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Egg nutrition update - how many can I have a week?Egg nutrition update - how many can I have a week? [tweetmeme] Mention cholesterol and what food jumps to mind? Probably the egg. Since the early 1980’s it has been the much maligned food icon of high cholesterol. True, it is high in cholesterol but...

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Kiwifruit – Super-fruit for the gutKiwifruit – Super-fruit for the gut My parents came to stay a few weeks ago, bearing bags of kiwifruit from their orchard. “We’ve got so much!” my mum exclaimed as she dumped three or four bulging bags in the front hall. “The fruit...

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Eat Colours – the ultimate in healthy eating Eat Colours – the ultimate in healthy eating A man in one of my lectures once told me that his father had a simple rule for ensuring good health – eat colours. This was before the explosion of artificial colours into our food and decades before...

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Tea & Toast or Milk & Oats–which is the better brekky?Tea & Toast or Milk & Oats–which is the better brekky? There’s nothing better first thing on a cool morning than a nice hot cup of tea and some grainy toast with homemade grapefruit marmalade. Or is there? The cup of tea gives me a small shot of caffeine...

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What summers are all about in New Zealand...What summers are all about in New Zealand... Apples didn’t feature in my Christmas/New Year menus. Why would they? It’s summer and apples are an autumn fruit. But there they were – languishing at the bottom of my fridge and desperately...

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Taking probiotics during pregnancy may mean less diabetes

Posted on : 19-02-2010 | By : Cindy | In : Eating in pregnancy

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Some women, particularly if they gain lots of weight during pregnancy, can develop gestational diabetes – high blood sugars. They usually return to normal after the baby is born but it does make you more prone to developing diabetes later on. If it’s not controlled by diet you end up having a big baby (ouch!)and he or she has a higher risk of being overweight and developing diabetes when older. Now here’s a study, just published in the British Journal of Nutrition, that has found taking specific probiotics may reduce gestational diabetes by 20%.

What did they do? It was a double-blind, randomised controlled study which means the study participants (256 healthy pregnant women) were randomly assigned to one of three groups: dietary counselling plus a daily probiotic capsule, dietary counselling plus a placebo capsule (looked and tasted the same but had no probiotics in it) or just the placebo capsule.

Double-blind means that neither the study participants nor the study organisers knew which group was which. Actually the control group who had no dietary counselling and just took the placebo capsule were single-blinded which means they didn’t know it didn’t contain probiotics but the study organisers did.

Omega-3’s are not all equal!

Posted on : 14-02-2010 | By : Cindy | In : Seafood, Super-healthy...er...stuff

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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.

Scallops and Riesling

Posted on : 08-02-2010 | By : Cindy | In : On my plate, Seafood

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I just had to take a photo of the delicious scallops I cooked on the weekend. I heated some olive oil in a small fry-pan and dumped them in along with finely chopped garlic, ginger and coriander root. “One minute each side, turn them over only once and don’t over-cook them,” the helpful man at my local fish shop ordered me. I obeyed the orders and they turned out perfectly. For NZ$15 we had a smoked kahawai and 12 scallops – more than enough for three of us to eat.

“When I was a kid, scallops just washed up on the beach,” my father-in-law reminisced. They don’t do that now so we headed off to what I think is the best fish shop in Auckland – Marsic Brothers in Glen Innes.

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