Just Natural Health & Beauty magazine - July - September 2021 (issue 7)

July - Sept 2021

www.justnaturalhealth.co.uk

ISSUE 07

MENSTRUATION: Understanding the Complex Power of the Female

Veganism,

Tea, &

Olympic Sports A Chat with Unstoppable Team GB Athletes

INDUSTRY

INSIDER:

Healthfood Stores & a Summer of Hope

Learning Compassion, Laughing Through Lion Seeking the Perfect Recipe

Editor’s NOTES And just like that, all the rewards come at once… Hello, sweet freedom.

Greetings, summer sun. After the long-haul of the pandemic and multiple lockdowns (how we shudder at the memory now), let us not dwell any further on such matters in the interim (though ever-aware that the tide could change once more). Instead, let us – sensibly – revel in a return to a semblance of normality; let us live life as safely fully as we can during these long, warm months of bright days and brighter dreams of hoping that all will remain well, though in a somewhat changed regard.

Certainly, wellness should remain our key concern, and what better way to live healthily and happily than when blessed with good weather and fabulous, beloved company? As much as we adore those with whom we were ensconced in our homes for over a year, variety is the spice of life, and the actual, tangible existence of friends and family outside of one’s domestic bounds adds an incomparable and delicious diversity to existence. Although we might not just yet be chucking out the laptops and other technology that aided Zoom-living those long months locked away in protection from the risk of Covid-19 – become as comfortable as we have with a more WFH lifestyle, we are definitely not dawdling indoors anymore.

So, raise a glass (whether of percentage proof or dealcoholized) and dig into that bowl of vibrantly verdant, “living food” salad on the garden dining table or whilst “terracing” (a habit and term developed in those first few freer days of permissible outdoor dining), with the voices of all surrounding the feast raised in jubilant mirth, grinning faces caressed by a balmy breeze and skin that had become sallow in the shadows of home now taking on a radiant glow once more. Be mindful, though, of slapping on the (environmentally friendly) sun screen when partaking in those strident walks through Britain’s wonderful countryside and urban landscapes (some pandemic habits will be hard to break; if they should be broken at all).

This issue, we’re all about the symbiosis between Man and Earth. Focussed on being kind to ourselves and to other human beings, accepting the things which make us all unique, we’ll be looking at green living without rigidity, at how caring for the planet (both its lands and its oceans) means caring for ourselves as well. And this might very well mean flexitarianism, as opposed to striving for a purely plant-based existence. It’s about letting go of shame, whether self-directed or critical of others struggling with dietary and even lifestyle identity, and one thing which causes a lot of self-reprimanding thought and is certainly not a “one size fits all” is diet.

Just Natural Health and Beauty for the most part lauds and supports plant-based living as a major contributor to good health and a more sustainable way of life.

Nonetheless, we also understand that such veganism – whether simply dietary or ethically prompted and pervasive in the adherent’s life – is not for everyone. Medically, some people really cannot thrive on a diet restricted to plant-sourced foods only, certainly those who are coeliac or unable to tolerate legumes. So it is that we thought we’d offer some alternative options for those who wish to go plant-based, but who really can’t in the long-run; eco-conscious options for those who care about the planet just as much as the next green-minded person, but who need another way in order to remain strong enough to wave the environmental flag with energy, and with stamina. The Book of Genesis might very well have stated “let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing”, but such “dominion” is equally interpreted as “care”, and that “care” as “responsibility”.

Thus, whether it’s ancestral health, wildevorism, or another biodynamic, rewilding-inspired form of sustainable consumption – this issue, you’ll find provided key information on ways of living which yet strive for equilibrium with the world around us. As with life as a whole, nothing is a panacea: it’s all about a harmonious giveand-take, about balance. And when that is achieved, the mind can rest serene. As Rudolph Steiner put it, “feelings are for the soul what food is for the body”. Compassion, then, and a patience for understanding – both of which begin in childhood. To this end, this issue also explores plant-based parenting and how we can teach youngsters the power of embracing diversity, within which, as Maya Angelou said, “there is beauty and there is strength”. Strength and determination, helped by plant-based nutrition, is also something the Team GB women we spoke with this issue know all about.

At the end of the day, we have survived a pandemic: now is the time for rebirth. We saw how Earth, how Nature renewed when we paused just a few of our destructive habits – the long commutes, the air travel, the sheer thoughtless waste of fast-paced living; creatures great and small crept out, tested manmade concrete and less busy waters and skies. In our “new normal” age, then, we need to retain the wisdom of some of those lessons we learnt during our WFH days. So, while some of us yet wait for further roll-outs of the vaccination programme, wait for the green light (pun unintentional but strangely fitting) on safe international travel, and wait perhaps uneasy for when autumn comes round and inclement weather once more brings into question whether we’re truly free – let’s ride this wonderful vegan wave that has been rising in the consumer sphere in response to the coronavirus’ zoonotic origins, certainly, but let us also allow for and be tolerant of the reality of those who can’t surf beside us fully plant-based. Taken all together, with shared goals for the planet, we can still achieve what we have set out to do: heal the Earth, yes, but also heal ourselves at the same time, physically and mentally. Now, that’s an admirable aspiration, isn’t it?

NICOLE RALEIGH EDITOR

MARKETING MANAGER MARK SHARP DESIGN CLARICE LEIGH & JAMES HEATHCOTE MARKETING EXECUTIVE ELLIE RANGER WEB DESIGN ANT PAPA Produced by Just Natural Health, 210 Mauretania Road, Nursling Industrial Estate, Southampton, Hampshire, SO16 0YS Just Natural Health make a conscious effort to ensure accurate content at the time of publishing. The views expressed by advertisers do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the publisher.

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WEEKS OF PROMOTIONS see page 6

J U LY - S E PTE M BE R 2021

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54 Zero Waste: Where Are We Now

Packaging-free living takes a little thought, but the eco-joys of Grow Your Own and allotments never perish.

ON THE COVER

25 08 Fishing for

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Constructive Oceanic Compassion & Taking the Conspiracy out of Seafood Diving to the bottom of the backlash against eco-doc Seaspiracy, we provide some balanced guidance on the environmental and health impacts of fish consumption.

16 Plastic-Free July:

Reuse, Recycle, and Reconsider Post-pandemic plastic waste getting you down?

Here are some tips and tricks for taking action.

18 The Yellow-Brick

Road to Plant-Based Possibilities Diversity in biodiversity: making healthy, vegan living accessible to everyone.

21 6 Delicious Vegan Pantry Delights

A little guide to some crucial ingredients for any aspiring plant-based kitchen.

22 Rewilding Humans: Dietary Diversity & Rejoining the Planetary Ecosystem

Acceptance of minimal and sustainable meat consumption as one alternative environmental avenue.

25 Digestive Harmony: Gut Issues, the Vagus Nerve, and Living Clean

Coeliac awareness, the importance of the gut microbiome, and exploring the history of kefir.

32 Veganism, Tea, & Olympic Sports: A Chat with Unstoppable Team GB Athletes

JNHB caught up with Lisa Worthington and Lisa Gawthorne to discuss green-minded women in sport and how one trains during a pandemic.

42 Yoga for Children: Learning Compassion, Laughing Through Lion

Keep those kids calm in the face of climate woes and find Zen in Zebra pose.

44 Industry Insider: Healthfood Stores & a Summer of Hope

JNHB checked in with independent retailers throughout the country, asking how they survived multiple lockdowns and what a postCovid future might hold.

A Question of Houmous: a Tubless, Homemade History Out with the plastic tubs and in with a whole lot of tasty recipe experimentation this summer.

60 A Green Family

& Other (Equine) Animals Felix and Fido and Ned and… How to tend to companion animals in line with an awoken environmental consciousness.

66 Menstruation

& the Modern Working Woman: Understanding the Complex Power of the Female Though she be but little, she is fierce – pushing for “menstruality”, workplace awareness, and acceptance of lunarguided physicality that cannot be ignored.

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Fishing for Constructive Oceanic Compassion & Taking the Conspiracy out of Seafood “If oceans were a country, they would be the seventh largest economy in the world.”

UN Environment Programme ummer is the time for sun and laughter and sand. But humans have a weakness, a tendency to close their eyes and ears to realities too horrific to process, realities that are there, just beneath the surface of the inviting seas. Strength, however, is a ripping off of that self-tied blindfold and a striding into the depths of truth, whatever it might reveal. Though we’re on the cusp of a global awakening to the atrocities of the slaughterhouse on terra firma, it is an as yet painfully slow process to garner equal compassion for the diverse and fascinating life under the ocean’s waters, as well. Can a land animal empathise with a fish or a marine mammal, at all? We both need oxygen, but we bipeds are encompassed by gaseous air as opposed to those of fins and gills surrounded on all sides by liquid. When a fish is brought onto land it gasps; when a human is submerged in water they cannot breathe unaided.

Like two sides of the same coin, neither truly seeing the other, each is aware of the other’s existence; only, without the other, it is probably only humans who would die.

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And yet we abuse the oceans unforgivably. Last year, the Great British Beach Clean collected over 3 tonnes of litter from 459 clean-up sites, a large part of which was discarded PPE. Indeed, some 54% of us believe Covid-19 led to even more plastic pollution, what with approximately 30% of beaches having disposable face masks and gloves strewn over them and in general around 59% of people seeing an increase in waste. The majority of the remainder of the litter collected on shores was, as per usual, drinks litter. Surfers Against Sewage launched The Million Mile Clean earlier this year in order to tackle not just this beach detritus and the hindrance of pandemic restrictions in picking it up, but the rubbish discarded along rivers, in mountains, and of course in urban settings. A year-long campaign, it aims “to inspire, empower, and support 100,000 volunteers walking 10 miles whilst cleaning the places they love”. Meanwhile, the well-established Clean Beaches Week 2021 runs from the 1st through 6th July (with the Great British Beach Clean taking place between the 18th and 20th September).

Nonetheless, the problem isn’t just the eyesore of litter-dotted sand, nor the bother it causes beachgoers: the issue at stake is when the tide rolls in and takes that litter back out to sea. According to a study by the Pew Trusts, if we don’t change our ways, in the next two decades the amount of plastic thus entering the oceans will triple. An obvious statement, seemingly. Yet, the latest eco-documentary to hit small screens, Seaspiracy, claims plastic itself is not the central issue: fishing, and the consumers who buy and eat fish, is.

Given the penchant for a plate of seafood during the summer months – a habit no doubt appropriated from Continental sojourns – the film’s release date was timely, both seasonally and environmentally. So full of promise as it was, though, Reuters’ Rob Lyons recently wrote, “Netflix’s new antifishing film that’s being lauded by celebrities has got more holes in it than a trawler’s net”… No prizes for guessing Lyons’ reaction, then, to 27-year-old Ali Tabrizi’s breakout work of filmic journalism. Seaspiracy – dubbed ‘Conspira-sea’ by quite a few – has ruffled so many (gill) feathers because it was produced by vegan activist Kip Andersen (he of Cowspiracy fame and a link to whose vegan recipe service is proudly advertised on the Seaspiracy website).

Lyons, also the author of Panic on a Plate: How Society Developed an Eating Disorder, summarises what he deems Tabrizi’s speed through dolphin slaughter, whale hunting, and shark finning, with a side of human rights violations and a cocktail of interview snippets “taken out of context” and asks, is it (given the perhaps toomany-to-dismiss-as-a-few disgruntled voices) a load of vegan propaganda?

National Marine Week

The Wildlife Trust’s celebration of all things coastal and oceanic runs from the 25th July to 9th August this year. An ideal event to get involved in if you’ve youngsters to keep entertained this summer, try out citizen science and study the sand and rocks and paddling pools for creatures shy at the best of times, and later report your findings online (we are at the tail end of a pandemic, after all). That said, there are still some socially distanced in-person beachside events taking place in Alderney, Ulster, and the North West.

To be fair, Seaspiracy does begin with the essence of a thriller: “It is dangerous for you to make this documentary” one faceless individual tells Tabrizi; “If you’re scared of dying, go home”, warns another. But, of course, Tabrizi – fascinated by marine mammals ever since a child, camera in hand while he frolics on a sandy beach; super-fan of the likes of Jacques Cousteau, Sir Attenborough, and Dr Sylvia Earle – pays no heed. Informing viewers that up to 80% of all life on Earth dwells underwater, the filmmaker dives into his documentary through the catalyst of the corpse of a beached whale, felled by plastic: another benign giant gone, one more fertiliser of oceanic phytoplankton down. A sizeable loss when that phytoplankton filters four times the amount of carbon as the Amazon rainforest and produces 85% of breathable oxygen. Tabrizi fatalistically declares, “if the ocean dies, so do we”.

And so we hear how Seaspiracy’s director became part of the “plastic police”, going on endless beach cleans and shunning the material in his day-to-day life, but that it was a journey which ultimately led back to the plight of living whales, and also dolphins. Japan renewing its whaling in the Antarctic in 2019 after a ban of over 30 years, Tabrizi and his partner, Lucy jet to a bay in Taiji infamous for capture and slaughter not of whales, but of dolphins. A “tradition” dating back to the 17th century which founder of Dolphin Project, Ric O’ Barry is on camera as saying continues thanks to the “government itself [being] against conservationists”, the taste of conspiracy is already as thick in the air as the stench of fish and the footage of

the Tabrizis being pulled over by police after arrival is extraneous. However, what is not a dramatic veneer, what is very much horribly real are the bloody waters of dolphin culling. Lucy reads aloud governmental data recorded between 2000 and 2015 stating that for every one dolphin captured for marine park benefit (mainly in China, after a ban in the West, with a value of around $10,000 [c. £7,088] per creature), 12 are killed. Why? As Tamara Arenovich of the conservation society Sea Shepherd, founded in 1977, puts it: “pest control”. That is to say, dolphins are competitors with fishermen and their livelihoods – a fact Harvard talkgiving vegan activist Earthling Ed (or Ed Winters) keenly reiterated in his debunking of the widespread fishing industry debunking of Seapsiracy, just one of many such factually grounded refutations of the refutations.

In 2019, the Washington Post reported on Taiji’s annual dolphin hunt, but the paper mentioned that “11 Risso’s dolphins were cut up for meat”. It is a fact Tabrizi doesn’t share in his documentary, focusing on the bluefin tuna industry in the port of Kii-katsuura instead, in reference to Japan’s (and the world’s) consumption.

For every 8 tuna caught, some 45 dolphins can be culled at the same time. However, dolphin meat itself is apparently worth $500 [c. £354] per animal. Given that “Taiji’s fishermen are allowed to catch 1,749 dolphins or small whales from nine species during the six-month hunting season”, the practice is no small concern.

The bluefin tuna the Tabrizis come across can be worth $3.1 million [c. £2.2 million] each, making the industry worth around $42 billion [c. £30 billion] annually. With numbers of the species around 3% of what they were mere decades ago, viewers start to understand where Tabrizi is going. justnaturalhealth.co.uk | Just Natural Health & Beauty

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Lyons exclaims that even “dolphinsafe tuna” is dismissed as clever labelling, blackening the name of Earth Island Institute’s owner, Mark J. Palmer, in the process of revealing graphic footage of dolphin bodies tossed nonchalantly back into the ocean by fishermen uninterested in the bycatch that occurred in the name of their haul for “dolphin-safe” cans.

As for those ultimate, apex predators of the watery depths, the sharks – in October last year, The New York Times reported that companies racing to the Covid-19 vaccine finish line had started using squalene, sourced from shark livers. Just Natural Health & Beauty has written on the use of squalene in facial care products (such as moisturizers and sunscreen) in the past, how there are plant sources, but shark liver squalene is easier to collect. In the instance of the NYT article, scientists were looking into the “immunity-boosting powers” (or adjuvant qualities) of the shark liver oil compound. When the campaign group Shark Allies discovered such research was taking place, they were duly appalled. With an estimated 2,500 to 3,000 sharks needed for one metric tonne of squalene, if mainstreamed as an ingredient in the vaccine over half a million additional sharks would have been culled. As the shark situation stands in Seaspiracy, the bodies of sharks de-finned are seen left to roll along the seabed.

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According to Paul de Gelder, an ex-military shark activist who lost both a leg and a hand to a bull shark attack, shark finning is a multibillion-dollar industry with a distinct criminal over- and undertone. In China, a bowl of shark fin soup can cost upwards of $100 [c. £70]. Cue shots of the Tabrizis having insistent knives gesticulated at them to stop filming, being threatened with blunt force violence if they don’t put their cameras away while in Hong Kong, aka “Shark Fin City”. De Gelder urges that “people should be afraid of not having sharks in the ocean”, their diminishing numbers purportedly hastening the destruction of the aquatic food chain as smaller species (such as bristlemouths, possibly “the most abundant vertebrate species on Earth” and unprofitable for fishermen) overpopulate and die out from lack of resources, their early mortality reducing the churning of sea waters and thereby elevating the temperature of the water. Hello, swamp seas. Indeed, populations of sharks and also stingrays are now so low that it might be too late to save them even if drastic conservation measures are put in place immediately. With sharks killing circa 10 people per year and humans killing up to 30,000 sharks in one single hour (mainly as bycatch, equating to around 50 million sharks a year), the scales are definitely out of balance.

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To return to the whales, though, as Lex Rigby wrote for Vegan Life last year, the majestically beautiful creatures have undergone “persecution” since even the 16th century, “when a British vessel sailed to the coast of Labrador to hunt whales in the Biscay Bay”. Inspired

by Rod Coronado and David Howitt’s work in Iceland (bringing whaling to a halt in the country for some 16 years), Rigby started fundraising in the sector, before joining whale-defense charity Sea Shepherd (the organization the Tabrizis are seen joining off the coast of West Africa). Although there was a “moratorium on commercial whaling” in 1986 – similar to proposals today for a pause on intensive fishing practices, in order to let numbers “recover” – nonetheless, whaling persists to this very day. Norway, for instance, released its hunt quota for 2021 back in March (over 1,200 minke whales, up from 500 in 2020) and anyone who watches Seaspiracy’s coverage of the whale slaughter (what this writer would propose is better termed a massacre) in the Faroe Islands will certainly never look at life the same way again (there’s a reason Netflix has given it a certificate rating of 15).

But very few people on the planet are eating whales and it is rightly abhorred by many, despite whaler Jens Mortan Rasmussen’s weighing up in preference the taking of one whale life instead of that of 2,000 chickens. What is Tabrizi’s purpose, then, in including coverage of such?

It goes without saying that Tabrizi isn’t the only young and fervent eco-activist out there. Setting aside Greta Thunberg – who won’t be attending the climate conference COP26 in Glasgow this year out of principle over Covid vaccine availability – Katie Hill, of My Green Pod, recently reported on the “world’s first underwater climate strike”. Undertaken as part of the Fridays for Futures strikes by Mauritian scientist and climate activist, Shaama Sandoovea in “the heart of the Indian Ocean” (i.e.

Saya de Malha Bank, off the coast of the Seychelles, an area known for its carbonabsorbing and fish-breeding ground seagrass meadows). The 24-year-old held a placard that read “Youth Strike for Climate”, as well as an alternate placard with the words “We Demand Climate Justice” in Mauritian Creole (“Nou Reklam Lazistis Klimatik”). Sandoovea is currently in the region with Greenpeace, participating in a research capacity with their Arctic Sunrise project. Calling for a “Global Ocean Treaty”, Greenpeace has made clear that at least 30% of our seas must be protected by 2030 in order to arrest imminent and irreversible ecological catastrophe.

Approximately 28% of the ocean would need to be protected under conservation status in order to facilitate meaningful repopulation of fish species. Such a practice is not merely theoretical, but has been proven to be effective in California, another study this year finding a 225% increase in spiny lobster numbers after 35% of the fishing grounds for the species had been set aside as untouchable for merely six years. Currently, only 7% of the ocean is protected and only 3% strictly so. Similar to endeavours to conserve land areas in the interests of biodiversity, by designating areas of the marine environment as nonfishing, not only will species be given a chance to recover and positively thrive, but through banning mining and drilling in those areas, as well, could help to sequester a considerable amount of CO2, also.

What comes across clearly is that to destroy the ocean is quite simply to accelerate our own end. In addition to the crucial role of phytoplankton, marine plants can store up to 20 times the amount of carbon as terrestrial forests in each acre.

Coral reefs also subsist on waste from fish, recycling their eliminations, while the bodies of fish naturally fall to the ocean floor when they die and sequester carbon.

Mangroves even play a role in protecting humans from storms and tsunamis, but are being wiped out for shrimp farming.

Everything was created to exist in harmony, a particular balance of necessity and respect. If just 1% of this ecosystem is destroyed, the equivalent of the emissions of “97 million cars” will be released into the atmosphere.

So, when the BBC reported at the start of the year that Greenpeace – perhaps the most globally recognised name amid the fleet of sea-buoyant activist groups in existence – had been dropping “huge boulders” into the sea just off the Brighton coast in order to deter trawler fishing, one becomes ever more aware that when Seaspiracy reports that trawlers are razing the underwater landscape to extinction, it is no mere nightmare scenario. This is aquatic deforestation on an almost unestimable scale, with trawler nets able to contain a cathedral-size catch.

Whereas 25 million acres of land are deforested annually, we are told, 3.9 billion acres of sea floor are obliterated. The New York Times reported earlier this year on a study undertaken by a team of 26 biologists, climate scientists, and economists. Headed

by Enric Sala, director of the National Geographic ‘Pristine Seas’ project, and published in the journal Nature, the study had found that around 1.9 million square miles of seabed is trawled annually, releasing stored carbon which would normally remain in place for “tens of thousands of years”. As rosetinted and protected as we would like our consumer habits to be, it is vital to be aware that such a practice exists and it is crucial that we ensure such a method of industrial fishing stops immediately, particularly when we learn that an astounding 4.5 million commercial fishing vessels are currently at sea. Cyrill Gutsch, founder of Parley for the Oceans, terms it “wildlife poaching on a massive scale” and it is, with just under 3 trillion fish killed each year (roughly “5 million each minute”).

