Why would you pay for water when you can drink it straight from the tap? Why indeed?

Recently I joined a throng of thirsty wine drinkers at the annual ‘NZ in a Glass’ wine tasting evening in Sydney.  Squeezing through the crowd was worth it to find fantastic wines like Te Pa Sauvignon Blanc and Grasshopper Rock Pinot Noir. But at around 500 kilojoules per 150ml glass (that’s roughly the same as eating five squares of milk chocolate) it was a relief to stumble, not literally, upon Antipodes Water. It was the elegant shape of the bottle that caught my eye and discovering that it was sourced not far from where I grew up that made me stop and taste.

“Can you taste the smoothness? It’s the silica that gives it that smooth mouth feel,”  Simon enthusiastically explained to us. I had never thought of water as smooth but, yes, I had to agree that it did taste smooth on my tongue. Very nice. He reeled off the names of some top restaurateurs who refused to serve any water except Antipodes. And then he answered my unspoken question: why pay for something you can get from the tap?

“I can’t drink alcohol and whenever I would ask the waiter if they had something non-alcoholic they would

If you find honey, eat just enough – too much of it, and you will vomit (Proverbs 25:16) This proverb was written around 3000 years ago but applies just as well today. The author knew honey was good: in Proverbs 24:13 he says, Eat honey… for it is good. But he also knew that we can get too much of a good thing.

Today most of us don’t eat enough honey to make ourselves sick but what if we swap the word honey for sugar? That makes it a pretty modern observation. Sugar is good but eat too much of it and you’ll get sick.

Why is honey or sugar good? It is the number one energy source for our brain. It’s quick energy and it tastes good. But notice the beginning of the proverb. It says ‘If you find honey…’ Those blokes 3000 years ago had to search for their sweet treat. They weren’t bombarded with supermarket aisle after aisle of sugar laden foods. They didn’t walk down the street past shop after shop selling sugar – think ice-cream, fizzy drinks, muffins, cakes, lollies, thickshakes. When they ate roast chicken, it didn’t come topped it with a ‘finger-lickin’ sugar sauce.

The whole sugar issue has a lot of people asking a lot of questions. Is natural sugar better than added? No. Is brown sugar better than white? No. If a banana has more sugar that a chocolate biscuit, is the biscuit healthier? What about a fruit smoothie that has more sugar than a can of soft drink? Is the soft drink healthier?

Perhaps more than Christmas food, it’s the drinks that conjure the best Christmas memories. There was the wild year where a bunch of us each had to concoct a, mostly lethal, drink from a motley assortment of spirits, juice and mixes, then give it an imaginative name. Please note: Nutritionchic does not endorse this sort of degenerative behaviour! Then there was the Christmas in Western Australia, complete with swarms of flies, where we blended pineapple juice with tropical fruit and a splash of Midori – yum.

“Don’t give me any dinner this week,” my husband said to me. “I’ll just have your fruit drink.” What delightful words for any busy mum to hear: No cooking real meals for a week! Well actually I did still cook a little something extra for myself and my son. But fruit drink every night was a great way to start off November – the month set aside in New Zealand to promote eating ‘Five-a-day’. Five-a-day means eating five serves of fruit and vegetables each day. It’s not that much. A serve is one average sized piece of fruit, half a cup of vegetables or a cup of salad. For children, a serve is the amount they can hold in one cupped hand.

I’ve worked out that my fruit drink has about 11 or 12 serves and 22-24 grams of fibre. Split between three of us, we just about hit our daily 5-a-day with one large glass! And no wonder my husband doesn’t feel like dinner: