, swap the pasta over to the brown variety and bulk up the ragout with red lentils to raise the fibre content.

“The wholewheat spaghetti again keeps you feeling fuller for longer, keeps you satiated, and stabilises blood sugar. You get the point.

`’If you think eating healthy is about self-deprivation, denial and self-punishment then man alive have you missed the point! Enjoy the food you love but at the same time get educated about what healthy actually looks like and why, and bring the two worlds together so you have something that is both sustainable and thoroughly enjoyable for life!!

“Over the coming weeks I’m going to be giving you small tips and challenges so you can begin to adjust your diet and lifestyle to not only help manage your weight but improve many aspects of your health.

“It’s a complete dietary overhaul that’s simple, enjoyable, fad free and not a calorie or set of scales in site. My tips and challenges will build on each other to really step up your healthy eating game!”

Here’s Medicinal Chef Dale’s super-healthy Spag Bol recipe

Spag Bol’s a real family favourite up and down the country – and one that can be a monumental calorie bomb if we aren’t careful. This one will go down an absolute storm. The changes aren’t huge – just a couple of tweaks and this dish becomes so much better for you. By swapping white pasta for brown we up the fibre, and adding the lentils means extra protein, fibre and B vitamins.

Ingredients

180g dry red lentils

1 large red onion, finely chopped

2 garlic cloves, finely chopped

1 red seeded, finely chopped and deseeded

Olive oil

500g lean minced beef

1 tablespoon tomato puree

2 X 400g cans of chopped tomatoes

250ml beef stock

500g wholewheat spaghetti, mixed leaf salad to serve

Method

Place the lentils in a saucepan, cover with boiling water and simmer for 15–20 mins until soft, then drain and set aside.

Meanwhile, in a pan sauté the onion, garlic and red pepper in a little olive oil, along with a pinch of salt, until the onion and peppers have softened.

Add the mince and gently fry for 7–8 mins, until it’s cooked through. Stir in the tomato puree. Add the lentils, chopped tomatoes and stock and simmer for 10–15 mins, until the sauce has thickened.

Finally, cook the spaghetti until al dente or according to the packet instructions.

Serve with a mixed leaf salad.

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Medicinal Chef Dale will reveal which foods make us healthier

YOU’VE probably seen Dale Pinnock, the Medicinal Chef, on TV or read one of his 14 books. He’s been on Lorraine, the Alan Titchmarsh Show and the series Eat, Shop and Save explaining the science of how food can make us healthier. Well, here’s the exciting news: Dale is teaming up with me to give Slimpodders expert advice on how to eat for good health and what to eat to lose weight more effectively.

He’ll be joining us on Facebook for a live session in a week or so, and today in this blog he’s giving you an introductory insight into the invaluable guidance he’s going to be sharing with you. I’m SO excited!

Over the next four weeks Medicinal Chef Dale will be showing you that if you just change one thing in your diet it can make a big difference to your weight and your health.

He’ll be showing you how you can give your favourite food a facelift and also how you can eat to help underlying medical conditions, like under-active thyroids, and other health related issues that might be preventing you from losing weight so far.

He’ll even be helping you to make healthy comfort food during the winter months and sharing some great recipes! Dale and I met in October at a conference in California and I knew right away that he’d be just the man to give podders expert help with nutrition and health.

Dale has degrees in human nutrition and herbal medicine and is completing a master’s degree in nutritional medicine. Don’t worry that he’ll be baffling you with science – Dale has a remarkable knack of putting everything in a down to earth way that’s great fun.

His book The Medicinal Chef is packed with recipes that prove how easy it is to use seemingly humble ingredients which have been shown to have beneficial effects on a range of medical conditions – as well as helping you to shed pounds.

You can find out more at Dale’s website. Today the Medicinal Chef has this advice for you to set the scene for the amazing stuff he’ll be sharing:

“How many of you were on the diet hamster wheel for years and were involved counting or recording something? A lot of you, I would guess. For decades we’ve been taught the concept of diet that revolves around counting calories, counting points, or syns, or all manner of different things.

“Yet the more of us that do this, the more of us that fail. We focus on all of the things we shouldn’t do, and arbitrary numbers that in theory, if the maths add up, take us to health and fitness Utopia.

“However, the health of the nation is in crisis. That is undeniable now. Here in the UK between 2005 and 2015 the percentage of adults that were overweight or obese rose from 60.5% to 62.9%. We are WAY over the halfway mark!!

“We are in an age where we know so much about the way that our bodies work, and there is so much information at our fingertips, yet the scales keep going up. I believe there are two things responsible for this. Environment and misinformation.

“The first, we cannot easily control. The second, well that very much influences our choices. If we tackle that, we can determine how we respond to the first.

