After listening to yesterday’s lecture on the relationship between diet and disease, I thought I’d give Bill Clinton’s healthy breakfast smoothie a go. 

Apparently Clinton’s love of hamburgers had made him a heart attack waiting to happen, so in 2010 he drastically changed his diet and this smoothie is what he has every morning now. 

http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/jan/24/bill-clinton-almond-milk-smoothie

Considering he must have the world’s top nutritionalists at his disposal, it’s a bit of a boring smoothie, just berries, almond milk & some protein powder. Ollie & I decided to do our own jazzed up version: 



Breakfast Smoothie

Serves 2

• 1banana
• Raspberries, small handful
• Blueberries, small handful
• 1/2 mango
• Coconut milk

For an extra health kick, we also added: 

• Tbsp super greens powder
• Tbsp milled chia seeds
• Tsp raw wild honey.



Chia seeds are the fad at the moment because they contain calcium, manganese, phosphorus, and are a great source of healthy omega-3 fats (important for brain function). See more here:

http://m.huffpost.com/ca/entry/3379831

Raw honey is better for you than the standard stuff because it hasn’t been heat-treated, so still contains its full complement of enzymes and antioxidants, and has antibacterial properties. 

Raw honey is expensive so I haven’t bought it before, but I stumbled across this stuff and the chia seeds while I was in TK Maxx buying pants. Ok, they may have fallen off the back of a lorry but the honey was only £2 instead of £10 and is the BEST I’ve ever tasted. Ollie & I kept having little spoonfuls of it. 

Tell Me What You Eat And I’ll Tell You What You Are

This was the title of yesterday’s lecture and is a quote by Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, a French gastronome born in 1755. The lecture, by a gastroenterologist, looked at all the latest world research (much of it excitingly done in Norwich!) on diet & disease. 

Here are the top 10 things I took away. Please bare in mind it was in the evening, I took no notes and I’d spent the day with a four year-old, so don’t take me word for anything:

1. Consuming milk is bad for adults (increased cancer and diabetes risk).
2. But yogurt is good because of the enzymes.
3. Cheese is somewhere in the middle: a bit good, a bit bad. 
4. Coffee is good but only the caffeinated stuff (protects against liver cancer & diabetes II) 
5. Alcohol is bad, although a glass of red wine a day is good.
6. If you have Crohn’s Disease in the family, breastfeeding your children can help prevent them getting it.
7. Peanuts are bad. They can contain a fungus called Aspergillus, which is a source of aflatoxins and they are toxic and highly carcinogenic.
8. Japan has a high rate of gastric cancer because of the high salt content of their diet. 
9. Cooking food using a wok or barbecue is bad because compounds called AGEs are formed when food is cooked at high temps. AGMs can cause tissue damage, inflammation and increase your risk of diabetes and heart disease.
10. Pineapple (the bromelain in it) is very good for curing diahorrea and for aiding digestion. 

So quite a few avenues of pleasure shut down there, but you can still have coffee and pinapple, so we can’t complain!