The jacaranda trees are in full bloom in Sydney. These elegant trees are a mass of beautiful mauve flowers. If you park your car underneath one you won’t feel quite so enchanted as the sticky flowers fall from the tree but the purple pavements look amazing. In the fruit and vegetable world, purple is usually made by anthocyanins – think eggplant, berries and purple grapes. Anthocyanins are powerful antioxidants. But the purple colour of beetroot comes from another group of antioxidants called betacyanins.

I never wear white when cooking beetroot. Its colour is so potent that it stains hands, chopping boards and even urine. I remember freaking out one morning when my toddler had the most disturbing coloured wee. For a shocking moment I thought it was blood until I remembered that we had eaten beetroot for dinner the night before.

Beetroot and beetroot juice sales have apparently been increasing since research has revealed that it can help reduce high blood pressure by relaxing blood vessel walls – sort of like widening the hose pipe so the water flows more easily. Beetroot contains natural nitrates which chewing converts to nitrites which then get converted to nitric oxide. Here’s another reason to chew your food like your grandma told you to!

I have just completed the Omega-3 Centre’s quiz to check my omega-3 intake. In the past week I’ve had poached eggs with salmon (brunch with friends), grilled barramundi (birthday lunch) and prawns (see the picture above) so I passed with flying colours. But what if you don’t like fish? It can be pretty hard to eat enough omega-3 fats from non-fish foods alone. That’s because alpha-linolenic acid – the short chain plant form of omega-3 – does not convert very well to the effective long chain form of omega-3 – EPA and DHA.

A recent study published in the journal Lipids found that when mice were fed bifidus bacteria, which is added to some brands of yoghurt, along with alpha-linolenic acid, the levels of EPA were higher than if they ate the ALA alone. Because it’s an animal study we can’t assume that the same applies to humans. However it’s a distinct possibility.

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.