“So what is this misinformation? Well, I’m going to tease you with it here, and make a very controversial statement…

“The biggest piece of misinformation is that weight management is simply a “calories in” versus “calories out” equation. Burn more calories than you consume, and you will lose weight.

“OH IS THAT IT?? That’s all I need to do then…if only!!! Millions of people have been doing this and just continue to pile on weight or struggle to lose a pound. In my clinical practice I have worked with thousands of patients over the years and I have NEVER met ONE single patient that strictly adhered to a calorie counting diet and managed to maintain it and to successfully keep the weight off for more than two years.

The Medicinal Chef says you’re not to blame

“This is the norm. We are taught this, we put it into action, and we fail. Then, even worse we believe that it’s US that’s to blame. We feel like a failure and we beat ourselves up. We get disheartened and we give up and stop our efforts to live a healthier life.

“Our bodies are not a mechanical engine that runs at a set rate on a single standardised fuel. We are biological systems. We break down, absorb, metabolise, respond, react, adapt.

“We are an incredibly complex and beautifully orchestrated sea of interconnected biochemical processes and interactions. We are regulated by hormones, by cross-system communication and it is understanding this, our very nature that holds the key to getting free from the dieting trap for ever.

“Understand exactly how your body works, how the food that you eat influences the myriad of control systems, hormonal responses and biochemical interactions, and how to put this knowledge into action when you eat, then you will finally have the map out of the woods.”

And I’m delighted and excited that’s what Dale the Medicinal Chef is going to be showing us all! So look out for my blogs in the weeks ahead. Please leave a comment below with your food questions and to give Dale a warm welcome to the Slimpod community.

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Quit sugar and this is why you’ll look younger and feel better

WANT to look younger, feel more energetic, lose some belly fat and improve your health? Of course you do! But you don’t have to buy any expensive “magic” potions or book into a swanky health farm – just give up sugar for a month and you’ll notice some great changes to the way you feel and the way you look.

As this is Sugar Awareness Week I thought you might like to find out the benefits to you if you quit sugar. I don’t just mean the spoonful you add to your tea or coffee, by the way.

I mean being totally aware of the hidden sugar in everyday food and drink and steering clear of it.

You can find out more about hidden sugar in some of my earlier blog posts.

More sugar in ready meals than in Coke

Think you’re eating healthily? Think again 

Jamie Oliver’s shock food video 

But here for the first time are some of the scientifically-proven benefits of a life without sugar.

Younger-looking skin

Research suggests that high blood sugar hinders the repair of your skin’s collagen. So a poor diet can make your skin less elastic and bring on premature wrinkles. Studies show that if you quit it can help reduce visible signs of ageing.

Lose that belly fat

Cakes, biscuits and fizzy drinks pile on the pounds around your middle. This is because high blood sugar levels release a flood of insulin through your body and over time make fat build up around your belly. This is especially dangerous because these abdominal fat cells release hormones that bring on the kind of inflammation that can cause heart disease and cancer.

Keep diabetes at bay

For greater protection against type 2 diabetes, you should quit sugar (or at the very least cut down on it). When you eat a lot of sweet carbohydrate the pancreas releases huge amounts of sugar to cope. Repeat this day after day at every mean – and between meals with snacks – and the cells which produce insulin can get tired and stop working, eventually leading to diabetes.

Protect your heart

A research project shows that people who get between 17 and 21 per cent of their daily calories from food packed with sugar had a 38 per cent higher risk of dying from heart disease than those who kept their added sugar intake to below eight per cent. So stay away from ready meals, junk food, pizza, sauces and all processed food in tins and jars. Their sugar content is huge.

One man in Holland who quit sugar and alcohol for a month for a TV documentary lost 8lbs, saw his blood pressure fall from 135 to 125 and got his cholesterol level to drop by eight per cent.

But going “cold turkey” wasn’t easy. He felt “cranky” and was constantly hungry. This is because sugar is like alcohol – it makes you feel tired, dehydrates you and sucks the vitamins out of your body.

The Dutch guinea pig said he felt much fitter at the end of his month being forced to live on fruit, yoghurt and salads. But it took three weeks for the sugar cravings to finally disappear.

What really grabbed my attention was when I discovered what happened when he started eating sugar again. “I got arrhythmia [irregular heartbeat] twice,” he said. “I also had trouble sleeping. I couldn’t fall asleep before 3am or 4am. My body wasn’t used to sugar any more and it came in like a drug.”

That’s precisely the problem we face in our sugar-laden world today. Sugar is like an addictive drug – and it’s hugely powerful.

Is sugar a problem in your life? Could you challenge yourself to quit sugar for 21 days? Please leave a comment below – I read them all with great interest and they really help me to help others.

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