Tabrizi has his heroine, Dr Earle (now vegan) tell the camera that by the end of the 21st century “there won’t be fish to catch” and, certainly, what shocked most viewers was the documentary’s statement that we “will run out of fish by 2048”. Gleaned from a 2006 study – which was later dismissed by its own author as erroneous and the information corrected by a group of scientists in 2009, who by contrast evidenced very few downward-trending fish stocks – 15 years later, due to monitoring and other measures, fish populations are apparently steadily increasing. This, according to Sustainable Fisheries. Similarly, they say, bycatch does not equate to 40%, but 10%. The seemingly erroneous 40% is said to come from inflated figures due to a 2009 study which conflated “unmanaged catch” figures with “bycatch” figures to form its estimate. Nonetheless, bycatch is crucially measured in order to not just keep other sea creatures as safe as possible, but also estimate the impact even sustainable fishing is having on the oceanic ecosystem at large in order to maintain its place as another level to that aquatic ecosystem. Yet, the founder of Sea Shepherd, Captain Paul Watson tells Tabrizi sustainable fishing is simply “a feel-good business”. justnaturalhealth.co.uk | Just Natural Health & Beauty

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The conspiracy doesn’t seem to lie simply on the filmmaker’s end, though. Plant Based News reported at the time that “leaked documents” from within the fishing industry, within NFI, had exposed a retaliative plan against what they deemed a “dishonest attack”. Although Seaspiracy has been widely criticised for its reporting style (and excessive airmiles) and usage of now somewhat historic facts, Sustainable Fisheries’ response to the docu-film, noting its production link to not only previous eco-minded coverage by Cowspiracy, but also What the Health, does admit the “passion for the ocean” which Tabrizi clearly possesses. Yet, when it is delivered alongside apparent misinformation (something this world definitely doesn’t need more of), empathy diminishes. As Lyons writes, “alarmist statements and outlandish claims simply undermine Tabrizi's case”. Of course, the MSC (Marine Stewardship Council) was not Seaspiracy’s biggest fan. In response to the claims against it therein, although it did not deign to be interviewed on camera by Tabrizi, it later released a statement setting out the “rigorous requirements” fisheries must meet, noting how its trademark blue tick was denied fisheries before they were up to their standards, and how its role on environmental non-profit organizations had recently denied certification to the “Australian eastern zone orange roughy fishery” – statements which in themselves will sway few minds already decided.

Meanwhile, the claim that 250,000 sea turtles are killed as inadvertent bycatch each year dates back to the turn of this century. Sustainable Fisheries clarified that the figure is closer to 4,600 (though it goes without saying that this is still too many to be acceptable). Indeed, the authors of the original 2000 study that Tabrizi used have noted more recently a 94% decrease in sea turtle deaths by cause of fishing, thanks to the subsequent introduction of TEDs (Turtle Excluder Devices). Mention of sea turtles in conjunction with ocean health brings immediately to mind, of course, the infamous and virally shared video of the poor creature with a plastic straw up its nose. Ever since, single-use plastic straws have been not just rightly vilified, but actually banned from being provided by hospitality establishments except on medical grounds in England as of October 2020. The law included for cotton buds, also, with a total ban on drinks stirrers. A cause for celebration, one would think, but there is actually an opposing camp to the plastic straw ban in existence, lamenting the easy biodegradability of paper straws – a stance which beggars belief, given the transience of an ease of sip of drink in comparison to the life of an animal.

Any ban comes into being through necessity: each year, Ocean Conservancy International runs its Coastal Cleanup and of the top ten items found, plastic straws are always one. Seabirds, especially, are at risk from these items, Odyssey finding that each year over one million either choke on straws or starve to death, thinking the plastic in their bellies is food. Nonetheless, Tabrizi focusses on bycatch, has on record Professor Callum Roberts noting that in a 12

sustainable Icelandic fishery in one month alone there were 5,000 seabirds killed inadvertently as bycatch.

Tabrizi dubs the anti-plastic straw movement a white wash, states that plastic straws equate only to 0.03% of plastic entering the ocean.

Rather, it is fishing gear which is the killer. The UN Environment Programme believes “abandoned, lost or otherwise discarded fishing gear [ALDFG] makes up less than 10 percent of global marine litter by volume, with land-based sources being the predominant cause of marine debris in coastal areas”. With the GPGP (Great Pacific Garbage Patch) some 1.6 million square kilometres in size, and the amount of ALDFG being 333 times more than plastic straws, the size of the danger to marine life is almost unfathomable.

Ghost fishing is all too real an issue. As Just Natural Health & Beauty has reported before, fishing nets account for nearly half of the 12 million tonnes of oceanic plastic pollution calculated to be floating in the seas by Friends of the Earth.

These nets, this ghost gear, never ceases the occupation it was created to do, undying death traps of the aquatic environment. The subtlety in what precise statistics represent, however, is important.

Setting aside the astoundingly confrontational defensive stance taken by Dianna Cohen, CEO of Plastic Pollution Coalition, in reaction to the suggestion to “eliminate fish” from our diets to save the ocean from fishing detritus – although 46% of plastic in the GPGP (Great Pacific Garbage Patch) is indeed from fishing nets, as Tabrizi states, it is by weight that it is so, not by number.

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A 2018 study noted that megaplastics (pieces of plastic larger than 50cm, the category into which fishing nets fall) represents under 0.0002% of the many trillions of pieces of plastic in the GPGP; that is to say, the microplastics.

The buoys attached to the nets are what keep them from sinking with what is suspected to be a vast quantity of other plastic, but microplastics – first detected in open waters back in the 1970s – occur when larger plastic is weathered by photodegradation, oxidation, hydrolytic degradation, and machinal degradation. It has been estimated that there are up to 51 trillion microplastic particles in the ocean (or 500 times the number of stars in the Milky Way, according to Tabrizi), but if that weren’t horrific enough a thought, nanoparticles (weathered and degraded microplastics) are even worse, and if you’re eating fish, you’re most definitely eating them.

In fact, as The Times reported at the start of the year, in Britain only North East Atlantic mackerel, West of Scotland nephrops (scampi), and North Sea haddock are fished sustainably: the rest of the species in our waters are overfished. To put it another way, just 36% of 104 stocks of fish are doing well. So, what should we really try to avoid eating when it comes to seafood? No-nos include: North Sea Cod European Eel Yellow Gunard Rock Salmon (aka “spiny dogfish”) Anchovies originating from Chile Sea Bass from the southern Bay of Biscay

Sustainable choices, meanwhile, we are told, should adhere to the “Fish local” mentality, buying as far as possible only those species caught or farmed in British waters. This includes: Rope-grown Mussels Haddock

Fishy Nutrition & Cellular Shellfish What about the health impacts of consuming or not consuming fish, then? Tabrizi includes a few words from Whole Foods Plant Based nutritionist gods at the end of Seaspiracy, including Dr Michael Gregor, author of How Not To Die, explaining that to cease consuming seafood is to miss out on only “toxins and heavy metals”, how there is no such thing as “clean fish”, only “dirty fish and dirtier fish”. Indeed, with species such as tilapia long thought to be worse for us “than bacon or doughnuts”, containing as they do more Omega-6s than Omega-3s (let alone any metallic essences), is it wise to keep selecting watersourced animal products for our supper, particularly when the bioaccumulation of mercury within a fillet very much outweighs the benefit of the heart-healthy oils?

Sticking with the tilapia example, “tilapia” is actually the name given to more than 100 farmed and wildcaught species of fish in over 80 nations, according to Seafood Health Facts. When sourced from farms in China, Seafood Watch has recorded tainting by “illegal antibiotics and antimicrobials”, due to the fish being “fed faeces from livestock animals”. Horrific, and very much a serious consideration for those in the US, especially, when in 2017 the FOA recorded 73% of tilapia had been imported from China. Yet, the 2020-2025 USDA dietary guidelines promote the consumption of fish twice a week and tilapia is an affordable option for many households, still offering 100mg of Omega-3s per 85g serving, as well as 66% of the RDA of vitamin B12, 84% RDA of selenium, 16% RDA of niacin (or vitamin B3), and 14% of the RDA of phosphorous. To this end, the most sustainable sources that side of the Atlantic are blue tilapia (or Izumidai) from Peru and Ecuador. For assurance of eco-credentials, shoppers are told to look for the ASC (Aquaculture Stewardship Council, you might have seen this label in larger stores in the UK) and BAP (Best Aquaculture Practices) labels. But, having watched Seaspiracy, what are viewers to think now?

Hake Coley Cod from Iceland Farmed Oysters

Setting aside the ethical concerns of the sentience of fish, however, is not as easy as it at first appears. According to Jonathan Balcombe, author of What a Fish Knows, they’re not only thinking and feeling creatures, but “probably invented all the familiar senses to us” (what with their “excellent vision, hearing, smell, taste” and even pain). Why not, then, and as many vegans will happily tell you, eat the food the fish themselves subsist on? We’re talking about algae, of course.

Algae cells, in fact, are “pure omega”, with no cholesterol, no PCBs, no metals or antibiotics. Given the offering of this “simple solution” in its final minutes, Seaspiracy has as a result been accused of being mere “vegan propaganda”.

Yet, veganism is at its zenith and alternatives to fish are speeding into the chilled and freezer cabinets of stores worldwide, including cell ag creations. Vegconomist recently reported that Prime Roots have used koji to develop their vegan lobster ravioli, while New Wave Foods has brought out vegan shrimp for hospitality industry kitchens, “made from seaweed and plant protein”, provided to trade first due to 80% of shrimp consumption happening just in that sector. Next year, they plan to release lobster, scallops, and crab. Meanwhile, Cultured Decadence, a US cell-cultured seafood company, was given $1.6 million [c. £1.15 million] in funding (including the financial support of the Wisconsin State government, the first time any cell-cultured company has received such) for its “cell-cultured lobster meat”. With a focus on shellfish and – you guessed it – lobster in particular, Cultured Decadence will take cells from living shellfish to “make real meat without the shell or organs”. It is claimed the resultant product will be of superior nutritional quality to the original. justnaturalhealth.co.uk | Just Natural Health & Beauty

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George Monbiot – journalist, author, environmentalist, and all-round knowledgeable guy – tells Tabrizi “even if we didn’t put a drop of plastic in the ocean [anymore], we would still be ripping the oceans apart because of fishing” and says it is “worse than oil spills”, that the anti-plastic campaign and the anti-fossil fuels movement “distract” from the ecodanger that is fishing. What, then, of farm fishing? On the subject of aquaculture, Sustainable Fisheries has noted how Tabrizi (graphically) focussed only on open net pen salmon farms, on the pollution and infestations there within, and included Monbiot’s terming of shrimp farming as “blood shrimp”, equivalent to the slavery involved in the diamond industry.

Interestingly, Tabrizi also stated that farmed fish are fed on meal made from other fish and their oils – but this is not necessarily so anymore. Yes, 20 years back, wild fish stocks were indeed going into food for farmed fish to gobble up, but scientists have recently enthusiastically recorded a shift…

To soya. Not so great for concerns over monoculture, then.

Aquaculture is responsible for in excess of 50% of global seafood consumption. A paper published only last year highlighted the benefits that aquaculture and mariculture offer for “sustainably feeding a growing population”, as well as providing jobs for some 20.5 million people, including many women. Furthermore, as Just Natural Health & Beauty has reported before, there is a case for farming bivalves, such as mussels and oysters, as not only are they possibly “the least-impactful food on the planet”, but they help the environment too. Again, this interconnection of entities, symbiotically connected by that life-giving substance, water.

National Geographic defines “sustainable fishing” as the means by which to ensure “there will be populations of ocean and freshwater wildlife for the future”, in the main for food, “an important source of protein and healthy fat” relied upon by people for “thousands of years” – when industrial and illegal fishing were not practiced. However, some 170 billion pounds of fish are now taken from waters annually. So, who are the worst offenders?

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According to the UN’s FOA, in ascending order the countries who catch the most fish (that is, excluding any aquaculture) are India, the US, Indonesia, Peru, and China.

Just as cod stocks were depleted in Canada in the 1990s (so too Chilean sea bass), so bluefin tuna was fished to endangerment, its population thought to be around 21% of its 1970s numbers. Methods employed include purse seining (herding nets with a drawstring to capture rounded up fish) and longlining (a literal fishing line up to 62 miles long with “thousands of bolted hooks” on smaller lines hanging from off its stretch) – both of which can, for want of a better expression, reel in many hundreds of fish in one go. Needless to say, these are not sustainable fishing methods, no matter the reproductive speeds of species caught: this is overfishing and both purse seining and longlining result in bycatch. And just as you’ve heard a lot about factory farming and terrestrial livestock reared industrially, without any care for the animals’ welfare, so there exist factory ships, too.

Designed to catch and store unfathomable quantities of fish, factory ships are on the water for a long time, filleting and freezing the fish caught immediately.

Literally hundreds of tonnes of cod can be “processed” in just one hour on such a ship.

By contrast, indigenous cultures can provide a lesson in sustainability: the Tagbanua people in the Philippines fish seasonally, taking specific species at specific times of year, and even then take only what their community needs; the same goes for the South Pacific’s traditional Polynesian peoples. Spearfishing, in particular, has been appropriated by those fishermen worldwide who believe in its one-fish-ata-time sustainability ethic, the same thinking which saw rodand-reel fishing quite sufficient for centuries. Their methods have previously been exampled by a 2007 study seeking a way to protect Irrawaddy dolphins from getting caught up in commercial nets and traps. The key, it seems, is quantity.

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Global Fishing Watch recently took an in-depth look at the Liberian situation when it comes both to sustainable fishing and gender equality, interviewing Emma Metieh-Glassco, Director General of Liberia’s National Fisheries & Aquaculture Authority.

Understanding that “fishing, fish processing, and fish selling are all part of life for many women” in West Africa, knowing that some 6.7 million people are dependent upon fish as a resource – to realise that foreign fishermen are coming into the waters on commercial vessels and denuding the fish stock…

It goes directly against the UN’s SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals), namely Numbers 1 (“No Poverty”), 2 (“Zero Hunger”), 5 (“Gender Equality”), 8 (“Decent Work and Growth”), and 14 (“Life Below Water”). As National Geographic points out, most of the “high seas” are unregulated, international waters.

There do exist Regional Fisheries Management Organisations (RFMOs), bringing together “nations that share economic interests in a particular area”, but their focus is more on reducing bycatch than the depletion of fish populations, given the economic drive behind industrial fishing practices.

Nonetheless, National Geographic insists “with technology and fisheries management, most fisheries can be made sustainable”.

Land Fish: Aquatic Farms of the Future The BBC reported in April that salmon farms were heading in-land. The brainchild of Johan Andreassen, he has had built chilled indoor tanks for approximately 5 million Atlantic salmon, on a 160-acre lot 40 miles southwest of Miami, Florida.

Salmon being used to a cold climate (such as Scotland or Andreassen’s native Norway), Bluehouse’s tanks are in ginormous insulated air-conditioned units in order to keep the mercury from rising. It is essentially a fish farm on dry land, with artificial currents for the salmon to swim against. Otherwise known as RAS (Recirculating Aquaculture Systems), salinity and water pH levels are monitored, as well as lighting cycles, waste removal, and oxygen levels. A closed-loop system, there is said to be no risk of the diseases and parasites seen in sea-based fish farming, reducing the need for antibiotics and pesticides.

Adreassen, CEO of Atlantic Sapphire, aims to produce about 9,500 metric tonnes of fish annually to start with, and increase output to 222,000 tonnes within the next decade. This would provide for 41% of current US consumer levels (1 billion meals). Already, the fillets sell for $12/kg [c. £8.50/kg].

Such indoor, land-based aquaculture is taking root in Europe and Asia, also, with approximately 40 others in existence.

Bluehouse was designed by the Israeli firm, AquaMaof, and is estimated to end up costing $2 billion in total [c. £1.42 billion]. Utilising the two aquifers Florida sits on (fresh water at the surface, salt water lower down), Bluehouse’s location benefits the salmon through both the early days of their lives as smolts (when they require fresh water) and when fully grown (when they need salt water). It has caused controversy, however, with plans to “inject what waste water it does produce down to an empty layer in the rock even further below”.

Apparently, this will be “minimal”.

The project saw a hiccup last summer, when compromised water quality dictated an early “emergency harvest” of 20,000 fish before they had reached 20 months old, and only in March this year there were further fish deaths due to a design fault. PETA has voiced its condemnation of Bluehouse as just another “pit of filth”, speaking out against plans for a similar unit in Arizona. The species of fish to be farmed there would be barramundi.

Meanwhile, some have expressed concern over energy use and CO2 emissions in the long-term.

An ingenious plan? Or the latest costly way to deny the state of affairs, to refuse to accept that commercial fishing and farming fish, in short meddling with and denuding aquatic environments is not sustainable? Time will tell.

In the plant-based sector, Vegconomist reported on responses to Seaspiracy, including Will McCallum, head of oceans at Greenpeace UK, who said shifting to a vegan lifestyle simply isn’t enough to arrest further destruction of the planet, terrestrially or aquatically. Furthermore, he noted that “veganism ignores the billions of people that depend on the oceans for survival”. One climate activist philanthropist, Wendy Schmidt, part of Philanthropic Ocean Research Vessel Operator, certainly doesn’t seem to see the need for a separation of Man from the seas, saying of the ocean, “It’s our pantry, it’s our pharmacy, and it’s our playground”. Meanwhile, Shiv Misra, co-founder of Roots & Hoots, believes a zero waste lifestyle “must be the only way forward”, that logic dictates there is no other option, and Keya Lamba, co-founder of Earth Warriors – a “Harvardreviewed international Early Years Environmental Curriculum provider” which “teaches young children about sustainability and climate change” – disagrees with Tabrizi on several points, but mainly that the oceans should become untouched at all. Rather, Lamba believes “children are the future” for “changing the tide” of how we interact with the seas.

With Sustainable Fisheries concluding their riposte to Seaspiracy with their own definition of sustainable fishing (that it is “catching the right amount of fish, each year, in perpetuity”), their argument proposes an ecosystem of which Man is a part, rather than separate. A report released only this year by FAO (the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization) has made clear “the importance of seafood for survival is equivalent to the entire land mass of Spain, without even quantifying the human carrying capacity (persons fed per unit land area) – it is undeniable that such black and white proposals are naïve at best.

As Lyons comments, “Tabrizi gives us a one-sided view of the problems”.

However, this ignores the poignant inclusion of the Ebola outbreak along the African coast, due to having to resort to bush meat instead of fishing to put food on the table for many – zoonotically caused epidemics and worse alluded to and a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it inclusion of a bemasked Tabrizi in Asia shot a nod to the current pandemic.

Given the diversity of life, our biodiversity, there is no panacea, no one-size-fits-all solution. Rather, it is up to each individual – to the best of their moral comprehension and consideration and financial abilities – to live as mindfully as possible. For one person, that might be a 100% ethical vegan lifestyle; for another, it could mean prioritising organic, biodynamic, and regeneratively farmed meat once a week and living whole foods plant-based the rest of the time. Another person might love the proliferation of vegan alternatives to traditional animal products and swap those in to satisfy their cravings for the most part, while yet another might not be able to afford such and cannot but be swayed by the inexpensive cuts and fillets in the chilled aisles in order to meet their family’s nutritional needs.

Education, the means to learn what can be done and how, is crucial. Aside from the animals themselves, it is also the last demographic that benefits from endeavours to cease factory farming and industrial fishing practices: the more people who buy the “kinder” cuts, who fund the soilhealing farming practices and slow food movement mentality, who put their money into rebuilding the human animal’s level of the food chain so that it is working in sync with the environment and non-human animals on the other levels – not an apex predator lording over lesser species, to use and abuse however we like, but a conductor of a fragile symphony of life processes, floral and faunal, so that this wonderful, achingly beautiful planet of ours stands a chance at surviving.

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Plastic-Free

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Reuse, Recycle, and Reconsider idding the world of excess plastic starts on a scale small and local. As Vegan Life reported early last year, the UK government has revealed that “one million birds and over 100,000 sea mammals die from eating and getting tangled in plastic waste every year”.

Furthermore, some “12 million tonnes of plastic end up in the sea annually, weighing the same as around 60,000 fully-grown blue whales”. But while a considerably larger portion of society now carries a reusable coffee cup and/or stainless-steel water bottle wherever they go (which, to be fair, wasn’t particularly far during the pandemic), it’s still not enough. Supermarket products are wrapped in veritable reams of plastic (loose fruit and veg often more expensive than pre-packed), convenience food eating trails a long line of tiny on-the-go versions of condiments in addition to the packaging, and there was so much waste as a result of the popularity of takeaways and coffee-to-go during the multiple lockdowns (as much as a lifeline for cafés and restaurants as that was) that it seemed to almost reverse what good had previously been done in plastic reduction. We might very well have steel and bamboo alternatives to plastic drinking straws these days, but we need now to be sipping from a glass of sustainable reality: it might be somewhat slower living, but at least it enables future living for those who come after us.

Given that under 1 in 400 takeaway cups are recycled (with some 2.5 billion simply thrown in the bin each year), obviously reusable coffee cups are brilliant as a baby step to ameliorating the situation. Nonetheless, convenience foods are not only a major contributor to plastic pollution, but are also loaded with excess sugar and salt.

Instead, preparing meals from scratch, food prepping for multiple meals ahead of time, is a far more sensible option for oneself and the planet.

The Times reported in April that paddleboarding is to be offered on the NHS in partnership with the Canal and River Trust in Nottinghamshire to “boost wellbeing as part of a ‘social-prescribing’ project”: how beneficial will that be if those waterways are clogged with other, plastic detritus, human-originated?

Happily, an overdue tax on plastic has begun to be implemented, with 90% of us supporting the proposal for a “phase-out of non-essential singleuse plastic” as soon as 2025. And, although July is the month for vehemently shaking one’s head and saying “No!” to plastic, September 20th through 26th is the week to roll up your sleeves and put your recycling hat on.

