Fitness guru and dieting expert

This website started as a place that I can store the recipes I love and don’t want to lose and to log nutritional information as I discover and revisit it. However, you might find my recipes useful and be interested in some of the things I have learned. Read, comment or sign up and submit your own recipes and save favorites – it’s up to you!

My Food Background

I’m lucky to come from a family of food lovers who can all cook, some grow their own food and one is even a professional chef! I grew up cooking with lots of different family members and learnt to become a confident cook happy to try new foods, methods and cuisines. Not to blow my own trumpet but I am a great cook! Note the use of ‘cook’, not ‘chef’ as I don’t overthink or overcomplicate my food – it should be fun and straight forward to prepare and look good without needing a kitchen full of gizmos or a pair of tweezers!

Recipes

I have tried thousands of recipes, been given loads from equally experimental family and friends. Over the years I have built up a huge trove of great recipes. Some are on bits of cardboard, some in folders, some are pages torn out of magazines, some are bookmarked web links, some are in cookbooks!  My life as a digital nomad means that I never seem to have the recipe I want with me when I want to make it so I decided to store them all online where I could access them whenever and where ever I was.

And that is where this website started! I use it all the time and continually add to it as I find new gems. If I know a recipe comes from another website or chef I will provide acknowledgment.  If I recommend a book or a website it is because I genuinely use it and think it’s great.

Nutrition

Later in life, I have developed an avid interest in nutrition and have tried to educate myself about what we should actually eat and avoid eating in order to maintain good health. It’s safe to say it’s a complicated area and most of what we have been taught about healthy eating is wrong.

I wanted to answers to questions like; Can we eat butter? Is chicken as bad for us as fatty steak? Are vegetable oils as bad as hydrogenated fats? Can we cure heart disease and diabetes with our diets? Should we be eliminating animal products from our diets? Is there any point to eating organic? How do we maintain healthy and stable weights? Should we eat high or low protein diets? What is the best mix of food groups if we want to lose fat? Are there such things as superfoods?

I have read, books, scientific papers and watched countless videos. Where I have learnt something interesting I have blogged about it here so you can use this as a resource to start your own journey into human nutrition.

I agree wholeheartedly with Hippocrates;

“Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food”

However, I also agree with him when he said;

There are in fact two things, science and opinion; the former begets knowledge, the latter ignorance.

So I will only be blogging about things that have been properly tested scientifically and there is some good evidence for. There will be no crystals, homeopathy, or references to weirdos from the internet here. I will also be transparent about my sources to you can read them and make up your own minds.

The Good News

There is a wealth of recent science that gives us some very good evidence for rethinking the way we eat. The good news is that what is emerging from research into nutrition and the fields of diabetes, obesity, cancer, heart disease, aging, dementia is that they all recommend the same diet!  Avoid processed foods and eat mainly plants. Simple, tasty, and good for the environment!

If you are instantly put off by words like ‘plant-based’ or even shock horror ‘vegan’. Don’t be. It is very easy to include more plants in our diets and reduce animal products.  I have some great articles on how you can make some simple changes to help you and your families eat to beat disease and to ensure their lives are as long and productive as possible.

So please read, share, and contribute to make this a great resource for anyone who enjoys food and cares about their health.