Want to cut the amount of salt your family shakes on their food? Stick clear tape over half the holes in the salt shaker. Who knows? It might just work. It certainly did for one study where they found that people shook the salt shaker for a certain time regardless of how much was coming out. When they taped over half the holes, the study subjects unknowingly ended up eating half the amount of salt.

This ’stealth’ method of reducing salt is exactly what many nutritionally responsible food manufacturers

When I first heard Professor Christine Thompson from the Department of Human Nutrition, Otago University tell us that eating just two Brazil nuts a day provides us with all the selenium we need, I was excited. So simple, so natural, so perfect for us New Zealanders who err on the side of selenium deficiency due to our selenium deficient soil.

So if a couple of Brazil nuts are good, more must be better, right? Wrong!! This is one food that we definitely DO NOT want to overdose on. Why?

First, we can get selenium poisoning. We need a little selenium – it acts as an anti-oxidant and has potential anti-cancer effects – but eat too much and it will build up in the body to toxic levels. If you’ve over-embraced the ‘Brazil nuts are good for you’ message and have noticed you’re fatigued, irritable, feel nauseous, have a horrible garlic breath even when you haven’t been near garlic or, horror of horrors, your nails look bad and brittle and you’re losing hair, chances are you’ve overdosed on selenium.

Who said 8-year-olds can’t cook? I’ve just spent the afternoon helping a group of them grate carrots, slice cabbage, measure out vinegar and finely chop garlic and parsley. We made coleslaw – the real way. No store bought mayonnaise for us. The kids made it from scratch – an egg, vinegar and garlic whisked together. Then the oil very slowly drizzled in while the cooking teacher whisked until it became thick and creamy. What a fun way to teach the science of emulsifiers.

There’s no denying that eating fish is good for you. One of the key reasons is that it’s a great source of polyunsaturated fat – in particular the omega-3 fats called EPA and DHA. These fats are help reduce inflammation, clotting, high triglycerides (a type of fat in the blood) and help keep the blood vessels flexible. They are a critical part of brain growth and visual and nervous system development. Some parents and teachers swear by fish oil as a solution to lack of concentration and unruly behaviour in kids although the scientific evidence is not so certain about this.

The Nutrient Reference Values for Australia and New Zealand have a ‘suggested dietary target’ of 610mg per day for men and 430mg per day for women of long-chain omega-3’s.