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Eco Lingo: Buzzwords for Green Thinkers in 2021

There’s no doubt about it, to be environmentally aware, overtly eco-conscious and active in saving this third planet of ours is not simply the only right thing to do, but it’s now deemed pretty damn cool as well. However, with the notion of “cool” comes the attendant language and, unfortunately, terminology can quickly become no more than empty buzzwords, thrown into a conversation with friends, typed without thought but never without a hashtag on social media, yet in most of these cases with no tangible substance to their being carried out in private after the fact.

Here are just some of the serially referenced, seriously sustainable buzzwords for 2021: ask yourself, is there a depth of truth to your use of these terms? If challenged, could you even define them?

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Biodegradable Bioplastics Carbon Footprint Carbon Neutral Carbon Offsets Climate Change Climate Emergency Compostable Environmentally Friendly Energy-Efficient Green Greenhouse Effect Greenwashing Organic Pollution Recyclable Renewable Energy Reusable Sustainable Upcycling Zero Waste

As One Green Planet recently reported, though, avoiding plastic isn’t as simple as it at first sounds. Keeping clean has been one area infiltrated by the stuff, though hope is on the horizon with the burgeoning shampoo and body bar movement, bathrooms globally either whipping out some dishes for the tub or treading (carbon footprint) lightly to the nearest zero waste independent health store for a refill in kept containers. Dental hygiene, also, is seeing a return of natural tooth powders and toothbrushes made from biodegradable materials, such as bamboo. Nonetheless, the very technology we use, that has kept us sane and functioning during the lengthy WFH period of pandemic existence – from laptops to smartphones – contain plastics. When you realise that less than 10% of plastic is recycled, and that plastic can take up to a millennium to decompose, the situation is really quite dire.

However, although we might think something is recyclable, more often than not it isn’t, or it doesn’t suit the recycling centre of our local council.

For instance, disposable coffee cups and pizza boxes (who hasn’t seen the swathes of delivery motorbikes with stacks of one of the nation’s favourite

fast foods zipping through the neighbourhood?) are not recyclable and will contaminate what is recyclable and thereby void the ability to recycle any of it. Worse, though, are those who fail to clean items intended for recycling: anything to be recycled that has had food or liquid in it must absolutely be cleaned before it goes in the recycling bin. Otherwise, everything simply gets sent either to the landfill or to the ocean.

Nevertheless, recycling isn’t a miracle cure for the planet. Rather than producing more plastics that can be recycled, a better option is to buy non-plastic entirely. An astonishing amount of plastic waste is shipped to third world countries, like Indonesia and Vietnam, countries already overflowing with plastic, and when they can’t handle any further plastic, they dump it into the ocean. Out of sight, out of mind? Wrong: as covered in our article on Seaspiracy (see p.8), that plastic goes on to enact a brutal end for innocent sea creatures. Not only that, though, but the nanoplastics (from the microplastics from the macroplastics) are coming back to pollute us in turn in the very air we breathe, so small and easily widespread are they.

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What, then, can be done?

Here are just a few simple suggestions:

The Yellow-Brick Road to Plant-Based Possibilities he term “living mindfully” is thrown around a lot. Nonetheless, at a time when to start with all of us experienced what it means to have no control over a situation (i.e. the pandemic), to exert control, to exhibit what little power we do have in enacting change for the good of the planet seems a painfully obvious action or call to action.

And food activism, conscious consumption, is as simple as it gets when it comes to helping Earth and all its creatures. To lay down one’s fork, say no to the bacon (and who else gets queasy at the thought, as The Guardian reported back in 2019, that those pigs’ organs will be able to be successfully transplanted into humans by next year?), is a small gesture, but the more people who do it, then the further afield the aftereffects of that ripple motion of repulsion will be felt and endure.

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Think Reusable

Globally, humans power through 1 million plastic bottles each and every minute.

Stop now. Not only does a stainless-steel water bottle, an organic cotton tote bag, or reusable travel cup reduce the need for a single-use plastic vessel, but in the long-run you’ll save money as well.

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Say No to & Minimise Plastic

If what you need to buy can’t be bought without plastic packaging, if zero waste isn’t yet a possibility for you (see our article, “Zero Waste: Where Are We Now?”, p.54), (a) try to buy a product that has recyclable plastic packaging or (b) buy in bulk. If, as the BBC reported back in March, Waitrose & Partners can be inspired by a 10-year old eco-activist and henceforth refuse to sell children’s magazines with disposable plastic toys, you can enact this change.

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Get Political

Sign petitions, write to your local representatives, and support those candidates who demonstrate commitment to implementing environmentally beneficial principles.

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While companies debate over the correct terminology of laudable laboratory-based meat production (Vegconomist reporting that “cellcultured” has become the term for US lab-grown animal flesh), and while the European Union recently invested 2.7 million euros into the Spanish “Meat4All” project, on the more distinctly plant-based end of the spectrum, a new burger from the Netherlands has been made from seaweed. The Dutch Weed Burger (no, not that kind of weed) provides a sustainable alternative protein source, being fast-growing and needing no fertilisers or fresh water. Founded by Mark Kulsom and Lisette Kreischer (author of Man Eat Plant, a guide to vegan food for men, and Dog Eat Plant – do we need explain the latter?), the Dutch Weed Burger contains three different types of seaweed: kombu (for the patty), sea lettuce (for the sauce), and chlorella (for the bun).

Setting aside how the shunning of a steak and opting for seaweed can work wonders for one’s health – and even Mindy Kaling has been persuaded by superstar friend, Natalie Portman, to be a little more of a vegan dab-hand in the kitchen lately – plant-based eating as a form of food activism isn’t just about the climate impact the meal we put before ourselves and our loved ones has; nor is it about weight loss and general wellbeing. It is about provenance in a multitude of ways, as well.

Where did the ingredients come from?

How were they produced? Who benefitted from and who, if anyone, suffered injustice in progression from farm to plate? In short, what economic and social impact what we eat has in coming to market, so to speak, matters just as much as how that journey affected the environment.

We’ve written on food deserts previously, on those areas where access to stores selling fresh fruit and vegetables is greatly limited. Unfortunately, it is often the people in these food deserts that should especially be living (and thriving) on a plant-based diet. In the US, for instance, much plant-based eating is directly derived from African, Asian, Caribbean, and Indigenous cultures. Essentially, then, veganism is not a white and monied movement of the 21st Century, matured from its early beanburger days to the heady Beyond Meat peaks of today, but another form of food activism, one of decolonisation and one in solidarity with a non-industrial heritage, a heritage both holistic and biodiverse. Such BIPOC communities, when they have settled for consuming the enforced industrially produced western diet, have been shown to exhibit a high rate of heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and obesity – all issues exacerbated by animal products.

By reclaiming plant-based eating, reclaiming their health, the future of these communities is ameliorated. And that is part of that care and concern for the future of the planet that is ceaselessly discussed these days. We are all creatures of the Earth; we all have unique nutritional needs and our diversity is what only increases the natural wonder given us.

Food Navigator has stated in the past that by 2030, three times the amount of land given to urban areas in 2000 would exist – one example of this great detriment to biodiversity has been in Latin America. This has seen a distinct food activist movement on that continent. As Vegconomist reported recently, in 2018 a survey in Chile showed roughly 1.5 million of the population were already electing to abstain from meat on a daily basis:

of respondents claimed they would reduce their meat consumption for the good of the environment, in order to offset the damage done by animal agriculture.

Indeed, Chile is leading the way in the vegan stakes, although Mexico has the largest number of vegetarians and vegans combined in Latin America.

However, back at the start of the year, it was reported that Brazil – the largest exporter of beef in the world – was seeing a shift in appetites from heavy red meat consumption to an increased turning to plantbased alternatives, prompted by concern for the state of the Amazon. An amazing event, given “churrascaria is as Brazilian as summer barbecues are American”. According to GlobalData, one third of Brazilians are now purchasing less meat and 14% of all consumers (of which a considerable 62% are interested in plant-based food developments) are buying meat-alternatives for the purposes of reductarianism (and lowering cholesterol).

Nevertheless, globally, the human food system is a major GHG (Greenhouse Gas) emitter and animal agriculture is the main culprit.

The United Nations Environment Programme notes that emissions from livestock are far more numerous and detrimental than fruit and vegetable farming and, furthermore, animal agriculture requires a massive quantity of natural resources. Nonetheless, even cutting down to one meat-based meal a week is an effective contribution to lessening consumption of animal products and thereby reducing the ill effects of livestock rearing, as suggested by EAT-Lancet. And the more people who eat predominantly plant-based alternatives, the more affordable such products will become and as a result be made more readily available in less affluent areas – on a worldwide scale. justnaturalhealth.co.uk | Just Natural Health & Beauty

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Delicious Vegan Pantry Delights 1

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Maple Syrup

With some 24 antioxidants, darker maple syrup is more plentiful in these free radical-busters than lighter versions, but either are no-brainers for sugar replacement.

Furthermore, its zinc content is thought to help keep the heart healthy, bolster immunity, and protect endothelial cells from cholesterol. There are even believed benefits to the magic of maple syrup on male fertility – pancakes on a Sunday morning, anyone?

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A great source of fibre, cacao is thought to be beneficial to IBS sufferers and those seeking better digestive health in general. The flavonoids are thought to lower blood pressure and reduce the risk of Type-II diabetes and inflammation in the body. High in potassium, it is also a worthy inclusion in any heart-healthy diet.

Avocado Oil

Almost 70% of avocado oil consists of the heart-healthy oleic acid, a monounsaturated Omega-9 fatty acid. Studies have seen an increase in HDL (or “good”) cholesterol when avocado oil is taken, as well as a lowering of blood pressure. Also containing a substantial amount of lutein, an antioxidant especially beneficial for eyesight, avocado oil is certainly one oil to keep alongside olive oil and coconut oil.

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Coconut Milk

Electrolyte-rich, replete with potassium, iron, and magnesium – as well as MCTs (Medium-Chain Triglycerides) – coconut milk can be used for an almost limitless range of recipes, from summer-apt ice lollies and creamy smoothies, to rich curries and tropical-inspired porridge for those cooler days this season.

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Peanut Butter

The deity of vegan ingredients, the king protein go-to of any plant-based kitchen: peanut butter is not the same sugar-laden pasty creature it was only a mere decade or so ago. Containing vitamins A, E, and even C, peanuts are a rich source of unsaturated and polyunsaturated fats and are as similarly cardiovascularly beneficial as olive oil.

Smooth versus crunchy is a matter of personal choice, but look for unsweetened and organic every time.

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Cacao Powder

Chickpeas

If peanut butter is the king of the vegan diet, then chickpeas are its queen, and now most of us know the water chickpeas come in is useful for budding plant-based chefs everywhere, too (if you’re scratching your head, we’re talking about aquafaba). Full of protein and iron and just generally deliciously diverse – if you haven’t got a tin of chickpeas (or five) in your kitchen cupboards, are you even vegan?

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They have recently expanded the range with the launch of a new Organic Atlantic range including Agar Flakes, Dulse, Sea Salad and Sea Spaghetti. The entire range is sustainably farmed in the Atlantic Ocean by a family producer, and comes in innovative, 100% sustainable packaging which features a home compostable inner pouch. justnaturalhealth.co.uk | Just Natural Health & Beauty

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Rewilding Humans:

Dietary Diversity & Rejoining the Planetary Ecosystem his issue, of course, we’re all about acceptance. Even though our priorities are ensuring that we all live as sustainably as possible and attempt to arrest climate catastrophe while we still can through manageable actions on a scale individual yet multitudinous, we accept – as everyone who is easily able to live plant-based should – that sadly for some the practice of plant-based living just isn’t possible.

To this end, whatever the medical/biological/personal reasons behind the decision to give up trying to pursue dietary veganism for the good of the planet (nobody is expecting sainthood, or wilful striving towards an ahimsa or non-harmful diet to the detriment of a person’s own health; equally, we are not talking about ignoring the suffering of animals needlessly for cosmetics or clothing and the like), we thought we’d provide an overview of some ways in which those who are struggling are instead trying to adopt the most “earthfriendly meats” into their diet, without (as much as possible) adding to the livestock problem and its intertwined surplus of burping, gaseous creatures.

A word of warning if you are intrigued to learn of this alternative way: such flesh food is probably an organ, rather than muscle meat.

Wildervorism Also termed the “eco-omnivore diet” (and reminiscent of regenerative agriculture’s propositions, as discussed), those who switch to the Wildevore diet do so with the twofold aim of saving both the planet and themselves. The key word here is “nourish”: nourish the land and nourish your body by choosing to buy only from those (local) farms who implement organic regenerative methods and by selecting those cuts or parts not mass produced and chemical-laden and antibioticpumped elsewhere, so that there is a nose-to-tail ethic to your eating habits.

Quite similar to the Paleo and Primal diets, what sets wildervorism apart is its socio-moral consciousness and a praxis which over time will address issues of animal welfare, soil degradation, food security, sustainability, and climate change without turning away from meat consumption. Physically, the Wildevore diet (with its 100% grassfed beef and lamb/mutton, depending on the season) is said to help improve gut health and rebalance the body as a whole, so that cravings for unhealthy foods lessen and you desire and hunger instead for a more natural, satisfying and – erm – wild diet.

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Primal Blueprint The title of US triathlete, Mark Sisson’s well-known and immensely popular book, the Primal Blueprint diet is part of the ancestral health movement. Come about through Sisson’s own route to wellness after the end of his competing career, when he was finding that he often became sick despite being at peak fitness levels and that he was suffering from a veritable list of over-training Also referred to as the “caveman diet”, the aim is to eat “paleolithically” issues (not just tendinitis and arthritis, but as far as is possible, as in what is within the bounds of what is even gastritis and sinusitis) – finally, he felt available to a modern consumer. Operating under the assumption the the only real, tangible thing he could to combination of changes in society and its farming practices in the last address those problems was to look to his millennium have been too quick for the human genome to adapt, the diet.

Paleo diet seeks a return to a “hunter-gatherer” way of thinking, harking Cutting out sugar and processed back to ancestors who certainly didn’t have a microwave and ready-meal carbohydrates and hydrogenated oils, and to hand for those evenings when they were absolutely shattered from severely limiting wholegrains and complex the day job. carbohydrates, the Primal Blueprint diet is Asserting that 10,000 years ago, in a pre-agricultural era, although similar to the Paleo diet in its macronutrient longevity was truncated by childbirth complications, extreme organic animal protein and healthy fat weather patterns, and hunting accidents – on the plus side, there focal foundations, alongside fresh fruit and were fewer incidences of obesity, heart disease, Type-II diabetes, veg, and whole nuts and seeds. Happily, cancer, autoimmune diseases, and – yup – acne. Deducing that the it allows for the occasional indulgence in anti-inflammatory benefits of a diet rich in fruits and vegetables, nuts some decadent dark chocolate. It also and seeds could be why, the Paleo diet bans sugar, so too dairy, and permits raw milk. Nonetheless, if you also most grains and legumes, as well as anything artificial (what was love wheat and corn, then this might not aspartame to a man in a loin cloth?). As a result, and as a 2019 study’s be the “primally” ancestral menu to try; results substantiated, blood pressure levels, waist measurements, and nor is it keen on the nightshade plant lipid profiles have been shown to be improved by following the Paleo foods (aubergines, peppers, potatoes, and diet. However, given its inclusion here, it should be evident that Paleo tomatoes). In addition concentrating on adherents still insist that iron levels should be maintained by allowing movement and time spent out of doors for the continuance of the hunting side of that heritage: that is to say, by (given that that was a considerable part of including red meat. the “hunter-gathering” process within our heritage), the Primal Blueprint diet aims to burn fat and build muscle so as to extend You’ll begin to see a running longevity. theme with these natural, ecoconscious-yet-omnivorous diets, but fundamentally the simple goto reasoning for the Ancestral Wisdom dedicatee is, “we’ve been eating animals for 2.5 million years”… Believing in the incomparable nutrient density of animal products, citing “unsurpassable” absorption rates of vitamin B12, choline, haem iron, DHA (Docosahexaenoic acid), EPA (Eicosapentaenoic acid), Omega3s, vitamin K2, selenium, and preformed vitamin A – those on the Ancestral Wisdom diet are they who expound the virtues of the nose-to-tail eating mentality for supreme bioavailability of protein and calcium and the diminishment of waste in the slaughter/taking of life of an animal.

From bone broth and cartilaginous cuts rich in the amino acid, glycine, to the superfood qualities of organ meats such as kidneys, heart, and liver (the ultimate in nutrient-dense animal-sourced foods), the Ancestral Wisdom diet is focussed on natural nourishment. However, it is not solely carnivorous and advocates suggest that between two-thirds and three-quarters of a plate of food should consist of plant foods for gut health. This, despite studies of 229 hunter-gatherer groups finding that the proportion of calories in their diet from consuming solely animals was on average around two-thirds, at times even as great as 99%. Conversely, the greatest proportion of plant foods in such ancestral diets, and only in 14% of the groups studied, was found to be not much greater than 50%.

It seems, then, that today’s green thinking has caused a laudable evolution of ancestral eating into not so much “ecosystem eating”, but “gut microbiome-concerned consumption”. In fact, a 2019 study published in PLoS noted the microbiomic diversity of Paleo diet adherents, strikingly changed to states similar to the gut microbiomes of traditional Hadzabe, Mayoruna, and Inuit populations.

Paleo

Ancestral Wisdom

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Despite the overt central place of meat in such heritage diets, studies have shown that wheat, rice, and barley consumption dates back thousands of years and might even have been eaten during the Paleolithic era. That said, given the antinutrients within these foods (preventing proper absorption of the nutritional content of other edibles), those earlier peoples – our ancestors – who did eat such grains first either soaked or sprouted them, or even fermented them in order to destroy the antinutrients. And as for refined sugars and flours (aka cellular carbohydrates), and as for seed oils: dubbed the “Three Horsemen of the Apocalypse”, ancestral “dieters” shudder at the very thought of these promoters of “overeating and inflammation”.

Human genetic diversity is astounding. Each of us if made up of literally billions of cells and even more numerous microorganisms, and each of us has different nutritional needs. Indeed, the search for one’s personal “perfect diet” can be a life-long pursuit.

By adopting one of these heritage or ancestral ways of eating, though, by switching to a more “Native Lifestyle” way of being, it is clear that it isn’t opting for yet another fad diet just because it’s popular and seems to work for so many others. Rather, it’s finding a personal harmony with the body one has been born with, allowing for acceptance of self and consideration of environmental ethics simultaneously.

We can’t all go berry-picking from a bush when we’re hungry, but we can invest in those small businesses who bring the organically grown fruit (and the organic regeneratively reared meat) within proximity of the supper table.

There is, then, simply so much choice out there, so many alternatives to traditional animal products come from climatically damaging livestock agriculture, that to not in some way implement a more (and that’s the key word) plant-based way of life is wilfully, obstinately ignorant, and selfish. Yet, extreme views exist in both camps and to claim that a middle way, a flexitarian path, say, is beneficial too is often condemned.

Recently, Plant Based News reported that a wellknown vegan doctor was near-trolled online after saying that ideal health doesn’t have to come from an absolutely 100% plant-based diet”. Dr Danielle Belardo has defended her refusal to ignore scientific data supporting such a statement. A cardiologist who shuns all animal-sourced products in all areas of her life, not just diet, her admission (which has earned her the label of being a “bad vegan”) came about during an interview with the YouTube health influencer, Doctor Mike (aka Dr Varshavski). Dr Belardo conceded that veganism is “more of an ethical decision” than a diet needed to be adopted for health reasons. Indeed, in response to Dr Varshavski’s question whether veganism is “undoubtedly safe and ideal for all”, Dr Belardo called the concept of a “perfect diet” an utter “fallacy”, but that there are “absolutely no health benefits to eating meat”.

Is it a question of language? What is being misunderstood, what signs and symbols should be employed instead to convince people – in addition to the plethora of scientific studies and resultant data – that by reducing exploitation of non-human animals for alimentary and lifestyle purposes, we will just about manage to save our planet and leave a home for our children and our children’s children?

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Even though we are blessed with the existence of the likes of the Thunbergs of this world, will it always be a singular raised voice amid the crowd that is heard by some, but tuned out by many? As LARB recently wrote, the Swedish vegan has used such powerful rhetoric as “I want you to panic. We are in the middle of a mass extinction”. No longer a child, but a young woman who continues to roar into the winds, even fiction – young adult climate fiction – is appropriating such language, and that can only be a good thing. Education, the enlightenment of still developing minds, the opening of eyes which aren’t used to shutting out the monstrousness of a situation self-created – it is the youth of today, it seems, who will be the main implementers of their own tomorrow. But is it not a lesson we as adults are overdue in learning? We created this dystopic reality, no mere story: it’s time to uncreate it now.

To be clear, the fact that there has been almost a deluge of plant-based alternatives of late is a great thing, indeed. However, is it as good as it seems on the surface when the leaders in such a market become those very multinationals who consumers shifted away from due to mistrust over factors including factory farming practices? Furthermore, can a vegan ethically purchase a plant-based product sold by a company that still profits from the sale of animal flesh? Vegconomist recently explored current opinions on this conundrum in plant-based capitalism, also noting that between 2010 and 2020 nearly $6 billion was raised for funding plant-based alternative products, with over $3 billion of that invested in 2020 alone. A decline in meat production after 2025 has already been predicted in a recent study by Blue Horizon and BCG (Boston Consulting Group). Christina Rodrigo, country manager of ProVeg International in Spain, believes such companies do need to be brought into the plant-based arena in order to facilitate “large-scale transformation” that is “sustainable resilient, and functional”, and Maria Troya, research fellow at the GFI (Good Food Institute) thinks it essential, given the financial standing of such corporations in comparison to the economic barriers faced by start-ups.

