Archives for December 2015

Christmas is the most wonderful time of the year and my favourite holiday! There is a certain kind of magic in this season that we carry on through our lives, something from our childhood when we still believed in Santa Clause and spent every December waiting for a miracle. Don’t you just feel it? I really do remember the smell of fresh Christmas tree, mandarins and the delicious aroma from the kitchen where lots of wonderful foods were constantly being prepared during this festive season. It is so nice to spend some time in the kitchen with a mother or a grandmother to prepare all sorts of delicious things! I have always loved to be in the kitchen. This place has a certain magic in it, really!

You can combine different ingredients and create something very different and, if you lucky, very yummy at the end of this process. It is like making a magical potion, if you will. I am sure that many children really like to cook and always demonstrate some interest to participate in the process of preparing food. My daughters have always wanted to help around the kitchen! However, sometimes parents do not have time or the patience to spend that time with their kids and cook something together. We rush too much nowadays. Do you not agree? It is much faster to prepare a dinner by yourself and just serve it to your family rather than do it with children and teach them how to peel and cut, mix ingredients, use various kitchen gadgets and how to decorate plates and the table. Time is required for this which we often do not have. We quickly cook, or even stick something in the oven or microwave, and it is done in a few minutes, out of way! Yet, cooking together is much more then just preparing a meal to satisfy our hunger. It is a great educational moment, it is an opportunity to talk to your children about their day, school or something special; it is a process of building an understanding and developing deep connections between generations; it is a possibility to keep your family’s cultural traditions alive! And it just so happens that Christmas is perfect time for this!

I really would like to encourage you to spend some time with your loved ones in the kitchen during this festive period. Do something together every day and have lots of fun! Explain to your kids what you cook and which ingredients you use and why. Teach them to think about what they actually put in their mouth and how important it is for their health, why certain products are better than others and how some food makes them run and dance well, while others make them weak and sick. Ask them to help to do simple tasks and actively reward them for assisting you. Be creative together, invent new recipes, experiment with flavours and colours!  Be enthusiastic about healthy products you use as an alternative to less healthy ones (for example, honey rather than sugar) and bring their attention to the fact that home-made food tastes so much better than ready-made meals. These lessons about importance of real food – the only food we can actually digest properly and benefit from the most. This is truly the most important message you can give your children as this knowledge leads them to make the right food choices, lead the right life style and be healthy! Isn’t this the best Christmas gift we can give our children?

Well, that is enough theory from me! I would now like to share with you one very simple recipe that you can use with your children and cook something delicious! I call it “Gluten Free Fruit Cake”. And the beauty of this recipe is that you can easily change the ingredients by replacing one type of fruit with another, or with dry fruits or berries. You also can add some other spices, tailor it to your personal taste.  You can even choose between making either one big cake or lots of small cup cakes and be very creative with decorating!

You will need:

4 eggs

150g of butter

3 table spoons of honey

3 table spoons of grated coconut

1 cup of almond flour

1/2 cup of buckwheat flour

¼ tea spoon of bicarbonate soda

1 cup of blueberries

Spices: 1/2 tea spoon of nutmeg, cinnamon, clove, ginger (all in powder form)

Cranberries and coconut for decoration

Method:

Beat the eggs with the honey with an electric whisk until the mixture is smooth and fluffy. Add the grated coconut, all of the flour and spices. Mix well. In small cup cake cases put several blueberries and then cover them with your cake mix, leaving some space at the top.

Bake it at 180⁰C for about 20 min till your cakes are ready.

When they have cooled down, put a tiny bit of honey on top of each, add one cranberry on the top and a little bit of grated coconut for decoration.

Bon appétit!

Please, try the recipe and let me know if you liked it and which modifications you introduced into the recipe. Take a picture and send it to me! How about photo on Instagram (#liverightxmas). This will be a great Christmas present for me!

I wish you and your families A Merry, Healthy, Delicious Christmas!

Have you ever realised that in our hands we have the power over our and our children’s destiny? Let me explain what I mean.

How often do we hear excuses such as – “I am overweight but it is genetic and I cannot do anything about it” or “Heart disease runs in my family, so I am sure I will develop heart problems as well at some point” or something similar? This cannot go on any longer! Modern research clearly demonstrates that the health concerns we often blame on our parents and grandparents are actually within OUR control! In fact, only approximately 1% of all diseases are caused by “imperfect” genes. So, although we may have a predisposition for obesity or other conditions, we still have full control over our destiny!

Of course, we do partly inherit certain features from our parents. Whether we are tall or short, blonde or brunette depends on parental input. However, many other factors around us have a huge impact on us and our health. For example, how we have been looked after during our time in the womb and early childhood, what type of food our mother was ate during her pregnancy, how much stress she experienced and many other factors.

It has been shown that a complex interaction between genes, diet, and other environmental factors play a huge role in our life. In fact, our genes have “switches” and they allow for genes to be activated and deactivated. These switches can be affected by many factors, including our food, stress, exercise, sleep, environmental factors and state of our own microbiome.

This simply means that by introducing positive changes in our life style and avoiding unnecessary toxicity around us, we can achieve optimal health. It means that we can take some degree of control over our life and life of our children. For example, omega-3 fatty acids found in oily fish affect more than 100 genes, while a diet high in carbohydrates turns on genes linked to inflammation and so on. Furthermore, our lifestyle has a big impact on genes linked to Alzheimer’s disease.

Autism has been intensively studied recently. Because Autism tends to run in families, researches have identified vast amounts of genes linked to this disorder. However, more and more evidence suggests that genetic “master switches”, that can turn many genes involved in critical pathways on and off, have been shown to be disrupted in Autism. Therefore, Autism as many other disorders appear to have an epigenetic mechanism where environmental and lifestyle factors play big roles in gene regulation and expression. Thus, we can most certainly do our best to reduce the chance of the development of these diseases. We have been empowered so that the lifestyle we lead can directly alter the expression of our genes. This is a remarkable opportunity indeed! Just imagine that by choosing food of better quality appropriate for you and providing your body with a better set of essential nutrients you can directly effect your genes in a positive way!

And of course, nature gets it best. We need to focus more on eating real and whole foods that contain nutrients which, in optimal combination, are necessary for life and the health. If our digestive system is functioning efficiently and our microbiome is in good condition, we have all the right tools to break down and utilise nutrients from these foods and nourish ourselves in the best possible way.

I really hope you can use this information to empower yourself and start to introduce positive changes in to your diet and life style! New Year is almost here and this is the perfect time to implement some changes into your life that will bring you the long lasting gift of health!

Thank you very much and, as usual, if you have any questions or comments, I would love to hear from you!