Just because you load up your shopping trolley with fruit and vegetables doesn\u2019t mean\u00a0you\u2019re getting all the nutrients you need.<\/p>\n
Knowing what to eat can be exhausting if you\u2019re trying to be health conscious, with many feeling overwhelmed by contradictory information.<\/p>\n
Founder of MyHealthy DXB, Louise Steen, and\u00a0food safety consultant, and author of \u2018Food She Blogged\u2019, Judy Sebastian hosted a seminar to bridge the gap between food safety and health \u2013 and talked about how to maximise the nutritional value when buying produce.<\/p>\n
Louise explains: \u201cYour body is an amazing machine that needs macro [carbs, protein] and micronutrients [including calcium, vitamin\u2008C, zinc] to function. When you look in the supermarket you see a lot of food that\u2019s packed, processed and transported a long way. The nutrients diminish over time. For example, if you\u2019re eating a tomato from Holland, it\u2019s come a long way, and been stored. This means it has lost a lot of the vitamins and nutritional value. We need to minimise the loss of nutrients\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cEven when you buy a melon, for example, at the shop. Vitamin C, when it comes in contact with oxygen, starts getting broken down \u2013 so it has different make up of micronutrients than a melon that we\u2019d take home and cut up ourselves\u201d.<\/p>\n
So eating fruit and vegetables isn\u2019t just enough. But what\u2019s to be done? \u201cWe\u2019re fortunate that more and more local products are becoming available in the UAE \u2013 I recommend getting produce from as close as possible, because it minimises the travel and time factors. Though that\u2019s not always possible, try and head to the local farmers\u2019 markets, which are emerging in the UAE. They\u2019re cheaper because they\u2019re locally produced and the carbon footprint is smaller\u201d.<\/p>\n
If you can\u2019t get to the next Ripe Farmer\u2019s Market, Louise says there are other alternatives \u2013 particularly for the hot summer months when produce is harder to access.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you look at frozen food, from a nutritional point of view, it often has more of the micronutrients than the fresh produce from abroad. Let\u2019s look at a green bean for example \u2013 the beans are left on the plant for as long as it needs, to absorb everything it needs from the sun and the soil, and then with modern technologies, is frozen, preserving the micronutrients. So if I was to choose between a fresh, but older green bean, and a frozen bean, from a nutrition point of view, I\u2019d opt for the frozen beans\u201d.<\/p>\n
But, Judy warns, local isn\u2019t always better \u2013 take for example the heavy metals found in fish within the Gulf. \u201cWith fish, it\u2019s better to get frozen, from Europe. This is an exception to the \u2018buy local\u2019 rule\u201d.<\/p>\n
Judy recommends always reading the labels, and doing research: \u201cIt\u2019s about prioritising what\u2019s best for you, have the information so you can make the choice.\u201d Louise says a good rule of thumb is to reverse your weekly routine.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Just because you load up your shopping trolley with fruit and vegetables doesn\u2019t mean\u00a0you\u2019re getting all the nutrients you need. Knowing what to eat can be exhausting if you\u2019re trying to be health conscious, with many feeling overwhelmed by contradictory information. Founder of MyHealthy DXB, Louise Steen, and\u00a0food safety consultant, and author of \u2018Food She […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4009,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[4],"tags":[5],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/aktiveproducts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2024"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/aktiveproducts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/aktiveproducts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aktiveproducts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aktiveproducts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2024"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/aktiveproducts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2024\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aktiveproducts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/aktiveproducts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2024"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aktiveproducts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2024"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aktiveproducts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2024"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}