But is it not a little bit like a child being awarded a certificate for “effort” rather than “achievement”? What seems to be the deciding factor, as Mariana Issa, food innovation manager at EligeVeg in Mexico, said is that by purchasing such products, by voting with our money, we widen affordability and accessibility to plant-based foods – and that, really, can only be a good thing.

Digestive Harmony: Gut Issues, the Vagus Nerve, and Living Clean It might very well be Coeliac Awareness Week from the 9th to 15th September, but – like never before – gut health in general is at the top of people’s priorities these days.

Ensuring a symbiotic balance of prebiotics and probiotics within our digestive system has become so much a focus due to scientific studies, discoveries from lengthy research into how much of a bacterial universe our gut microbiome actually is, affecting everything from weight to mental health, from immunity to everyday functioning.

Prebiotics, if you were wondering, are natural, nondigestible carbohydrates (or oligosaccharides) which are fermented by probiotics (being as they are the fuel for probiotics, bacteria that assist in maintaining that desired natural balance of microorganisms and microflora in our intestines). That fermentation results in a fatty acid known as butyric acid, which maintains the healthy lining of the intestines, promoting proper digestion and supporting the regularity of our bowel movements. Believed to also keep in equilibrium the amount of cortisol in our bodies as well, thereby not allowing our stress levels to become overwhelming – for those who suffer from Crohn’s disease, leaky gut syndrome, or ulcerative colitis, focussing on the importance of prebiotics can be a lifesaver.

According to Dr Anton Emmanuel, around 4 in 10 people in the UK suffer from a digestive complaint at any one time. The group Core, meanwhile, reported in 2016 that over 10% of a GP’s working life is spent treating GI (Gastrointestinal) health issues: perhaps not surprising given that some 43% of us suffer digestive problems at some point. A shocking statistic when you realise that up to 90% of a person’s immunity is controlled by the gut. In these (hopefully) post-pandemic days, or at least in this brief reprieve from the frontline of battling the coronavirus (though such can’t be said for India), maintaining a healthy immune system is absolutely critical. Therefore, logic dictates we should look to our gut.

One individual’s microbiome contains trillions of microbes, which in turn consist of over 10,000 species of bacteria, yeasts, fungi, and parasites – and those microbiota are more unique than DNA. In order to keep this intestinal galaxy of microbial magic in tiptop condition, it is advised that we consume in excess of 50 different types of food each week (over seven days; equal to just over seven different foods per day) in order to provide the diversity of nutrients necessary to essentially feed all those species. Just as the ecoconscious are striving to return a full and thriving biodiversity to the world at large, consider your own personal gut microbiome as an environment which also needs to be kept vitally biodiverse.

Kefir: From Mountain Milk to Modern Usage Fermented foods are highly important for overall gut health.

Fermentation being the anaerobic process whereby lactic acid bacteria convert sugar into lactic acid, which in turn acts as a preservative that also leaves alive the prebiotics and probiotics present. You’ll have heard of tempeh and miso, of sauerkraut and kimchi, but in addition to drinks like kombucha (a superstar of the holistic lifestyle movement, and frequently in the positive social media spotlight) there exists kefir.

The history of kefir dates back thousands of years, some say 4,000 years ago to China, but the grains recognisable today are just like those used by nomadic mountain peoples in the northern Caucasus over 2,000 years ago, when they utilised the milk from their goats and cows. The people there fermented their stocks of the liquid in order to save any spoiling, replenishing the leather skins containing the kefir grains with fresh milk as and when the liquid had been diminished (just like one feeds a sourdough starter in breadmaking). The grains were so valuable that they were passed down as heirlooms.

Kefir came to be more widely known when Russian scientists in the 14th century began to want to understand how the mountain peoples of the Caucasus lived as long as they did, despite the inclement climate and harsh natural conditions. Even early research noted the beneficial effect on the digestive system.

Yet, it wasn’t until the 20th century that kefir grains were able to be obtained (by cheesemaker, Irina Sakharova, according to a very nice legend involving Tsar Nicholas II) and actually brought back to Russia, where they were used initially to treat tuberculosis with kefir. Given the lengthy history of its appropriation, it speaks volumes that kefir became as mainstream as milk and eggs in the country as quickly as by the 1930s.

The kefir found today on shelves beside yogurts and other probiotic dairy drinks is often made from powdered cultures, rather than grains. That said, vegan alternatives have been formed from coconut milk and other nut milks. justnaturalhealth.co.uk | Just Natural Health & Beauty

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Our intestines have an equal number of neuroreceptors to our spinal cord, and the vagus nerve directly communicates messages both ways between the gut and brain: if our mental wellbeing is imbalanced, our stomach will let us know; if our digestion is in turmoil, our mood will be affected also (and, by extension, our behaviour). This is where the microbiota in the gut come into play. For instance, the neurotransmitters GABA (gamma-aminobutyric acid, serotonin, catecholamines, and acetylcholine are all macrobiotically influenced. Similarly, lactobacilli and bifidobacteria affect inflammation levels and immune responses in the body. Nonetheless, if you are living through a period of unending stress (perhaps exacerbated from WFH living and all the juggling of multiple roles within work and the domestic set-up that that involved) – then your gut will most certainly be suffering.

Psychobiotics, such as lactobacillus helveticus R0052 and Bifidobacterium longum R0175, act as support to the total body stress-response system (otherwise known as the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal, or HPA, axis) and control levels of tryptophan and serotonin. Studies have shown that, by supplementing these, anxiety and sleep disturbances can be decreased and depressive symptoms lessened.

One 2011 study published in the British Journal of Nutrition noted the “psychotropic-like” effect of the combination of these two probiotics in particular, which have additionally been found to also reduce abdominal pain. This is thought to be due to their function in reducing LPS (or gut-derived lipopolysaccharides). They further protect against the ill effects of food-borne pathogens.

Of course, when stress is mentioned in conjunction with digestive disorders, these days most of us think, “It must be IBS!” (that is to say, Irritable Bowel Syndrome). Although 1 in 5 of us will suffer from this condition at some point in our lives, the first instance normally being between the ages of 20 and 30, IBS should not become a go-to diagnosis for symptoms such as: stomach cramps and bloating; bloating and/or constipation; wanting to but unable to make further bowel movements; excessive flatulence; fatigue and lack of energy; backache; a frequent need to urinate.

There might be a more serious cause, such as undiagnosed diverticular disorder, IBD (or Inflammatory Bowel Disease), and even bowel cancer, from which over 16,000 people die annually. You should definitely see your GP straight away if you begin to experience any of the following: sudden and unexplained weight-loss; blood in the stools or bleeding from the anus; a noticeable-to-the-touch hard lump or swelling in the stomach area; shortness of breath, heart palpitations, and pale skin.

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Coeliac Disease: Gluten-Free Living

Some 25% of people diagnosed with IBS actually have Coeliac disease and 1% of Britons are thought to have it. An autoimmune disease, it is believed that only 30% of sufferers are correctly diagnosed, of which there three times as many women as men afflicted.

Neither an allergy nor an intolerance, Coeliac disease is a genetic mutation of the HLA-DQ genes that are responsible for our immune system. As a result, the lining of the small intestine becomes inflamed in reaction to the protein gluten. This inflammation in turn prevents proper absorption of nutrients from our food and by extension ill health.

Diagnosis is by blood test and biopsy and if Coeliac disease is confirmed, then gluten must be avoided for life. No ands, ifs, or buts. Clearing the digestive system of remnants of gluten can be a 2-year process. People most prone to developing Coeliac disease are Type-I diabetes sufferers, those with ulcerative colitis, and those with autoimmune thyroid disease. For infants, doctors recommend not introducing gluten into the diet before 6 months (the usual weaning age) and only if still breastfeeding as the breastmilk lends added immune support.

The symptoms of Coeliac disease are similar to IBS, but if left unattended, other signs such as frequent mouth ulcers, skin rashes, oedema, and anaemia occur, and eventually sufferers can develop osteoporosis, infertility, neuropathy, gluten ataxia, and even bowel cancer and intestinal lymphoma due to the malabsorption of nutrients and diminished immune system.

Found in the cereals wheat, rye, and barley, gluten is also prevalent in convenience foods like pasta, pizza, biscuits, cake, breakfast cereals, ready meals, sauces, beer – the list goes on.

Some people with Coeliac disease find oats cause a flare-up as well, as they can be sensitive to the protein avenin, which is similar to gluten. Happily, the choice of Gluten-Free products is much, much wider than only a few years ago, so one doesn’t have to wave a last goodbye to bread, per se.

For further advice, consult your doctor.

Coeliac UK is also able to provide extensive guidance and information sheets. While you wait, though, it might be useful to be aware that the GAPS (or Gut And Psychology Syndrome) diet is renowned for its linking of the health of the gut microbiome to symptoms such as digestive disorders and depression. The GAPS menu includes a large proportion of fermented foods in order to “fix” or rebalance gut dysbiosis, aiming to detoxify the body, healing the gut lining and thereby prohibiting toxins reaching the brain via the blood. Formed by Dr Natasha Campbell-McBride in 2004 from the founding SC (or Specific Carbohydrate) diet of Dr Sidney Valentin Haas – the GAPS diet was conceived early in the 20th century as a means to treat coeliac and Crohn’s sufferers and is well worth a try.

Hippocrates declared back in 375 BC, “Let food be thy medicine” – advice heeded by multitudes since, but sometimes we all need a little extra guidance. After all, if we go through each day ingesting a poor diet, over time the effects of those nutritionally deficient and perhaps toxin-loaded meals can accumulate to cause serious problems.

Smoking and alcohol-use are a given as being harmful. Yet, add to that any antibiotic use, environmental pollutants (such as pesticides, additives, heavy metals, even chlorinated tap water), and a natural decline in bacteria as we age, and the prognosis for our gut isn’t great. Even the way you are delivered at birth affects your gut microbiome. Happily, though, Covid-19’s silver-lining was one that sent us eagerly out of doors to get exposure to sunlight and soil and animals and the general germy mess that is Nature, but if behind (now very much open) doors we’re still consuming the average Western diet of processed foods, high in sugar and salt and bad fats and refined carbohydrates, then we are not helping matters. Meat consumption, especially, can diminish the number of bacterial species in the intestine.

In very basic terms, toxins create acidity and the quickest and simplest step to adjusting the pH balance for the good of your gut microbiome is to start eating “living” foods.

Beyond the general rainbow suggested by medical practitioners for decades, to say start including living foods in your diet isn’t to advise switching instantly to total raw food veganism or a fruitarian ethos of “only what falls from the tree”. Rather, although most raw foodists state 75% of the diet should be plant foods raw, or dehydrated below 48C, or sprouted or soaked, or juiced and/ or blended – living foods can comprise as low as 50% of the diet. They key is kickstarting an acidic environment, a system overloaded with toxins, and then settling into a manageable day-byday routine wherein a “synergy with nature” is established As Leslie Kenton wrote in The Raw Energy Bible, you want to enjoy the forest, not just a singular tree alone, but she does suggest that initiating change is best served by a 36-hour juice fast.

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The 3 Stages of Digestion

1

APPROPRIATION

Eating and Digestion

2

ASSIMILATION

Taking in Nutrients

3

ELIMINATION

Expulsion of Waste Products Raw juice provides alkalinity, an opportunity to balance out the acidity of a polluted body. In the 36-hour cleanse, from a Friday night to a Sunday lunchtime one weekend, if you’re wanting to rid your intestine of built up pollutants, to press the restart button, and be done with gut issues – then, freshly pressing juice from whole fruit (no cartons of concentrate here) in the mornings, switching to a blended fruit and vegetable juice for lunch, and having a vegetable-only juice for supper (as well as water during the day to quench thirst) could be the very thing that resets your system.

Fruit-only juices are recommended for the mornings as they are especially detoxifying, yet also provide fuel for the brain. After that, vegetable juices allow for nutritional content intake and the continuance of metabolic building block processes. Summer, of course, is the ideal season to undertake such a detox. Carrots and apples go with most combinations and the quantity of juice is up to you and your appetite, but do be aware of the detoxifying effects that will ensue. It is suggested, also, that the weekend be spent quietly and gently in regard to self-care. Think good sleep, listening to the radio, watching some films, reading that novel you’ve been meaning to get to for ages – and think only gentle stretching and a spa-type bathing routine both evenings, assisting further the process of elimination.

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Acids and Alkalis: Your Body is a Chemistry Set Gut health as a general rule will be adversely affected by factors such as coffee and alcohol, chocolate and fizzy drinks, and of course wheat and dairy. All these (setting aside the potential probiotic benefits of yogurt) will not help a digestive system already in distress. By contrast, plant foods, such as bananas for excessive hydrochloric acid production in the stomach or conversely pineapple and papaya for hypochlorhydria (a lack of hydrochloric acid), can be effective “medicine” – functional nutrition – in the search for better all-round health. And this is due to the consideration of the equilibrium between acids and alkalis.

When we’re born, our bodies have a pH of around 7.4, a fragile balance which is tipped in favour of alkalinity. When the pH fluctuates outside of the bounds of between a more acidic 7.2 to a more alkaline 7.45, though, a range of problems can occur.

The more acidic our bodies, the greater the risk of premature ageing from impaired cell and tissue renewal, as well as weight gain and a general accumulation of other toxins.

What we eat plays a vitally important role in this management of the pH balance.

A diet chock full of meat and dairy and processed foods high in sugar and salt will send the acidity level of the body skyrocketing. A Whole Foods Plant-Based lifestyle, on the other hand, is the most alkalinising diet there is, one which studies have shown can reduce cardiovascular disease, Type-II diabetes, obesity, and potentially even cancer. The reason? Disease likes acidity; immunity likes alkalinity.

Particularly alkalinising plant-based foods include legumes, nuts and seeds, quinoa, and soybeans.

Although it might seem to go against logic, citrus actually enhance alkalinity in our bodies too and, together with other certain fresh fruit, are an important inclusion in any diet looking to increase the pH balance to one more alkaline:

Apples pH 8

Why not try our recipe for...

Elderflower Cordial

Ingredients: Makes 10 servings 2 ½ kg white sugar (granulated or caster) 2 ¾ pints water 2 lemons, unwaxed

Pineapple pH 8.5

20 elderflower heads, fresh and stems trimmed 85g Just Natural citric acid (food grade) Method:

Avocado pH 15

Grapes pH 8.5

Lemons pH 9

Mango pH 8.5

Watermelon

pH 9

1. In a very large saucepan, heat the sugar and 2¾ pints of water. Be careful not to bring it to the boil, but instead heat gently only until all the sugar has dissolved.

2. In the meantime, peel the zest from the lemons using a vegetable peeler and slice the body of the lemons into rounds.

3. Once the sugar has fully dissolved, then bring the saucepan of syrup to the boil and turn off the heat.

4. Fill a washing up bowl with cold water and rinse the flowers in this to clean off dirt or bugs. Shake off the flowers when lifted out of the water.

5. Add the flowers and the lemons, zest, and the citric acid to the syrup.

Stir well and cover and set aside for 24 hrs.

6. Line a colander with a clean tea towel. Place this over a large bowl or pan and ladle in the syrup. Let it drip slowly through and do away with the remainders in the cloth.

7. Funnel into sterilised bottles and enjoy.

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Walking Women and Stepping Off the Treadmill into Nature t is a truth now universally acknowledged that each and every single person in need of pandemic reprieve must be in want of a walk in the open air. As we approach the end of an extended period of curbs on our liberty for the good of the health of all, it seems timely that we have now come to the season for sunny striding, for revelling in a warmer semblance of the usually wintry Norwegian friluftsliv (“honouring the beauty of the outdoors”).

We might these days be well aware of the benefits – both mental and physical – that walking offers, but it wasn’t always so easy to simply don a pair of comfortable shoes or boots and step outside if one was of the fairer sex. There were female pilgrims in the Middle Ages, yes, but the male saints they tended to make their journeys to weren’t particularly, um, fondly receptive of their travels of admiration. One academic whose professional focus is precisely on such perambulations is Kerri Andrews, of Edge Hill University. Her book, Wanderers, explored the crucial part that walking played in a selection of women, finding themselves both “as people and as writers”.

From Dorothy Wordsworth to Cheryl Strayed and from Sarah Stoddart Hazlitt to Virginia Wolf, the walking woman (her urban sister otherwise referred to as the “flanêuse”) has for some time now determinedly set her steps to freedom. And that’s precisely what walking has afforded everyone – sex irrelevant – during the pandemic. Nonetheless, for the matriarchs of households for over the past year, surviving multiple lockdowns has been a question of retaining sanity – something which only daily escapes into the fresh air of the outdoors have afforded.

For, as mundane as it might seem, walking is an adventure.

One doesn’t have to be a daring soul taking on the highest peaks and sheerest drops; rather, even the humblest amble can permit adrenaline-sparking explorations of the imagination: a therapy of activity.

Of course, in the Victorian era women took to walking as a sport for a while: not just a stroll around the civilised streets, parasol in hand, but veritable endurance walking, seemingly dismissing entirely the previously patriarchally implemented public perception of the female of the species as being too weak for vigorous exercise. Referred to as “pedestriennes” (a bizarre appellation given the nature, or its lack, of these walks…), women like one “Mrs. Dunne” became celebrities of sorts, walking hundreds of miles, while a lady known as “C.C. Cushman” reportedly clocked up 500 miles. However, these were not hikes across open countryside à la Austen, but in constructed ovals and on indoor tracks (mainly on the East Coast of America), eventually leading to accusations of exploitation of these females in the 1880s.

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Not such a liberating moment, then. Yet, perhaps we can see the beginnings of our modern love affair with the treadmill – dismissing the 1st century Roman engineering feat of the tread-wheel as man-powered crane for lifting heavy objects, dismissing also the exercise-for-energy machines developed for powering by prisoners’ exertions (invention of Sir William Cubitt), but finding a parallel with earlier horse treadmills of the 19th century (jarringly equating the equine position with the feminine…). Nonetheless, it was one Claude Lauraine Hagen who developed the belt-based machine in 1911, of a shape and function more familiar to us today (though it was manually propelled and one had to move slats for momentum).

It was in 1952, though, that the first motorised treadmill came into being, coinvention of cardiologist Dr Robert A Bruce. Its purpose was to diagnose conditions of the heart and lungs, earning Bruce the unofficial title of “Father of Exercise Cardiology”. And by the late 1960s, William Staub brought to the domestic front an updated version able to be produced on the mass market. The concept took a little while to snowball, sales increasing from just 2,000 per year in the 1980s to approximately 35,000 a year by the mid-1990s. Now, it is estimated that the global fitness equipment market could be worth £11bn by next year.

Indeed, a survey carried out by ONS found that while of Britons critically crave exercise outside in order to cope with lockdown restrictions, by contrast a third of the population found indoor exercise just as beneficial to their physical and mental health.

This, despite on the face of it Britain once again rekindling its love affair with the great outdoors, flocking (when, really, one should not have so flocked, social distancing measures in place and all that) to breathe en plein air and upon occasion even absorb some vitamin D from that particular golden orb around which we all orbit. With gyms only recently reopened, it could very well be that people remain poised to return to the treadmill in their own homes in case of any further lockdowns when winter returns.

Before Covid-19, in fact, the Environmental Protection Agency estimated that 90% of our life – adults and young people alike – was spent indoors. Now, that’s some very stale air and stagnant bodies, indeed.

So, while you’re out there in that glorious summer sun, feet to the ground, flow of steps a rhythm for the journey, eyes lifted to take in the beauty of the skies and surrounding greenery, spare a thought for the bees – without them, we wouldn’t be here very long at all. From the power of an insect, a flower; from a singular flower, the entire natural world.

And sorry, urbanites: research has shown that where one spends time out of doors actually does count, studies finding that exercise taken in the forest (for a nicely verdant example) results in a lower heart rate and reduced levels of cortisol than those participants who were strolling and running through the city streets.

Greenery is also a boon for mental health (without any of the negative side effects of prescription meds).

A stepping into ART (Attention Restoration Therapy), it is far easier to recover from mental exhaustion and

overload in nature than in a bustling metropolis, one study finding a 50% better result in aptitude testing after a 4-day immersion in a natural environment (no smartphones allowed, either).

Perhaps this is why The Times reported in January that there’s been an upsurge in purchases of woodland recently. A private patch of nature, unmanicured and offering space in which to picnic safely away from others and let children play outside within Covid parameters (which include allowances for maintenance of one’s land, a crucial part of such ownership and for which grants exist, e.g. EWGS (the English Woodland Grant Scheme)) – personal parcels of wild natural space which are cheaper to acquire than holiday homes, too.

Priceless, one might say. Be sure to do your due diligence beforehand, though: be crystal clear about boundaries, for one thing; you also don’t want to be buying a piece of land populated by diseased trees.

Bodies, just like trees, of course, are not all hewn from the same clay. We are each of us unique and therefore each require a mindful attention to how our entire body responds to different forms and intensities of exercise. For instance, you might be someone who enjoys running very much indeed, but you always notice that after a certain point you start to feel a numb and/or tingly feeling in your hands. This is because of paraesthesia, or blood flow to the nerves being blocked – but why?

Most likely, the positioning of your arms and hands while you run (or even when walking vigorously). If the arm is bent at the elbow, the ulnar nerve (better known as the “funny bone”)

is stretched across the bone of the elbow, blocking blood flow to the forearm and pinky and ring fingers.

Some people are more afflicted than others and those who clench their fists or pump their arms during walking and running are more prone (though one shouldn’t really clench one’s fists at all; relaxation and a nicely gentle swinging action is key).

If the sensation is in your feet, that’s because increased blood flow to the muscles during exercise causes them to swell and gravity sends that fluid to the legs and feet, pressing against laced trainers and blocking further blood flow.

This normally happens with gym equipment, where the foot is in one position on a machine (such as an elliptical trainer or stationary bike).

If the feeling occurs while you’re out running or walking, it could simply be that you tied your shoes too tight. With both extremities, be sure that shaking things out at the end of exercise does get the blood flowing again: if not, see your GP as soon as possible, as it could be a symptom of something more serious, such as a pinched nerve, carpal tunnel syndrome, or diabetes, or a neurological disorder if accompanied by muscle weakness.

Nevertheless, if you’re still struggling to find the impetus to get off the sofa and step outside: a study published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology found a higher risk of cardiovascular mortality in both men and women who sat for long periods without moving. Conducted over a period of nearly nine years, those who were sedentary for over six hours a day had an increased risk of dying of a heart attack, whereas all such risk was voided by exercising approximately 45 minutes a day. The established minimum of 150 minutes of exercise per week was reasserted.

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Veganism, Tea & Olympic Sports: A Chat with Unstoppable Team GB Athletes It was a sad day for sports last year when Japan had to postpone the Tokyo Olympics due to the pandemic. As we go to press, breath is still bated as to whether July will see the historic sporting event go ahead, but in the meantime the outstanding athletes who take part in such global sporting events and those a little closer to home in Europe aren’t resting on their laurels (or, like the rest us, sitting too much upon our rears), but instead keeping very much alive the momentum needed to train in all conditions. Success is a frame of mind, most say; if so, then the minds of a certain two female Team GB competitors are hewn from undentable steel.

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Lisa Worthington Triathlete Speaking with Lisa Worthington one blueskied morning in late April, the 52-yearold triathlete was fresh and invigorated from her daily swim in the sea. Head of Marketing at Keith Spicer, the company behind such brands as Dorset Teas and Tea India, Lisa had previously been a self-described “coffee fiend” who might occasionally have perhaps one cup of tea.

Now, the beans are out the window and it’s all about the leaves. Starting each day with a pot of Dorset Tea for warmth (Lisa swims in the cold British sea every morning), by 11am she switches to chai, but goes herbal in the evenings (either chamomile or peppermint). The key, though, is hydration and no tea, Lisa says, can replace the importance of water, which as a triathlete she also “guzzles down”.

For Lisa Worthington has qualified for the European Championships with Team GB. To be held in September, if she does well there, she will qualify for the World Championships. No small success for a woman who only last year was diagnosed with Stage 3 breast cancer.

Having completed the Half Iron Ironman (70.3) in September 2019, Lisa was buoyed, pumped with the adrenalin of having completed something so physically incredible. Her training had helped, yes, but there comes a point when to carry on, the mind must be strong enough to take over, and having succeeded, she felt almost invincible. Then she went for a routine mammogram: a 4mm spot of Stage 3 breast cancer was picked up and two rounds of surgery ensued.

Lisa was lucky that it had been found and she was also fortunate that only a lumpectomy had to be carried out, with only radiotherapy alongside, rather than any chemo. However, surgeons had had to go in through her right armpit and, for a swimmer, this made things very difficult indeed.

Two weeks out of the water recuperating, and then Lisa tried to dive into a simple 1km gentle front crawl with her friend, Jamie, but she couldn’t even lift her right arm. Nonetheless, wanting desperately to go to the Team GB qualifier in Scotland, not wanting to live with regret, it was a case of setting her mind determinedly to the task. And it paid off: Lisa made it to Scotland and she also qualified.

The Worthingtons are a sporty family all round. Lisa’s 18-year-old daughter is also a keen triathlete and they occasionally train together, or her husband (a keen cyclist and runner) has been known to cycle to Paris with the eldest in order to watch the Tour de France and then cycle home. Lisa has not yet joined them on one of these trips, cycling being something the natural-born swimmer has had to learn to love (though her coach is a pro-cyclist). She and her betrothed do enjoy the occasional weekend couples’ cycle, though. Indeed, as a child Lisa swam competitively and loved running 800m and 1500m, but as with many teenage girls, she suffered from self-consciousness over her body, particularly when in sports shorts. So it was that she drifted away from sports for a while. She still swam at university and each morning before work in London after graduating, but it wasn’t until the age of 27 that she took up running seriously again and only while she was working in France after that did she take up biking.

What is astounding, however, is that Lisa didn’t come to sea-swimming until the family moved to their current residence in Dorset. Just 5km from the beach, early on Lisa dreamt of cycling to the water and back each day, but she was at first afraid of those chill depths.

That was in her early 40s; now, almost a decade later, the triathlete rises at 6.30am and by 7am is happily wrapped up in wetsuit and swimming hat and boots (not for her the bare flesh of those few souls merely in trunks: “They’re the real Ironmen,” Lisa jests not without sincerity) and in the sea, one of her two-disciplines-a-day training sessions – one of which is always a swim. Also a yoga enthusiast, this link between the physical and the mental is clearly something central to Lisa’s philosophy, believing as she does in honouring the body, stretching it out after pummelling it as an athlete does. Yoga helps to ease pre-race nerves, as well. In total, she probably trains 10 hours each week and sets aside one day for rest and repair.

Interestingly Covid-19 had little effect on Lisa’s training, able to cycle on turbo in all weathers and run no matter the forecast (treadmills fill her with horror).

In fact, without it, she wouldn’t have completed her first entire year of seaswimming. Normally stopping the first week in October, lockdown restrictions meant Lisa had to go fully wild in her aquatic training. Although speed work can really only be done in a pool, what she won’t forget are the dark mornings in the sea, being with and in nature in all its guises.

The seaside town of Weymouth seems to attract athletes, including Linda Ashmore, a 72-year-old Ironwoman (in more senses than one). The triathlon community, Lisa says, despite perceptions to the contrary, is not aggressive, it is healthily competitive. Without such competition, one wouldn’t push oneself to the limits to go further.

Competitors guide one another and Lisa has generally found the triathlon community is a “big up for the sisterhood”, full of support; a lifeline social bubble in unusual and trying times. Mondays especially benefitted from that first morning swim of the week, a setting up for the WFH day ahead and a chance to see a friendly face and have a chat at social (and watery) remove before returning to the home office. She cited a chapter from ROAR: How to Match Your Food and Fitness to Your Unique Female Physiology for Optimum Performance, Great Health, and a Strong, Lean Body for Life by Stacy T. Sims as having been enlightening during her journey to where she is now.

Speaking with the Team GB triathlete, it’s hard to believe that before she rediscovered her passion for sports in her late 20s, Lisa was a stone heavier, a smoker, so much a meat eater that she was “verging on carnivore”, and a self-described “big boozer”. Now, although she’ll permit herself the occasional glass of wine, her body is very much more temple-like. After watching The Game Changers during her recovery from breast cancer surgery late last year,

Lisa tried to go vegan, but found that the return to work and its commute she was very tired and “fantasising about parmesan”. Following a brief spell of pescatarianism after that, it was another documentary – you guessed it, Seaspiracy – that saw the sportswoman settle into what is now a comfortable vegetarianism (but no milk). As Lisa says, “I’ve eaten so much meat in my life; one less person eating meat will help the planet”.

Indeed, the Worthingtons as a family unit have pretty much all become vegetarian.

As our interview came to a close, Lisa revealed that she will be leaving her position at Keith Spicer in June in order to go freelance and permit more time for training. In the future, she is also passionately considering motivational speaking for female athletes and overcoming self-set limitations. She wants to talk to the people who want to run, but who think they can’t; the people who can only swim breast-stroke and don’t push themselves, don’t let time have a chance to develop an awesome front crawl. Without sounding like an ad campaign, Lisa wants people to “just dive in and feel it; just do it; just believe”.

For some, it seems, competitive sport, taking one’s body to its limits, really is the “natural progression” they say it is. Inspirational, certainly, for tomorrow’s generation – whether male or female – in a post-pandemic “new normal” world where health and longevity are key concerns. Now, where did I put that wetsuit..?

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Lisa Gawthorne Duathlete One only has to type Lisa Gawthorne’s name into Google to easily discover pages upon pages about a woman with a vision, driven to succeed from a young age – and ethically at that. A vegetarian from the age of six after a PETA leaflet on the brutal realities of animal agriculture was popped through the letterbox of the family home, Lisa went through her school days and into the university environment perceived as a bit of a hippy solely because of her non-meateating ways. But that’s not all there is to the entrepreneur and Team GB duathlete at all. Her supervisor at Sir John Moores University joking with foresight that she would start her own business before 30, Lisa actually opened the vegan food distribution company Bravura Foods with Karl Morris in 2011, when she was 29.

In approaching an interview with the unstoppable athlete and businesswoman, then, there are three

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angles one can take: Lisa the Team GB duathlete, Lisa the vegan author (of Gone in 60 Minutes, on the vegan diet, supplements, workouts, and motivation – the entirety of which can be read in an hour), and Lisa the vegan CEO. Indeed, Lisa switched to veganism in 2003, really only at that point having milk and butter left to give up. She had only waited for so long in order to make sure she could transition properly, given the crucial place of nutrition in a sportswoman’s – or anyone keen on exercise’s – daily life. It’s a quotidian fuelled, quite literally, by savvy nutrition. Lisa admits she eats most of the day (“3 meals and 3 snacks”) in order to satisfy hunger and keep her metabolism moving quickly.

Vegan food being less caloriedense than animal products, she uses the My Fitness Pal app to keep an eye on her output:input ratio, an easy means of focusing on functional nutrition and testing out what balance works best for the individual. It provides a deeper macronutrient analysis than other similar platforms and takes into account the time of year and the type of competition Lisa is in training for. As a general rule, though, the duathlete will opt for clean carbohydrates (quinoa, brown rice, oats, sweet potatoes) and protein such as tofu, tempeh, seitan, and mixed nuts, turning to avocados and seed oils for essential fats.

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Every day, the minimum fruit she’ll consume is one apple, one banana, and a handful of blueberries, and no 24-hour period passes without eating kale, spinach, and broccoli (for iron and plentiful antioxidants).

On her busiest days, she’ll allow herself a protein shake or protein bar in the afternoon to keep going, unable to have caffeine since 2007 when she underwent an operation for heart palpitations. And as for Saturdays? That’s her treat day for a “vegan cookie sandwich” from her local health store.

Aside from certain argumentative detractors in friendship groups, in the gym environment Lisa is so familiar with – training six days a week as she does (a combination of not just running and cycling, but weight-training as well) – there are various “characters” who will insist one “needs meat”, that veganism is “a fad”, and that plant-based eaters eventually become “weak”.

Lisa thinks it must be because meat has become so entrenched in society’s eating “traditions”, that it’s almost a form of identity.

Even when The Game Changers was released, although 70% of the people Lisa knows were positive (“My phone has never been so busy!” She exclaimed.), on social media platforms the remaining 30% focussed on the more controversial side of the unsatisfactory depth to the studies and the lack of keener scientific insight into certain areas mentioned only in passing. To any negativity, Lisa only ever replies, (1) it’s better for the animals, (2) it’s better for the planet, and (3) it’s better for our health. Furthermore, there are now more vegans in the world of sport and fitness than ever before.

On the topic of cellular agriculture, if wide eyes can be heard over a telephone line, one imagines they were thus opened when Lisa admitted it’s “really strange”. For “old-school vegans”, it doesn’t do much to address animal exploitation, and for those who’ve been vegan for a while, like Lisa, they don’t even recall the taste of meat. That said, she admits fewer livestock will be slaughtered and animal agriculture diminish; that it’s “very clever, very futuristic”, but ultimately not for her. It is, however, a “fantastic move forward to reductarianism”, an important “stepping-stone” to a “golden bridge”.

Asked if there’s anything she would tell her younger self, that determined soul who turned to running at university in order to combat anxiety and who now holds a Gold Medal, Lisa admitted she would advise her to take on less, to not say yes to everything, and to not give free advice to those who would never turn into a meaningful partnership. Also, to stay true to self and to one’s goals and have a clear strategic focus. As for the future of Bravura Foods, operating very healthily indeed, the effects of the pandemic were actually beneficial for business, people re-evaluating their lifestyle choices and having more time on their hands to “shop vegan”. Lisa believes this trend will continue and curve upwards, certainly if the some 570,000 Veganuary participants in 2021 are anything to go by. Over the next 18 months, her company will be bringing some exciting new products to market and

identifying any gaps and expanding existing ranges. Indeed, Bravura Foods was also previously invited to undertake the Goldman Sachs 4-month intensive professional training Small Business Certificate at Oxford University, a rigorous business plan development course with panel reviews, off the back of completing which Lisa was subsequently invited onto their 2020 Imagining Business Certificate, which took those futureplanning skills and adapted them for times of adversity, such as our ongoing pandemic. Now a Goldman Sachs alumni and public speaker, Lisa found the experience invaluable.

What Covid-19 did affect was Lisa’s training. From previously competing in some 40 to 50 races over a 12-month period, there were suddenly none. “Week in, week out; no races for 15 months,” she lamented.

Instead, though, it gave her time to focus on her training and adapt her training needs. Believing it important not just physically, but mentally to have “a goal”, Lisa resorted to time trials and virtual runs against the clock. Training six days a week and on four days doing two different disciplines, one of which is always weight-training, Lisa swears that it only serves to build power for her cycling and running. As she said, “ask any Olympian” and they will admit to a massive amount of weight-training, as it increases endurance. Often overlooked, working with weights provides for a functional physique, which is incredibly important specifically in the female fitness world, where competitors are afraid to develop “bulky muscles” and acquire a “macho look”. Nonetheless, when one goes from competing all the time to not competing at all, the risk of injury increases greatly. It becomes a task to just maintain a pre-race level of fitness. Fortunately, Lisa was able to compete in Madeira in October 2020 and brought home a Gold Medal for the 10km for Team GB.

So, how does one get started on such a successful sporting path? The answer is not so straightforward, perhaps. As a girl, Lisa attended a grammar school where the only options were tennis, netball, and hockey. It left her with a “bad taste for sport”.

Rather, during the stresses of life as an undergraduate, she took to “military-style” training, in addition to running for anxiety. Yet, it wasn’t until 2007 that she was invited by a running coach to join the Liverpool Pembroke Sefton club, where she became “fitter and faster” than ever before, running 5km and 10km at speed, winning County Best in 2014 for the Merseyside County Cross-Country. However, in 2016 she had to undergo a knee operation and it was while rehabilitating on a bike post-op that she thought of combining the two.

Joining the Merseyside Tri club for duathlon once she was fully healed, Lisa qualified for Team GB the first time she entered a qualifier.

Never having considered the triathlon due to being “a terrible swimmer”, she has nevertheless come 8th in the World Championship Duathlon and 6th in the European Championships. Now 40, age is no limit: she becomes only “quicker and quicker” and can work with “heavier and heavier” weights.

What is important is enjoyment and “increasing serotonin”, increasing “happiness”: placing great onus on the mental health benefits of exercise, to find no enjoyment in what one does “would otherwise be destructive”, she thinks.

Finally, asked if she has time to sleep, with a laugh the indomitable vegan duathlete businesswoman admitted she gets a minimum of eight hours a night (“I sleep like a baby”). Putting it down to her vegan diet – animal products, especially meat, are known to take far longer to digest than fruit and veg and in turn lead to sluggishness – Lisa firmly believes a good night’s sleep is crucial for cell repair and renewal and being the best one can be in the gym and on the track. She’s so refreshed from her slumber, in fact, that most days she’s “a spring lamb” of boundless energy – bounding successfully into a future of vitality and velocity, no doubt (interspersed with cuddles from her gorgeous green-eyed Bengal cat, Yoshi).

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Heeding a Vegan Hamilton:

Ahimsa for Today and Tomorrow When a world-class racing driver gets in on the act, you know it’s going to trend. British racing legend Sir Lewis Hamilton – no shy user of Instagram – has been vegan for some time now, but it was perhaps the plant-based diet he put his beloved dog, Roscoe, onto that drew the most press attention.

A voice raised yet calm, speaking for the voiceless, Hamilton has become a role model for the younger generation, a guiding figure who mucked in and cleared beachfronts of plastic waste pre the pandemic; a man with much to say and so very rightly criticise about the illegal wildlife trade, supporting Space for Giants in their work against that trade’s barbaric treatment of nonhuman animals.

Not afraid to share the graphic truth of the livestock industry, Hamilton’s online advocacy began in 2018, a year after the sportsman changed his diet for the good of the planet, and the good of his health. In January 2020, just before Covid-19 changed the world, it was revealed he had donated $500,000 [c. £358,000] to aid recovery from the horrific bushfires on Australia’s east coast in which over one billion animals perished. So heartbroken was he, that Hamilton visited New South Wales to raise public awareness over the crucial rehabilitative efforts of wildlife organisations there.

During a previous stay in Japan in 2019, in fact, the F1 racing driver had shared footage filmed by the dolphin welfare organisation, Dolphin Project, urging his followers and fans not to attend cruel dolphin shows – just one instance of the suffering inflicted on marine mammals for profit, dolphins stolen from the wild and thrown into captivity just like the orca whales of Seaworld infamy (see also our article, “Fishing for Constructive Oceanic Compassion & Taking the Conspiracy out of Seafood”, p.8).

Furthermore, Hamilton has recently condemned the shark fin trade, aghast after learning that 1,400lb of shark fin had been seized at a Miami port. His social media post last year was a no-holds-barred reveal, also, of the resultant finless shark sinking to the bottom of the ocean, unable to swim, and dying.

What all this serves to show here is a figure opening the eyes of those who need someone in the spotlight to follow, and to act. On a planet fading (not so slowly at all) as a direct cause of human beings’ selfish actions, it is laudable that Hamilton won’t let rest the mistaken belief that a non-human animal life is of any less value. As he requested his followers, “Please don’t turn away”, so he doesn’t seem to be either. In fact, he’s running towards the problems with fury, trailing an army of supporters in his wake.

What this also illuminates is the hope that such teaching of the concept of ahimsa (or “nonviolence”, towards both self and others) can hold for the future. If the youth of today can latch onto the idea of compassion, learn about the truth of the critical environmental predicament, learn also about the incredibly easy health benefits of leading a plant-based lifestyle – all through a celebrity, whether Hamilton or other likeminded star – then all for the better, as such words spread further and their echoes resonate longer, particularly in this digital age.

For, the tide is certainly turning, reaching beyond the bounds of school climate strikes. Late last year, The Guardian reported that young activists (four children and two young adults) in Portugal had filed a climate change case at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, the first ever of its kind. Represented by environmental and climate change expert barrister Marc Willers QC, and others, the case was crowdfunded with the help of NGO Glan (Global legal action network). The activists sued for countries – a list of 33 was provided, on which the UK was named as one – to be more ambitious in emissions targets to offset climate change (seeking “a minimum 65% emissions reduction target by 2030”), so as to protect the mental and physical wellbeing of the young in the near future: a generation currently anxious about the health effects of exercising outdoors in a polluted world, and one which is becoming increasingly warmer.

Initiated after the terrible forest fires in Portugal of 2017, that country has seen hotter and hotter summers each year since. Indeed, scientists predict that between the years 2071 and 2100, there could be a “thirty-fold increase in deaths from heatwaves in [the whole of] western Europe” if nothing is done to arrest and lower global warming. As it stands, there are periods of time when youngsters cannot exercise outside due to the sheer intensity of the heat. That’s to say nothing of the water shortages and ill effects on food production that such heatwaves cause.

As Just Natural Health & Beauty has reported extensively, a leading cause of the climate disaster we are currently living through is animal agriculture, specifically the methane produced by livestock and the deforestation undertaken on an unfathomable scale in order to clear land both for the creatures’ monoculture feed and for their enforced keeping before slaughter.

So, while Hamilton and others like him bring ever more awareness to the ecological situation as it stands, while urban centres like New York City see the concept of a “communal vegan fridge” implemented (a plant-based step-up on the brilliance of the foodbank, needed more than ever as a result of widespread pandemic job-loss), and while vegan food overall becomes fabulously mainstream and deliciously desirable – it is heartwarming to think we are perhaps not leaving the youth of today a dying tomorrow. Rather, it can be rainbow-hued and nourishing, diversely animal-filled and flourishing: there is still time to make it a planet of harmonious balance, as it once was; not the exploited and polluted living hell of today. Let’s leave our children dreams, not nightmares. And if that process begins with the example of a Formula One racing driver, so much the better. justnaturalhealth.co.uk | Just Natural Health & Beauty

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A Balanced

Approach to racing

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Please do follow our progress in the World Superbike Championship this season via crescentyamahaworldsbk.com or @PataYamahaBRIXX on social media and check out the races live on Eurosport – thank you and all the best to you and your families for a great rest of the year.

he argument correctly stands that motorcycles are largely still fuelled by petrol, but the incredible fuel efficiency of urban two-wheelers (up to 150mpg) and ultra-low emissions from their four-stroke engines means using much less fuel and producing far less carbon on the daily commute. Of course, the motorcycle industry now heads towards electrification, and as technology continues to develop rapidly we look forward to seeing greater uptake in alternative forms of cost-effective transport.

In the current climate, many of us can only focus on the steps we can take as individuals and small companies to facilitate change.

So in a day-to-day sense, my responsibility is to ensure personal support and the human performance of the entire Yamaha WorldSBK team. In 2021, this includes regular Covid-19 PCR testing and provision of high quality PPE equipment. Equally, the pandemic has highlighted a greater drive towards individual health and immune system support and as such, both the team and riders use Balanced Vitamin C Complex, Zinc and Vitamin D3 to further shore up their health through the rigours of international travel and fierce competition.

It isn’t one supplement to fix every challenge that faces us, but it’s a step in the right direction and creates an increased awareness of the benefits of taking responsibility for our own wellbeing.

You may ask yourself what a motorsport-related column is doing in Just Natural’s Health & Beauty magazine this quarter. On the face of it, racing motorcycles at speeds of over 200mph is far from a lifestyle focused on consideration for the planet through making better choices in our everyday life, but as we know from the global turmoil seen in the past year alone, things are far more nuanced than at first glance.

As Yamaha’s official World Superbikes Team, last year we had to reassess how we could continue to operate in the Covid-19 era, looking at every aspect of our operations prior to a return to race circuits around Europe in June of 2020. Our partnership with Balanced was born from a desire to do everything in our power to support the health of our 30-strong workforce, and to allow them to operate at the highest level no matter where we are. The combination of travel, alongside long working days in pursuit of winning on track, can take its toll on the body and mind.

While my personal family at home focuses on a largely sugar, dairy and meat-free diet, it’s a fact that my race team family, in a traditional motorsport environment, do not all commit to similar choices.

However, we do our best to support and encourage lifestyle changes wherever possible, not only for the health and wellbeing of the team itself, but to make a conscious effort to offset the environmental elements of the racing activity.

Yamaha, as one of the largest motorcycle manufacturers in the world, has a clear commitment to urban mobility and to producing low-carbon solutions for the future – be it in its forthcoming power assist bicycles (or “e-bikes”), fully electric scooters or in developing and popularising its easily manoeuvrable threewheel motorcycles which can be ridden on a car licence in order to reduce emissions and congestion caused by larger motor vehicles. As a manufacturer, the company can deliver these intentions to a wider audience through traditional platforms such as the World Superbike programme – excitement and performance on track that drives greater awareness to the brand’s broader range of transport solutions for everyday use. You may not be able to ride like our extremely talented young athletes (Turkish ‘wunderkind’ Toprak Razgatlioglu or reigning World Supersport Champion, Italian Andrea Locatelli) but you can very easily discover the personal freedom of two or three-wheel mobility yourself!

Author: Paul Denning, Team Principal – Pata Yamaha with Brixx WorldSBK

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Yoga

for Children:

Learning Compassion, Laughing Through Lion

t was International Yoga Day on the 21st June this year.

Proposed by India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi and conceived at the United Nations General Assembly in September 2014, it aligned with the longest day of the year, permitting a wide temporal window for a celebratory practice that day (whether one was an early bird or a night owl, or indeed our children were).

The inaugural celebration of International Yoga Day in 2015 saw nearly 36,000 people (including PM Modi and dignitaries from 84 nations) perform some 21 yoga postures (asanas) in Rajpath, New Delhi. The class lasted 35 minutes.

Modi reasoned that yoga creates “harmony between man and nature”, that it “is not about exercise but to discover the sense of oneness with yourself, the world and nature”. Such sentiments could not have been more apt this year, as pandemic restrictions came to an end. We most of us are currently stepping into the future very much aware of the delicate balance between Man and the natural world that keeps everything functioning fluidly. We certainly do not need to be dealing with further zoonotic viruses: the future is an enlightened and (largely) plant-based one, and we must educate the next generation in those teachings. As Modi stated, “by changing our lifestyle and creating consciousness” the wellbeing of all will be ameliorated no end.

Whether it’s raising our kiddies vegetarian or vegan, or simply making our children aware of animal suffering and living compassionately – home-schooling (whether full-time or in between the lessons delivered by teachers) ever extends beyond the traditional school curriculum of core subjects and it is a parent’s responsibility to broaden their offspring’s minds to the lived experience of others, non-human animals included.

Yoga is not just reserved for adults.

Where we might strive for perfection and worry about wearing the right gear, finding the best teacher, and remaining consistent on the path to loving to learn our own thoughts – yoga for children is a different matter entirely. It is about joyful release and connecting with their growing bodies, as well as connecting with the planet.

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Whether suffering from hyperactivity or in need of energising, our young can benefit from the breathwork and postures that yoga has to offer, too. A boon for giving them something else to do other than sticking their faces in front of a screen for hours upon hours upon end – in children, a yogic practice has been found to eventually improve the way they socially interact with their peers, as well as increase academic performance after only 10 weeks.

Children are, after all, sponges: if parents are chilling out and connecting with themselves through a yogic routine, logic dictates that offspring moving through the same flow of asanas are going to benefit similarly. Giving the established asanas wild animal names helps spark the imagination of young minds and allows them vocal release when yoga can seem an all too silent practice. It also serves to concentrate young minds on the physical experience of those creatures.

At the end of the day, really, a home yoga practice for all the family is bound to lead to healthier, happier Brits all round. From the physical to the mental and even the spiritual: just be sure to make it fun. Aum to that, we say.

Yoga for Children Mountain (Tadasana)

There is strength in stillness and stability. This pose requests of youngsters a silence at the beginning of the practice.

Camel (Ustrasana)

Tree (Vrkasana)

Giraffe

Visualisation is the key to making this interesting: arms become branches, fingers become leaves, and feet and toes solid roots for balance.

(Parsva Urdhva Tadasana) Oh, to be as tall as a giraffe. Bending to the side as slowly and gracefully as these gentle animals gradually connects children with their bodies, building up to the more active asanas to follow.

Lion (Marjaryasana)

Kangeroo

There’s no hump like a camel’s hump – a wonderful stretch for little backs sat too long at screens this year.

How like a cat the lion rounds his back and stretches, but beware his roar when he brings his face up once again…

(Utkatasana) The key to this is, of course, bouncing back up to standing!

Dog (Adho Mukha Svanasana)

Zebra

Only the fittest of dogs can bring their heels to the floor. If they can’t, though, be sure to reassure them that they can bend their knees if they need to.

(Eka Pada Adha Mukha Svanasana) Zebras are impatient creatures, kicking out their legs when bored.

But what do they sound like?

Mouse (Balasana)

Whale Pose

Cow Face

Butterfly (Badhakonasana)

Slow and secure, use this last (underwater) back and quad stretch before the wind down in Savasana.

A fun twist of a tongue-out pose that works on nearly every part of the body. Was that a moo that escaped just then..?

(Setu Bandhasana)

Cut along the dotted line and save this page for later!

(Gomukhasana)

The mouse is shy, the mouse is sleepy, and this little mouse is oh so squeaky!

The butterfly beats its wings, opening up the hips. The importance is in the reps.

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Industry Insider:

Healthfood Stores & a Summer of Hope Paul’s Natural Foods Elsecar Heritage Centre, Yorkshire Paul Nugent has owned Paul’s Natural Foods in Elsecar Heritage Centre for the past three and a half years, selling “totally natural” foods and remedies to locals and tourists alike. Having opened a second unit earlier this year a mere 50 yards away from the first with his partner, Rachel, Paul feels the unique location has been a large part of what has kept them going through the irregular times of the pandemic, and part of the reason for the shop’s success despite the naysayers.

Catering for intolerances, leaning towards organic in the main, Paul’s Natural Foods sits happily in the enclosed historic site once a centre of iron and coal production implemented by the Earls Fitzwilliam. Walled all round, until 1988 it had lain derelict for decades. Over these past 30 plus years, small space upon small space has been opened up in the abandoned workshops, to the point that the site, Grade-II listed in some parts, is currently seeking English Heritage funding to improve even further.

When Just Natural Health & Beauty spoke with Paul nearly three weeks after the second shop’s opening, there was a thunderstorm brewing of tropical proportions, the sky darkened to pitch black with the threat of rain. An apt meteorological parallel to a May in which many were still wary of the future as lockdown restrictions eased and we all cautiously stepped out finally into a proper semblance of the “new normal”.

Paul began in retail straight out of school, running a newsagent’s for about 20 years before becoming a business advisor to SMEs for a decade or so. Switching to health foods and natural wellbeing three and a half years ago, he feels his stores have a future precisely because they are not on a traditional high street and are instead blessed to be situated in the Elsecar Heritage Centre. People, he thinks, have developed “big company boredom” and that they are yet nervous about returning to the high street, whereas Elsecar is considered safe, in all respects.

And then there is the subject of trust: a man lately diagnosed with diabetes, say, can walk into Paul’s store and know that when he is advised of what he can and can’t now eat, but told also that he can still enjoy himself without harming himself – he honestly can. It is this authenticity that Paul believes will be key in the future, customers returning to the independents and farmers direct for what is “real”. This way of thinking has served to create incredible customer loyalty; a loyalty which saw Paul’s Natural Foods through the first lockdown and beyond.

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What a change it was: crash barriers and “Don’t Walk” signs for social distancing, padlocks and a return of squirrels and other nature; a jarring switch from busy and bustling to tumbleweed emptiness. In the initial panic buying stage, Paul had to hire a new member of staff just to field calls asking for deliveries. Though that person would work the usual 9 to 5, Paul and Rachel didn’t finish until 7pm some nights, trying to keep up with demand both in store (which they kept open only 4 hours a day due to diminished footfall) and by Paul driving his car throughout Barnsley and the surrounding area within a 15-mile radius on delivery duty. That’s the benefit of being a small business: independents can move quickly in retraining staff to meet new demands. Although tiring, he found this new part of the job different and enjoyable, even those moments when he was stopped by police road checks (to ensure he really was permitted to be zipping about like he was).

Of course, a local council grant helped matters when times became a little tougher, lending confidence during such a sustained period of “unusual” trading. This helped to set up a website, whereas before the store got by through a little Facebook activity and good old-fashioned telephone business if people hadn’t managed to set foot in-store.

In addition to the usual suspects of flour and yeast, long-life alternative milks and spreads – “the basics”, which included Cheeky Panda toilet rolls that normally only sell at a rate of one box a week – Paul found that supplements weren’t a priority any longer and a common sight was instead a person with raw, red, extremely dry, chapped hands from excessive hand sanitiser use and handwashing. Neem soaps therefore sold out, being fragrance free and skin-beneficial.

Although Paul considers Covid-19 might have done some good for general increased self-reflection, and although there was the summer reprieve for a while, with cafés reopening (queues included) and a sense of survival stoked with increased trade (in the main from “treat” items), the second lockdown was a considerable blow. By then, mainstream supermarkets had adapted to customers’ demands at such times, so the overflow trade didn’t really find its way back. Sales of Vitamin D and vitamin C and other immune support supplements went up as research was rolled out in the press, including the positive effects of probiotics on the gut microbiome and the benefits of a detox. Christmas was a subdued affair, with very few seasonal products snapped up. By 2021’s third lockdown, Paul and Rachel underordered intentionally just to get by, ticking over as one of only three shops still open out of an original 30 in the Centre.

What have they learned through all this? Firstly, that to survive one has to be multifaceted, and also to have a broad offer, keep prices low, be locatable in a bricks n’ mortar shop – and get a website up and running and operating as well as it can. Indeed, in the future, in addition to continuing his valued high-quality customer service and formalising the pandemic-instigated delivery service, Paul’s aim is to make the website “fantastic” and become the biggest independent natural foods retailer in the area by the end of 2022. Having at times felt like a GP pharmacy during the lockdowns, many flocking to him for ethical natural remedies, one has faith in Paul achieving his goals.

Distinctly admirable goals, especially when you learn that 8 years ago Paul was diagnosed with incurable cancer.

Given 10 years to live, Paul had received another 3-monthly report on his progress just before we spoke and, although the results are not as bad as they should be at this point, there has sadly been no miracle cure resulting from his switch to a natural foods diet after that terrible day those 8 years ago. Previously a marathon runner, he had thought he was in prime condition. Now, drinking raw fruit and vegetable juices everyday and eating mainly plant-based, Paul’s shop and its expansion has answered his final wish to get people to think more closely about their health and what they are actually doing to their bodies.

Certainly, trade has picked up again now, coffee and tea in particular recently seeing a boom, and Paul and Rachel are where they were pre-Covid. Further, the new second shop is doing very well, garnering incredible interest on social media, with some 42,000 people liking its announcement post instead of the usual 400. Offering more zero waste and home compostable products (though without the dispensers or risk of levers being pulled for fun), Paul and Rachel portion out products into containers and bags which customers have brought with them.

Paul’s Natural Foods is a story about trying to make a difference, it is Paul’s story, a sad yet inspiring tale of sharing with other people the love of what he has himself discovered. And there’s a lot more to tell yet. justnaturalhealth.co.uk | Just Natural Health & Beauty

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Better Food Wapping Wharf, St. Werburghs, & Clifton, Bristol Those in the South West within driving distance of Bristol will most probably have heard of Better Food, and the small independent chain of shops which has, in the words of marketing manager, Matthew Philpott “weathered the storm fairly well”.

Back in March 2020, Better Food might have looked very similar to the struggling scene of most independent retailers, with the trials and tribulations of stocking and restocking, panicked customers demanding bulk orders of anything store cupboard, from toilet rolls (of course), to pasta and tinned goods, and baking supplies and household essentials.

Nonetheless, because the company had already put in place supply chains prioritising local producers, with over 50% of suppliers within 20 miles, Better Food rode the pandemic wave on a steady platform of loyal custom (and quickly implemented WFH meetings in order to allow for the trials of self-isolating).

With over 100 staff members across three shops, Better Food is a Real Living Wage Foundation employer.

Begun 25 years ago by Phil Haughton, who is still active as chairman, from its initial start as an organic delivery box scheme run from his home, growing into a Saturday market and eventually into a bricks n’ mortar ethical food company offering an alternative take on supermarket shopping, with everything under one roof – being an essential retailer, Better Food traded throughout the pandemic. The first lockdown was logistically the most challenging. It was positive in terms of sales, but the café side of the business took a hit, despite being one of a handful of 4* Soil Association-certified cafés in the country. The important thing, said Matthew (whose office is next to and above the store), was that they survived.

Indeed, when they and other retailers resurfaced into a summer of hope, those things that had been learned were even more securely put in place, rolling out smoother online shopping and delivery capabilities with “Good Sixty”. Pricematching products to rival supermarkets, Better Food has also been running a loyalty programme of sorts, customers collecting stamps on an app (Be Better) when they brought (and still bring) their own containers in-store for refilling at their zero waste gravity stations or when visiting the café, which (apart from in two of their stores) continued to cook “Made For You” organic ready-meals-to-go throughout.

Typical takeout orders included fresh salads and dips, with five or six types of each to choose from, as well as vegan sausage rolls and quiches. For the heartier appetite, vegan tagine and a squash, goat’s cheese and pine nut lasagne seemed to hit the gastronomic spot.

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Although online, a good proportion of customers are vegan, Better Food’s customers en masse are of a “broad church” of alimentary desires. Distinctly, the deli remained popular in this flexitarian age we’re living in, wary of the zoonotic, living more plant-based, yet sometimes needing that boost of haem iron and other essential vitamins and minerals found in honestly reared animal protein. To this end, Better Food’s deli offers lots of different cuts which adhere to the company ethos of “Organic. Local. Ethical.”

So popular was it, in fact, that they ran out of chicken from one supplier whose methods are so ethical that they refused to accelerate slaughter of their birds to meet consumer demands: if people want the most humanely raised meat, they must accept the holistic, slow food concept in its entirety. Better Food’s ethos is, after all, doing the right thing for the planet.

Despite the trend for primal meats and paleo diets and a general nose-to-tail non-wasteful mindset, Matthew noted that Better Food has not seen a greater demand for offal.

However, carcasses and marrow bones for bone broths have been coveted like crazy for their purported immunity supportive properties.

And when Seaspiracy came out, customers sought guidance from the store, trusting in them and keen to learn of their fish-sourcing policy.

By the time September came round, it seemed everyone was in need of a little TLC, “treat” items seeing an upward surge, and all in good time, too, with 2020’s finals months seeing tighter and tighter restrictions once more enforced.

Nonetheless, Better Food was fully prepared and so it was all water off (an organic) duck’s back to them, having put processes in place months ahead of other businesses.

It is because people value the traceability of their foods, their links with smaller producers, that Better Food seems to be steaming ahead as the choice for those of an environmental consciousness. But it is also because they work on good common business sense, too.

And now, in these heady days when we have the taste of freedom on our lips as much as the next organic, healthy bite of picnic sandwich of local fresh veg and either organic cold cuts or plant-based alternative?

Now, things are pretty much back to normal for the company in terms of sales behaviours, though their Wapping Wharf store has especially seen business booming due to its outdoor Harbourside seating area. It is, after all, a fairly unusual time still, in the grand (pandemic) scheme of things. So, why not share a little positivity with a glass of wine or beer in hand? Certainly, Better Food is a great choice both for the connoisseur of local craft brews (über-popular during the lockdowns) and those looking for 100% organic wine, with one of the biggest selections in the UK. Although they do stock some locally produced vineyard creations, there are global vintages as well.

So, while we raise a glass to the future, what does Better Food have in the pipeline? Matthew hinted at two new stores in the Bristol area, one this autumn and one in Summer ’22. The Bristol food scene as a whole places importance on organic, ethical, and local. The grand scheme though is, with improved concepts, to take things outside the city and expand over the next decade to a planned 100-store total.

Independent stores promoting health and wellbeing through organic food, ethical means of production, and local supply chains? We can only say cheers to that. justnaturalhealth.co.uk | Just Natural Health & Beauty

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Sunrise Wholefoods Castle Douglas, Scotland Talking to Pauline Tilbury is one of those pleasant discourses that could easily be indulged in most enjoyably for hours (perhaps even alongside the crumpets and tea she herself had been relishing after 3 hours tending the garden just before our call on a day off). A trained medical herbalist, Pauline and her husband Steve (who was busy at the shop when we spoke) moved up to Castle Douglas from London in 1990, taking over a practice run by a friend. The next year, they began Sunrise Wholefoods. And the rest is history.

While in London, a general lack of organic fruit and vegetables and wholefoods had seen them both tend an allotment and keep bees (Steve is a keen cook), and it was that ethos of maintaining their level of wellbeing while scraping a living which trained them well for the 36-acre smallholding they now lovingly manage and adore and share with their two beloved dogs. With 4,000 or so inhabitants, Castle Douglas is an intimate location in which to reside and work. Laid out on a grid system, Sunrise Wholefoods is now one of nearly 100 independent businesses that populate the high street itself. But to find a business for sale in town is a competitive affair and their first bricks n’ mortar location was rather different, being as it was on an old industrial estate.

Absolutely “freezing”, Sunrise began life in what was once Fortnam Farm Chemicals (not a very appealing predecessor, granted). Nonetheless, it came with builtin shelving. Though early customers might have jested, “Where’s your rat poison?” (and though some might not have been requesting such in jest), the shop space permitted Pauline and Steve to hand-pack organic foods in biodegradable, compostable cellophane, and to place each label on by hand, then wait for the people to come. It also came with a portion of a Victorian walled garden to rent, in which the Tilburys could grow and sell organic veg. Within two years, they were no longer making a loss. It was timely: a grocer’s became available on the high street. In order to be in a financial position to buy it, they sold their home, moved into a rental, and made sure the new premises and Sunrise’s ethos, “bit by bit by bit” just “grew and grew and grew”. For the past decade, the books have been comfortingly balanced. And that rental they had to move into had a whole walled garden with it in which to grow enough veggie supplies for the shop for five years.

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Pauline and Steve have always had an environmental concern, both in their private life (neither have a mobile phone, neither have been on a plane or have any desire to go abroad on holiday) and when wearing their business hats, absolutely never allowing “triple wrapping” into the store and never handing out one single-use carrier bag.

It is common sense, despite the few who might gnash teeth and wail, but if people do forget to bring their own shopping bags, Sunrise has Just Natural Cotton Tote bags available or cardboard boxes (no need to stuff things into pockets!).

Selling about 70% food and 30% supplements and bodycare, Sunrise specialises in teas and herbs and spices, doing a bustling trade in all these. Pauline estimates that around 30% of customers are probably plant-based, with another 10% leaning towards it, but Dumfries & Galloway, she noted, is a farming area. It is grass and sheep and cows that grow there. Vegetables are very hard to cultivate naturally, given the harsh climate and lack of soil depth that is needed by root crops like carrots. That said, some people have grown up vegetarian in the area and Sunrise offers a cheese counter well-stocked by local, organic suppliers. The Tilburys themselves are not vegetarian (though people assume they are), but do eat plant-based naturally about 4 days a week. However, they also keep goats and milk them, tend to ducks and eat and sell their eggs, and still keep bees for honey.

When March 2020 happened, it was “Hell on Earth,” according to Pauline. She couldn’t believe the sheer volume of panicking people. It took a good three weeks for things to settle. Getting emotional at the thought of it, Pauline remembered how she had never seen her shelves so empty, had never before in 30 years of trading been unable to do anything about it, either. Would they ever be able to get stock in again? Would a customer bring in the very thing that they might all die of? Happily, Pauline and Steve rarely get ill and Covid was no exception.

What worried them both also, though, was the possibility of weevils: all that extra flour, keeping the dust from contaminating anything as it was individually packaged for customers… It put them both on edge, but they got through. Sadly, they did have to be dragged kicking and screaming into using plastic packaging for the extra portioning for a time due to running out of their usual eco-friendly materials. Nevertheless, increasing their orders of organic vegetables from fortnightly to weekly, it was clear that the appetite for health was booming.

Then lockdown was put in place. Given that a large proportion of their customers are elderly, Dumfries & Galloway being a popular retirement area, the Stay At Home order was strictly adhered to by many. So it was that Pauline and Steve (like other independent health store owners) had to plunge into deliveries. Shortening their opening hours to 10am to 3pm, closing Mondays, they managed to take email orders (they don’t have a website) and BACS payments, and when closed would run about the shop making up baskets and boxes. Deliveries to the store itself are on Thursdays. They couldn’t fulfil orders when open, because social distancing had meant putting a screen up and arrows on the floor and there wasn’t the room within guidelines to be by the shelves at the same time as their customers.

And in the summer, the customers indeed came, though being the tourist season – something which many greedily clung to and utilised, just-freed from lockdown as we all had been – there was a disappointingly large proportion of simple lookey-loos. But what helps Sunrise is the natural ventilation garnered merely by leaving both the front and back doors open (to say nothing of their green ethos of generating their own electricity from solar panels for over 10 years now).

A 14-mile commute, with 3 members of staff, all of them in different directions, the deliveries were able to be split up. However, this meant that they all got to drive around the countryside while everyone else was permitted only a restricted allocation of time out of doors. Being as they are in such a beautiful natural setting, it was rather enjoyable to zoom around, seeing the little villages that outline Castle Douglas (where one resident would be elected to receive the boxes on behalf of others). The Tilburys’ smallholding, of course, is its own little Eden, where they grow their own fruit and veg and make their own bread. There are clear skies, no traffic noise; simply a peaceful rural idyll.

They can see the Lake District hills, grow fruit such as apples, blackberries, currants, and use polytunnels to protect other crops from exposure. Whereas they used to grow specifically for the shop, however, they now grow for themselves and sell any surplus. Indeed, their regular customers get first pick – whether that’s organic asparagus, purple sprouting broccoli, or other seasonal produce.

In truth, with handwashing and the importance of hand sanitisers – the Tilburys were already dab – um – hands at that, being established food handlers with hygiene certificates (“Nothing new!” Pauline exclaimed), but the masks did cause Pauline problems, as they steamed up her glasses. So she opted for the neck versions and fitted a plastic band inside for a snug-fit. Now a fashion piece, she has several which get alternated in the wash.

While the lockdown at the start of 2021 saw no symbolic product fly off the shelves (barring vitamin D for a little while), and while there was a slight dip in their takings, footfall did return as more and more people had their vaccinations. Confidence was in the air and it was blossom-sweet. With some having quite literally not left their homes in a year, they weren’t ready for a supermarket and Sunrise was a safe zone to dare to enter and see a friendly face and indulge in fantastic, real customer service.

This has meant organic vegetable orders have been returned to fortnightly (perhaps due to a pandemic-inspired GYO movement). They aim to weather the summer ahead and see what happens, but the Tilburys are wary of a future ebbing and flowing in and out of lockdowns.

At the end of the day, Pauline muses, she and Steve run a shop they love and are interested in, and lead a lifestyle that suits it perfectly. Although Covid is a terrible, terrible thing, she sees some good coming from it in people’s reappraisal of their health and how they treat their bodies.

The Tilburys also do what they do to pay for dog food: lifelong dog owners, they currently share their home (and, though the neighbouring farmer might shudder, their furniture) with border collies Meggy and Toby who “think” they can herd, but who only together make up one decent sheepdog. Teamwork, then, exists all round on their smallholding and in Pauline and Steve’s lifelong professional lives. A spirit of union to be respected and perhaps emulated in these strange “new normal” days.

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Grain Wholefoods Hull, Yorkshire Kayte White kept Grain Wholefoods open throughout the entirety of the pandemic. She stuck fast to trading as the tidal demand for flour and pasta came in, stayed true to the shop’s foundational purpose of providing health and wellness supplies when customer appetites switched to immunity products, and to CBD for anxiety (when B vitamins didn’t work) and insomnia issues over coronavirus concerns. Indeed, business is better than pre-Covid and White thinks it is because people now want local, now care more about their and their loved ones’ health, having seen just how fragile that is.

Located on a busy shopping street, surrounded by residential properties, as well as a bohemian community and the nearby university, 15 years ago people came for “niche” products. Now, from being the go-to store pre the recent “vegan period” that has seen supermarkets take the bulk of the business in plant-based alternatives away from independents, happily Kayte is able to provide something supermarkets can’t: for the past couple of years, nutritionist Jolanta has worked in the store three days a week and offered a fortnightly bioresonance clinic in a space at the back. A 20-minute consult costs only £10, wherein Jolanta looks for anything that might be compromising the immune system. This can cross over into seeing if any deficiencies could be caused by a lack of digestive enzymes. Certainly, interest in maintaining a healthy gut microbiome has taken off, with non-dairy yogurts and kombucha incredibly popular products.

For those for whom WFH living became somewhat isolated, people have yet been able to have a chat over lunch at the corner-located shop, coming to collect pasties and cakes made by two girls in the kitchen who work three days a week. “Geoff” provides the honey, a local lady stocks them with organic eggs, and the bread cupboard is filled with delights from Patrick at Feast Rising (who runs breadmaking courses, as well). Grain Wholefoods also sells organic fruit and vegetables (for those struck by a sudden need for healthy snacking and more substantial meal prep) and its most popular goodies are probably, Kayte says, the peanut butter pies and sweet dahl pasties (always a quick seller), as well as the CBD “Happy Balls”. The store is pretty much all-vegan and similarly caters for gluten-free and grain-free lifestyles (despite its name).

Kayte doesn’t have a website, as she has enough to do already and has always done okay with local custom.

Indeed, familiar faces are what keep the community as a whole going. But one member of staff runs the Facebook page and there have been many changes implemented.

For instance, deliveries suddenly necessarily went out every day during the lockdowns, fulfilling same-day orders for older people, and sometimes Kayte and her partner wouldn’t finish until 9pm. Now, deliveries are reduced to Wednesdays and Fridays and one member of staff who had to come back from Australia due to Covid carries them out. Another development has been an expansion of their zero waste options, dispensers full of red lentils and rice, coconut flour and salt, and household items such as soaps and liquid cleaners. Although their student clientele has returned, Kayte has noticed as yet there are still fewer local people setting foot in the store than pre-pandemic.

Nonetheless, it all seems to have balanced itself out.

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Before Grain Wholefoods, Kayte had moved down from Yorkshire to the South, working for 13 years in various capacities on an organic farm, selling antique furniture, and importing garden furniture. When she fell pregnant with her daughter, however, she moved back up North. That’s when her partner heard that Grain Wholefoods was up for sale and he suggested she might be the person for the job. A vegetarian since she was just 5 years old, and vegan for a decade until her mid-20s, Kayte is once again vegan (and gluten-free), as is her daughter. She has had a lifelong interest in holistic living and came to explore homeopathy and herbalism when her dog was very poorly, as well as delve much further during a close friend’s battle with cancer and for minding her own 88-year-old mum’s health in general. One of those “it just kind of happened” events, she hasn’t looked back from becoming an independent health shop owner.

Kayte has plans for expansion in the future, as well as switching to an EPOS system from hand-ordering with codes, and potentially even putting in some treatment rooms upstairs. Although her present canine companion, Dylan, is a little too friendly to meet and greet customers in store (as most cockapoos are), Grain’s staff are an incredibly welcoming bunch. Indeed, for Kayte, customer service is all about those little, meaningful interactions with people.

The whole reason for owning and running a shop like Grain Wholefoods is to help others. And sometimes, all people really need is to talk to another human being.

Hanover Health Edinburgh, Scotland

If you’re looking for a natural with a sense of humour to put you at ease, John McKee is the independent health and wellness retailer to go visit the next time you’re in Edinburgh. Almost certainly the oldest health food shop in the world (whatever else Wikipedia might tell you), Hanover Health opened in 1904 and since then has not ceased trading once (unlike some of those who profess roots stretching back into the mid-1800s, yet which are more herbalists than health food shops). During the pandemic it was a close, close call – “We have had it really hard” – but John and his team (which includes a trained nutritionist and medical herbalist) were determined not to mar the store’s unbroken history. The “responsibility of legacy” is all too real.

Pre-Covid, the shop had not been in a better state. John has owned Hanover Health for the past six years and has worked there all his adult life, ever since he got a Saturday job there in 1994 as a student. Having by happy accident come to Edinburgh to study Biology, always interested in environmental issues, although he switched to Politics and Modern History in his second year, John has found that awareness of global issues has been a huge help in the natural health sector, because you are oh-so-aware of the world around you: it helps to understand the customers better, and to understand the origins of the products. By engaging natural health, John wants people to lessen the burden on the NHS: “Don’t wait to get ill,” he implores.

John had expanded the stock to provide a wider choice of foods, fostering numerous dietary trends which stores such as his have been ahead of the curve in promoting – ever environmentally and ethically – for years. This includes vegetarianism, unprocessed eating, turn-of-thecentury organics, Fairtrade, low-plastic, and most recently veganism and zero waste. Hanover Health is a nutritional remedy-focussed shop, after all.

Since Covid, with a deep sigh, John admits they “have suffered massively” in the “city desert”, but that he refuses to be “all doom and gloom”. Located in the centre of Edinburgh, the Scottish government’s messages of Stay Local and Work From Home reduced their customer numbers by up to 70%. In the beginning, Hanover Health was reluctant to sell online as the basic premise of the business is its knowledgeable team of staff who can look people in the eye and talk to them, building a relationship in order to help them. By contrast, online retail is pricefocussed rather than using the right product in the right way, John said. And this is what they passionately believed, but they were forced to change their minds quite quickly.

In May 2020, they went with Emporio and Microcell, and in only five weeks had a website up and running, listing their circa 2,500 products.

However, the number of online orders was but a “small fraction” of what they were used to from customer footfall.

Despite offering an in-house delivery option, as well as supporting DPD Royal Mail service, the underwhelming response to their innovations only cemented John’s belief that bricks n’ mortar retail is incomparable, and Hanover Health is the genuine article in such a shopping experience.

Deliveries are ad hoc and done by courier latterly, since demand dwindled from every day.

After everything, John is happily seeing an upturn in customers visiting the shop again. Long passed the days of the Flour Frenzy and Loo Roll Loading, fewer immunity products, if any, have been the – uh – order of the day recently (tastes leaning rather towards probiotics and premium supplements now). There might be a misperception, John accedes, that independents don’t populate city centres, the public thinking only high streets provide those individual retailer experiences. But Hanover Health is a self-described “centre of excellence in the city”, one which is run on a passion for helping people.

John has “never made vast piles of profit. I’m not driving a Lamborghini – I have a bike!”, but that’s not why he is in this business. He wants customers to appreciate the “specialist retailer, rather than non-human chain”; simply, he wants “to talk to people who want to talk to us, to be part of their journey”.

John was awaiting the return of the office workers in June when we spoke, a mass of custom that has been entirely missing (“Ordinarily, there are 10,000 of them”).

Nonetheless, he is apprehensive that habits might have changed. Hanover Health, however, has not and they aim to “maintain a fantastic inventory and personal service”, ready for healthy snack and immune system support requests as we all step out tentatively into this “new normal” world, not yet safe, not yet definable, but a world of hope, for sure.

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The Health Food Shop Richmond, Yorkshire Another independent carrying on a legacy is The Health Food Shop in the Yorkshire Dales. Taken over only in February this year by Dominic and Tania Fava, the store is celebrating 40 years of serving the local Richmond community, its history stretching back to 1981, when Dominic’s parents first opened.

A quaint little space, but with an extensive range of some 2,500 products (thanks in no small part to Dominic’s DIY shelving expansion), the Favas took the familial reins surprisingly without much apprehension. “Was there trepidation that it could go pear-shaped?” Mused Dominic.

The answer was one of calm logic: people are always going to need support with their health. Indeed, perhaps no more so than in these uncertain times.

The couple both switched to running The Health Food Shop from careers in marketing, moving back up to Dominic’s childhood county from the South of England to keep the store in the family and “learn the ropes” during the 2020 Christmas period. Indeed, Dominic remembers holidays working alongside his parents, as his siblings did as well, and remembers, too, a broad spectrum of products available from the start (ranging from organic and general health foods, to more specialist diet items and, of course, homeopathic remedies and supplements). Admittedly the precise stock has “waxed and waned” over the years, but there have always been mueslis and supplements and flour – that ingredient of mass hysteria that was sold out as the coronavirus swept the planet, as infamously sought after as toilet roll.

Although Dominic’s mother wasn’t available for comment on what it was like to battle through the pandemic lockdowns as her swansong to a life running The Health Food Shop, Dominic doubts Covid would have seen her lock up shop, given the other plentiful hurdles she and Irene Wagstaffe (who joined Dominic’s parents early on in the store’s history) faced over the years. Flour, though, was a symbol of mass panic as front doors across the nation (and, indeed, the world) shut in Spring 2020 and the experience of The Health Food Shop was no different: Dominic’s mother sold more flour in a single day than they ever had in a month. People queued for the stuff, ration limits were obliged to be put in place, and the type of flour had no relevance: any flour would do.

Despite that early specific voracious appetite, the Favas have noticed a continued trend for stocking the pantry, customers buying several of individual items, rather than just one. This could be for reducing the time spent going out (a “just in case” mentality), or the couple supposed it could be due to the new-found pleasure in cooking with more unusual ingredients which many people nurtured during the lockdowns. A beneficial change, if ever there was one.

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Certainly, “change” is still in the air at The Health Food Shop at the moment. Dominic and Tania want yet to get their feet under the table – truly understand the 2,500 products, use them themselves, and draw on their own experience in order to be able to honestly advise customers – but at the same time they have determinedly shifted to a more lowplastic, zero waste mentality. Without losing the charm of the circa 6m x 8m shop, and making sure social distancing measures can be safely implemented, the Favas have taken Dominic’s mother’s original refill range (dried goods such as porridge oats, seeds, nuts, dried fruit and the like, for which customers would bring in their own containers) and – in this age when environmental care has become mainstream – now additionally provide products in home-compostable packaging, thus reducing the amount of plastic that ends up in bins and later landfills. Additionally, the couple have introduced refillable home and bodycare items.

Dominic’s parents had been looking to retire for a while and when Rosemary, the woman who had helped them for the past near-15 years, announced her own wish to, the time was right for Dominic and Tania to step in. Tania recounted a childhood greatly influenced by her grandmother, a talented aromatherapist, and becoming vegetarian at the age of 10.

Although it was culturally necessary to partake of some meat and fish in her twenties while travelling the globe, when that journeying came to an end, it felt only natural for Tania to revert to not simply vegetarianism, but a wholly plant-based diet. Although Dominic was a healthy omnivore for many years, he too has recently begun the switch to a whole food plant-based lifestyle.

And the couple are loving it: from Tania’s passion for tahini (a calcium-rich ingredient she uses for homemade houmous and pasta sauces and pretty much “everything”) to self-professed chocoholic Dominic’s delight that healthy vegan chocs are just as good if not better than any other chocolate he’s had in his life (“I never thought I would have a chocolate shop growing up!”) – this enthusiasm for plantbased living and the wide range of products now available, making the switch from animal products so much easier for all, is clearly an energy that will reassure not only their current customers, but many new ones in the future as well.

Admittedly, business is not “booming” quite yet (these are still unpredictable times), but the couple are grateful for the community support they have received. Although they have a delivery service in place, orders taken either by phone or email (the Favas don’t have any “flashy systems” online), with either Dominic or Tania themselves dropping items off on their way home – one customer ventured out for the first time in 13 months recently, specifically to visit The Health Food Shop in person now that the vaccination programme is providing some safety and restrictions are easing.

It must be remembered that we are still in a tentative period of freedom from lockdowns, various strains of the virus and the inevitable return of autumn and winter all variant unknowns which can leave the average person uneasy. The Favas have definitely seen, perhaps unsurprisingly, a rise in the amount of immunity products sold as summer began its approach, customers anxious to protect themselves as they came into contact with other, non-support bubble people again (and the germs that face-to-face interaction naturally entails). That anxiety is a very real thing, and stress support products also saw a spike in sales, such as CBD and herbal remedies for sleep problems. Stress, by extension, often has a direct effect on the digestive system, and a huge number of people have been seeking the couple’s advice as regards functional nutrition for the good of their gut microbiomes.

It is in this regard that one might suggest the pandemic has done some good, slowing down daily life, enforcing a reappraisal of lifestyle, prompting a consideration of how we live both individually and as part of the planetary ecosystem as a whole. Thus, tastes have veered back to independents: people don’t want to shop at big, impersonal supermarkets. Small independent retailers offer not only a safer shopping space, but a far more personal shopping experience, and one which can facilitate a green shift in thinking. People devoid of human-to-human interaction (virtual meetings and chinwags aside) are able to have a conversation, a simple chat about their day or their lives in general and what is impacting them. Talk is a form of therapy, after all, and the ability to natter away the difficulties is a form of liberty, as much as a salve for the soul.

At The Health Food Shop, that need is more than satisfied. So, while the Favas continue their journey, eyes wide open to the future, positive that they can carry forth this lovely family business for years to come – what is in place now in this small area of the Yorkshire Dales is nonetheless something new, a shop still committed to helping people live the best life they can, but with even greater emphasis on living it greenly, with a care and kindness for the environment and for others that might just see this world heal. And that’s something rather wonderful. justnaturalhealth.co.uk | Just Natural Health & Beauty

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Where Are We Now? As Just Natural Health & Beauty wrote at the start of the year, pandemic living as a whole sadly only served to increase the global waste problem, the (over-)packaging of deliveries, the plastic of takeaway containers, and the necessity of disposable masks all combining to nearly undo any efforts taken pre-Covid to change our ways.

Yet, right will prevail. Otherwise known as waste-free living, Zero Waste is still a growing global movement, one that determinedly seeks to arrest this trail of detritus humans have been leaving on Earth simply by everyday, fast-and-convenient existence.

Zero Waste Week 2021 (from the 6th to 10th September) will certainly be tackling a gigantic backwards step in terms of offsetting lockdown delivery waste, but – pandemic lifestyle side effects besides – why did we accept for so long that it was okay to be acting with so little regard for anything outside of the modern day, materialistic human sphere? To live should not mean to be a rubbish-spewing creature, trailing not some sort of terrestrial mollusc slime or similar, but plastic and fumes and goodness knows what else chemically toxic. We leave a mark, yes, but all too soon there won’t be an environment in which to leave anything.

The question is essentially, “How much is enough?”

There is a beauty in the minimal, an aesthetic to simplicity, and – practically – an affordability to the real. But where to begin on that tricky-seeming path to zero waste living? A “category-by-category” approach is one way to go about it and the easiest first step, of course, is tackling food waste. In buying products with less packaging, buying more naturally and with a “whole foods” mentality, it is inevitable that there is a resultant tighter timeframe in which to consume what has been bought, as there aren’t the preservatives in such foods to keep them “fresher” for longer. Indeed, currently it is estimated that approximately 40% of food is wasted. But, by simply planning for the week ahead, vast quantities of food can be saved from being wasted nationally and even globally, and help people keep back a few extra pennies in the process.

The reason why that 40% also matters is that it contributes to GHGs (Greenhouse Gases). According to Earthjustice, in 2018 landfills accounted for around 15% of that year’s methane emissions, the equivalent of 20.6 million vehicles on the road. By buying local and in-season, by supporting farmers’ markets, GHGs are lessened by cutting out foreign imports of fruit and vegetables, and reducing transport emissions on both the seller and the customer ends.

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A Seasonal Food Guide is a handy place to start if the thought appeals but the mind is boggling.

Furthermore, buy only what is needed: actually, properly look in your cupboards and in your fridge before popping out, rather than going into autopilot and buying what you always buy.

Recycling as a concept dates back to Plato in the 4th Century BC. We’ve moved on a bit since then, but today – from foil recycling to composting and worm farms for pet poo (the resultant fertiliser used on ornamental plants only) – as much as zero waste living encompasses plastic-free and low-packaging shopping, it also entails literally a less wasteful lifestyle: preserving and upcycling and thrift store-browsing; even foraging for seaweed on the British coast (if one really wants to reconnect with that human-planet unity).

Although the ethos might be “if you’ve land, grow food; if you’ve a bike, shun the car”, one doesn’t have to have a private garden to promote organic fruit and vegetable cultivation, but perhaps an allotment or merely the time and inclination to contribute to community gardening.

For city dwellers this means popping on a hat of “urban sufficiency” and embracing the notion of “community dependence”, which includes community composting schemes if your Local Authority doesn’t offer curbside collections. For urbanites, a simple balcony area can also suffice.

For those with their own garden, other zerowasters have quoted about 4hrs per week being needed to upkeep a permacultureprosperous garden, logically planting together non-competitional species, indeed grouping those plants which promote the others’ growth. There are also a select few who advocate quail-keeping over chickens, due to the birds being quieter (though the point is they’ll still actively help compost like their cousin egg-layers). Nonetheless, if you can’t be green-fingered in some way, then try to buy organic produce as far as possible. If this can be done in such a way that it benefits local growers, so much the better. When it comes to specific fruits and certain vegetables, the following ‘dirty dozen’ are those most treated with pesticides when not bought organic.

For your and your family’s and the soil’s health’s sake, truly try to only buy these organic:

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Strawberries Cherries Grapes Spinach Kale, collard, and mustard greens Nectarines Peaches Apples Pears Bell and hot peppers Tomatoes Celery If you do find yourself pondering what to do with something such as a leftover teabag, though, it is perhaps worth noting that, as Waitrose & Partners recently reported, even those teabags can play a part in helping the environment these days. By burying the household items for a period of months, farmers later dig them up to check how much they have broken down in that time. Run by the field lab division of Innovative Farmers (funded by the Prince of Wales’ Charitable Fund), the patches of soil where the teabags are buried is both where “catch crops” (those species which grow speedily between main plantings, such as linseed) have been planted previously and in places they haven’t, for comparison. The purpose of the project is to see how much benefit “catch crops” offer to soil health. Using in particular a green tea and rooibos blend bag weighing 2g, the scientists (from the University of Lincoln and Anglian Water) weigh the dug-up teabags to measure the activity of organisms in the earth: the lighter the teabag, the more alive the soil. Something to consider during National Allotments Week from the 10th to 15th August.

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“[P]ick a tomato, while it’s still warm from the sun, and as you pop it into your mouth think about how all of its sugars have been laid down by a summer’s worth of sunlight.”

The Almanac

Tending to land, whatever form that parcel of soil might take, is incomparable for the joy it brings, as much as the good it does the soul and planet. Nonetheless, it is a seasonal, cyclical affair. To this end, sometimes it pays to have a little guidance to (greenfingered) hand: Harvest elderberries, raspberries, and blueberries (and make blueberry jam and/or elderberry wine). Harvest apples. According to the Almanac, this should be done between the 22nd and 30th of the month.

Tidy up your patch of land in time to switch to “wintering mode”. Feed fruit trees and lay mulch. To be done both between the 1st and 8th of the month and its last two days.

Save the seeds from your best and juiciest tomatoes.

Let some beans mature in order to have seeds to put away.

Plant the autumn crops: turnips, carrots, and beetroot between the 8th and 15th; cabbages and kale the week following.

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Although upcycling teabags and more solid foods (banana peel bacon, anyone?) have been a bit of a thing during the pandemic, though, there is more to zero waste living – and life in general – than what one eats (yes, really). Even when it’s National Preserving Awareness Week from the 25th July to 1st August.

Around the house, “zero waste” should slowly take effect as well. As a general rule, for the bathroom, think solid; for the kitchen, think fresh and think dry. And if you’re in the process of updating your kitchen by any chance, then – in addition to opting for sustainable countertops made from either recycled glass, or bamboo, or wood – an electric range stove is more eco-friendly than a gas- or propane-powered one. Both fossil fuels, they release not only carbon monoxide and nitrogen dioxide, but even formaldehyde and other pollutants into the home. The Rocky Mountain Institute has found that asthma and other respiratory illnesses can result in such homes. By contrast, electric range stoves (particularly those powered by renewables like sun and wind) have a distinctly reduced carbon footprint.

We don’t all of us have to go full Thoreau in adopting a less materialistic “Good Life”, but perhaps by getting by a little more frugally, lessening overconsumption in a purposeful “degrowth” in order to once and for all instil the idea of “One Planet Living” – all this will help attain Net Zero ambitions, will work towards an existence “Clean, Green, and Free”. Living differently to make a difference: that, surely, is an ethos apt for a post-pandemic world, in all respects.

Fresh Magic: Lending Longevity to Perishable Produce 1

Make Sure Fresh Fruit and Veggies are Dry

Extra moisture on these items will speed up the decomposition process. Obviously, wash your produce before eating it, but perhaps only wash it just beforehand, as pre-washing fruit also knocks days off fruit and vegetable longevity. An added boost is to keep such items in the coldest part of the fridge, away from the light and not in the door compartments, as they’re the warmest and least constant in low temperature.

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Don’t Buy Perfection; Opt for Underripe

There is no point in buying a beautiful bunch of textbook-yellow bananas if you aren’t going to eat that fruit straight away (there is only so much banana bread and dairy-free ice cream any household can make).

Instead, buy as green as possible, for practicality’s sake when you have perhaps a couple of perfectly ripe bananas still at home. For produce that ripens too quickly, pop those pieces in the fridge to slow them down for a while.

5

Freeze for Later and Adopt a Soup Habit

Pretty much anything can be frozen if properly prepared and stored in an airtight container. Herbs, for example, can be chopped up and mixed with a little olive oil before being portioned out into ice cube trays and covered, ready at a later point for ease of use. Additionally, if you’ve left it a little too late to store surplus veggies, throwing everything together in a pot to make a hearty homemade soup is a tasty way to avoid letting that food go to waste.

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Shun Plastic Bags: Go Container Every Time

Setting aside the atrocious effects of plastic on the environment, a more immediate negative impact is that moisture is stored if fruit and veg are kept inside, increasing the rate of decomposition. Airtight (ideally non-plastic, glass or stainless steel) containers are the savvy choice as they can extend longevity by up to a week.

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Species Dependent, Store Separately

Apples and bananas, onions and avocados, even melons release gases which increase the rate of ripening in other fruit and veg. Keep them in separate bowls and/or containers in order to extend their shelf life. It is worth noting that garlic and onions and potatoes and tomatoes should not be stored in the fridge. Similarly, plums, peaches, pears, and mangoes fare better in a bowl at room temperature.

NKD Living’s Powdered Erythritol now comes in a 200g recyclable pouch! This Great Taste Award-winning, zero-calorie icing sugar alternative is a popular staple for sugar-free, keto-diet & low-carb lovers alike and it’s used to naturally sweeten just about anything! Powdered erythritol is a plant-derived sugar substitute that doesn’t cause blood sugar spikes and crashes like sugar, it has a glycemic index of zero making it a great alternative for diabetics. This very fine powder has a similar taste and texture to icing sugar so dissolves very quickly and is ideal for recipes where a faster dissolving and finer sugar with no aftertaste is needed. It's perfect for icing sugar, ice cream, meringues and even cocktails!

Visit www.nkdliving.com for more information and recipe ideas or follow us on Instagram @nkdliving for low-carb food inspiration. justnaturalhealth.co.uk | Just Natural Health & Beauty

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A Question of Houmous:

Why not try...

our recipe for homemade houmous

a Tubless, Homemade History Admit it: each time you dip that carrot (organic, cut up into small, imperfect batons at home) into store-bought houmous, you feel a little guilty. You know that this tub too will empty and join its brothers gone before it in the recycling bin or become yet another upcycled plant pot for the garden (with a lick of colourful waterproof paint brushed lovingly round its exterior). But why have we become so lazy in our consumption of what has only been a staple of the British family home since the late 1980s?

Waitrose & Partners recently reported that the country goes through some 12,000 tonnes (c. 850,000kg) of houmous annually. That’s a fair few chickpeas and a lot of tahini… It begs the question, what stops us from making our own? Well, for those who’ve tried, whipping up a tasty houmous is not as easy as it seems on paper (though one is merely additionally combining salt, lemon juice, and perhaps a little cumin with the central two ingredients).

Although the earliest known recipe for the delicious stuff dates back to 13th century Cairo, and the first published recipe in the UK was thanks to Claudia Roden in 1968, opinions are divided on whether it should be smooth or coarse, dry or oily, served on its own or topped with the crunch of nuts or seeds.

At the end of the day, perhaps it is a question of experimenting with different types, waiting for the assessment of one’s domestic judging panel, and when in receipt of the unanimous nod of approval (and absolute devouring of the sample), writing it down for future reference – and storing it in an eco-friendly reusable airtight container in the fridge, or up to four months in the freezer, of course. Just don’t fill the container to the top, as the houmous will expand.

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Smooth and Velvety Houmous Recipe Ingredients: Tin of Organic Kitchen chickpeas 1 clove of garlic 1 tablespoon of tahini Splash of Organic Kitchen lemon juice 1 tablespoon of Organic Kitchen extra virgin olive oil Instructions:

1. Drain the chickpeas and place into a food processor.

2. Peel and add the garlic, tahini, lemon juice and oil.

3. Season with a pinch of sea salt, and blitz until smooth.

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All our snacks offer health benefits, including: Real, simple ingredients Certified vegan, gluten-free and kosher Free from all artificial colours, flavours and preservatives Free from all 14 declarable allergens 40% less fat than potato chips (in our Hummus & Lentil varieties) Multiple HFSS complaint flavours We also offer an organic range of products We offer a variety of pack sizes, including: sharing bag, grab bag, handy pack and multipack formats, to suit all your snacking needs.

Smart Ways with

Shredded Paper

The WFH lifestyle has its perks, certainly, but it also comes with a lot of waste, energy-wise and in terms of stationery. If you’re the type who needs must shred every piece of printed paper which is no longer needed, you’ll appreciate just how much shredded paper that results in. Rather than chucking it all into a bin bag and leaving it for waste collection (shredded paper not something currently recycled curbside), rest assured there are other means of upcycling all those mangled bits of what were once trees…

Scent sachet for clothes drawers Place inside some spare fabric, perfume with your favourite essential oil (though moths are repelled by lavender, cedar, and even cinnamon), sew up – et voilà! If you need a cushion for sitting outside, using shredded paper as stuffing for your fabric also works well (just remember to bring it in in the rain…).

Give green beans a helping hand Green beans are known for being thirsty plants: when you first lay down the seed, cover the soil with some shredded paper to help the earth retain moisture for longer. This works well for other seeds, also.

Free mulch, did you say?

Although it might not be as aesthetically pleasing, shredded paper can work just as well as mulch in the garden as a covering for topsoil. If you can’t stand the sight, sprinkle a little straw on top of it, for that “natural look” so pleasing on the eye.

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Animal bedding & for lining chicken nesting boxes If you’ve hutches of rodents or rabbits, or if you’re a keeper of backyard hens, save a few pennies and put down shredded paper instead. It can even be blended with pebbles and straw for the chicken coop floor.

Make cat litter go further Few will argue that cat litter is expensive, particularly the eco-friendly kind. To make it last longer, mix with some shredded paper: this will assist clumping and deodorising, too. Win-win.

Create fire starter logs Simply stuff the shredded paper inside empty loo rolls, close down the ends, and use them to help get those flames burning on cold nights. For woodburning stoves, though, you only have to place the shredded paper inside.

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Available in both 500ml and 5L variants, the handwashes also have benefited with a reformulation along with the remainder of the range which comes in customer favourite Lime and Aloe Vera and Fragrance Free.

All handwashes are made from 100% naturally derived ingredients and are still 100% vegan, cruelty-free and made in the UK. justnaturalhealth.co.uk | Just Natural Health & Beauty

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A Green Family and Other (Equine) Animals e talk a lot about our carbon footprint, but what about the “environmental pawprint” of companion animals? If we as humans are eating organic and moving towards a plant-based diet (for some, in the main; for others, entirely), then why should such considerations not apply also to those four-legged creatures we share our homes with?

These questions have been at the forefront of the approach of such companies as Beco, the first producer of dry dog food to ensure its “White Fish” option contained only MSC (Marine Stewardship Council) certified fish. Its bamboo pet bowls are also a popular purchase of many, while its compostable poo bags are imported from Britain by some 50 countries.

With a boom in pet purchases in the lockdown, according to PDSA (the People’s Dispensary for Sick Animals) approximately 51% of us now keep companion animals. “Eco scrutiny” is not so much a luxurious contemplation when one has the responsibility of a pet, but a necessity in living as sustainably as possible. And what pet food we buy is critical in chipping away at any negative impact having non-human animals in our lives might cause.

It is estimated that 25% of meat production’s environmental impact is caused by pet food manufacture. That said, dogs and cats are traditionally fed on offcuts from the human meat industry. Therefore, it we are striving to switch their diet to one similar to our own – free-range and organic and seemingly eco-friendly – are we not as a result creating more waste? To this end, companies such as Lily’s Kitchen use unwanted offal or organ meat in their recipes.

This raises the much-debated question of the safety or otherwise of having Fido follow in the footsteps of vegetarian and vegan humans.

Biologically, cats are obligate carnivores and cannot survive without meat amino acids. By contrast, dogs are in fact omnivorous and can in theory exist without animal flesh. However, it is veterinarian-advised that meat consumption reduction is preferable to total removal in the canine diet.

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On the topic of cats and the – um – tail end of what they eat, have you ever considered the environmental impact of puss’ litterbox? There is a wide range of litters to choose from these days, certainly (clumping and non-clumping; scented and unscented; even flushable, though a study by the University of California strongly indicating a correlation with the high infection rate of otters

by Toxoplasma gondii does raise concerns about the long-term safety of this last option). However, a first and basic decision – despite the cost implications – should be to step away from clay in any case.

Before the 1940s, cats’ litterboxes were filled with sawdust and sand or dirt and ashes, after which one Mr Edward Lowe came up with the idea of using Fuller’s Earth to save having mucky paw prints everywhere. Unfortunately, Fuller’s Earth is strip mined and excavated, the topsoil and any flora on the land utterly removed, scarring the natural landscape, deforesting it and ruining wildlife habitats, not to mention depleting any natural minerals present. Comprising raw bentonite clay, in just one year the US sees some 2 million tonnes pulled up from just that area of the globe. The clay you lovingly lay down for your beloved feline is not simply a matter of planet to domestic abode, though, as in order to make it absorbent it is baked and baked again at temperatures that can reach 2000 degrees Fahrenheit and burn through incredible amounts of fuel in the process. After cooling, it is crushed to fine granules, packaged, and transported for sale in-store.

If that weren’t negatively impacting enough on the environment, clay litter cannot be composted and it not only ends up in landfills, but it isn’t biodegradable. Further, those who scoop faeces into a plastic bag before placing it in the rubbish bin, which in turn is in a refuse sack, only serve to ensure all this used, soiled clay cat litter never breaks down. And crystal cat litters are no better, being produced by the same methods as clay, but with sodium silicate sand instead.

So, how does one provide for the sake of the hygienic wellbeing of the family cat with a litter option that is biodegradable and sustainable, toxinfree and preferably all-natural and organic? Well, there are a small handful of such options now available, most of which are so naturally absorbent that less litter is used over time. This balances out the greater cost of ecofriendly cat litters.

There are types made from coconuts, paper, wheat, corn, bamboo, wood, walnut shells, grass seeds… And so the list goes on.

Certainly, there are less excuses to be made and this is something to definitely consider when you next come to clean out the tray.

The animals we call our companions aren’t limited to those kept within the four walls of where we sleep, of course, and considerations over the environmental impact of food and toilet aren’t the limits of what we should be thinking in relation to those non-human animals which we adore. Nonetheless, when any vegan worth their (sea) salt will tell you that animals are not on this planet to be exploited or provide humans with pleasure, nor were they originally brought into existence to aid mankind’s survival, where does that position leave horse ownership – something utterly embedded in history and cherished by many vegans also?

Spiritual “partners” for centuries, there is a special place in the human heart for our equine counterpart. The awardwinning documentary, Herd: a Spiritual Journey offers especial insight into this interspecies relationship. Following an 8-day “Equinisity” retreat with the animals, run by artist and author Liz Mitten Ryan, deep in the Canadian wilderness, the focus is the concept of us all being “one herd”. This harmony is key. By learning horse care, studying and coming to know their behaviour, and enacting positive reinforcement training, the relationship between horse and rider can be a beautiful thing. It is when mistreatment occurs that serious questions must be asked and action taken, when there is fear of punishment or physical, potentially fatal risk, and the end, final nightmare of the meat truck or glue factory…

As Viva! has reported, horses are incredibly intelligent creatures, able to gauge human emotions and moods, remembering the different facial expressions of a person and thereby determining their character. Indeed, their memory is comparable to that of an elephant. Further, they are also herd animals, existing in the wild in “matriarchal groups” numbering up to 10 and forming close friendships with certain individuals within the group. This is why a domestic horse becomes anxious when separated from its favoured field companion.

Each continent except Antarctica is home to around 400 species of horse, with the only true “wild” species the Przewalski’s horse.

Those ponies roaming Dartmoor and the New Forest, or the Mustangs of America are all better termed “feral”, descended as they are from once-domesticated horses. Domestication only began about 6,000 years ago, near the Ukraine, western Kazakhstan, and southwestern Russia. The purpose was to use the horses for milk and transport, and meat when their “usefulness” waned. Even today, approximately 4.7 million horses are eaten each year around the globe, Poland being the biggest horse meat exporter.

Surprisingly, horse meat is not illegal in the UK, consumed until the 1930s. Then there was the 2013 horse meat scandal, meat labelled as beef actually consisting of 100% horse meat in some cases. Taboo, yes, and potentially lethal, too, the equine pain relief drug Phenylbutazone (or “Bute”) posing a real health risk if present in the meat eaten. Contrary to common belief, there is no horse meat in dog food, but horse meat does find its way to zoos as food for the big cats.

Horses themselves, of course, are herbivorous. They will eat grass and – erm – herbs, as well as leaves and fruit like acorns.

Each day, they need to consume about 2% of their bodyweight. Living to a good 30 years naturally, the oldest horse on record lived to 62.5 years (roughly equivalent to someone in their late 100s!). justnaturalhealth.co.uk | Just Natural Health & Beauty

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But what about the ethics of tack? Of saddles and bridles, and bits and reins – how can one be vegan and employ these tools for riding, either in relation to what they are made from or as pertains to how they are employed? Essentially, if used in the right way, it is claimed that little suffering or discomfort is felt by the horse.

Some horse owners (especially those who are vegan), though, opt out of putting metal shoes on their horses’ hooves or bits in their mouths. Nor do they employ whips to get their horses to do as instructed. Nonetheless, some newly vegan riders – interestingly, particularly in dressage – give up the pursuit all together when they look further into the ethical side of the sport, seeing the commodification of horses in riding schools as the equivalent of cattle “going to market”. An impassioned stance, indeed.

Yet, the majority of riders love their horses as much as a human companion and certainly aren’t so banally commodifying the creatures. In 2019, Horse & Hound magazine reported on the launch of former US dressage rider and Olympic bronze medallist Robert Dover’s vegan tack range, in Wellington, Florida. RobertSquared was launched in collaboration with Robert Ross, Dover’s fellow rider. Inspired by Tesla and the general shift to “luxury vegan leather” that has slowly been happening, the range includes all the above-mentioned tack, as well as halters, leads, riding boots, paddock boots, and accessories such as gloves. No cows harmed in the making there, and the non-stretch, eco-friendly material needs only soap and water to clean it. Another equestrian leading the way in greenminded wear is fashion designer Sophie Robbins, Everything Horse UK magazine reporting last year that her Rowberton line – sustainable, vegan, organic, and PETA-certified – offered eco-conscious fashion with fun and refreshing designs.

Additionally, keen rider and yoga teacher Faith Page founded Eco Equestrian, a company that produces “fishnet riding tights”, turning “discarded nylon fishing nets and waste from the textile industry into topquality fabric”.

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When it comes to riding itself, though, there is an entirely different level of contemplation to undertake to that of having cats or dogs in our life: a human being is sitting atop the back of another animal and “controlling” it. Time Magazine a while ago wrote on the dangers of equestrian eventing, the “equine equivalent of the triathlon”. Combing dressage, cross-country, and jumping, eventing has been part of the Olympics since 1912 (in Stockholm).

It is seen as one of the most dangerous sports, due in particular to the cross-country event, where a single, simple miscalculation could see either horse or rider or both perish. This is a union, an interspecies alliance, where nothing will happen without the effective silent, physical communication between horse and rider: without the volition and belief of the one in the other, neither will succeed.

Cross-country testing stamina and courage, dressage an indicator of “elegance and obedience”, and jumping an extension of that test of fitness at the end of everything – eventing was a military man-only sport until 1924; and women couldn’t participate until 1964. Now, men and women battle each other for Gold, one of the few sports to pit one sex against the other. However, in the elevenyear-period between 1997 and 2008, some “37 riders died as a result of injuries” from “the cross-country phase of eventing at national or international level or at Pony Club”. By contrast, the number of horses that died in the period is not available, but one record shows “at least 19 eventing horses, many of them top-level performers, died in 2007 and 2008” alone.

While safety measures – including inflatable vests and frangible pins in jumps to prevent rotational falls, which shockingly “permanently disable riders 25% of the time” – have been put in place to protect humans, what safeguards are there for the horses, those “other athletes”? While frangible pins can lessen injury to horses “by proxy”, the risk of a broken neck or back yet remains for the animal and, given they are legally considered “property”, owners can opt to euthanise the injured horse instead of undergoing expensive veterinary care which can leave the animal disabled forevermore, with a diminished quality of life.

A strange scenario when it is clear that the riders care so very much about their equine partners. When an incredible number of hours are spent in the company of another sentient being each day, how can a deep bond not develop? Kept in “luxury stabling” and treated to carrots as we would spoil a child with sweets, horses are nevertheless thought unlikely to be a future-thinking species in the way that humans are. Is there, then, a moral responsibility for humans, entirely aware of the risks (but in denial that they themselves will ever faulter), to not put a horse they love in dangerous competitive situations? In response, it is worth reflecting that a veterinary inspection is carried out at the start of the 3-day event, and a further inspection undertaken before the final jumping stage. At these times, the vet can send the horse to a “holding box” if unhappy, where a second veterinarian will “pass” or “fail” the animal, so no unfit or unsound creature will be put in danger (nor their rider) on the course.

There is also the fact, as any rider will tell you, that a horse will not do anything it doesn’t want to do. They are powerful, emotionally intuitive animals (and stubborn as mules, to boot). As overthinking creatures, perhaps that is one more thing for us to think about. We, as animals, are resident on this planet with all other animals, none alone.

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Fashion for Young and Old:

Say Farewell to Wearing Corpses

he global fashion industry is accountable for 10% of carbon emissions globally. We might be aware of the plastic we excessively use in day-to-day life, for packaging for food and beauty and cleaning products; we might take a few minutes to watch Jeff Bridges’ short film Open Your Eyes for Plastic Pollution Coalition (yes, the very same that told Seaspiracy’s Ali Tabrizi to turn off the cameras) and nod our heads to his warning that recycling is more often than not simply downcycling, and if not that then it is piled sky-high, dumped into the oceans, or burned, releasing toxic fumes; but do the majority of us know what’s really in our clothes (and in our carpets and curtains and generally in our home furnishings), that – as Friends of the Earth noted – up to 64% of our vêtements contain plastics, materials such as polyester, nylon, acrylic and polyamide? And when we pop them in the washing machine for cleanliness, tiny microplastics wash out to sea.

Further according to Friends of the Earth, only 9% of plastic is recycled.

Worringly, it has been found that 93% of Americans have BPA in their body. Of course, Earth Day’s theme in 2021 was “Restore Our Earth”, but what about our bodies? And if you can’t fork out for new “eco-gear”, then why not “restore” what you have, mending or even upcycling existing clothing? Rather than ditching one’s entire wardrobe and starting again more eco-aware (as we’ll come to in a moment), focus should instead be given to washing only a full-load of laundry (preferably in a Guppy Bag or with a Coraball to collect microfibres), in a front-loading washing machine (top-loading washing machines apparently release more microplastics), at a lower temperature, on a slower spin-speed, not tumble drying but air drying, and keeping the clothes one has for longer (after the first few washes, most fibres that will come loose have).

The mainstream fashion industry uses approximately 79 billion cubic metres of water during production processes: a massive quantity. By contrast “circular fashion”, recycling or upcycling what we already have (think “vintage”), avoids this environmental concern. If you must buy a new sweater for the unusually lingering chill this British summer, then, whatever you do, do not purchase a polyester fleece: they are the worst offenders when it comes to microplastic pollution. It might seem a lot to consider, but as with most things in life: practice makes perfect.

What about those of us whose concerns are a rather more – ahem – “pedestrian” affair when it comes to fashion? The cruelty endemic in the wool industry has been known for years, even a recent investigation by PETA on a farm in Australia finding that sheep are still punched with fists or even sheers, sometimes until drawing blood; sometimes grotesquely disfiguring the animals. But, more recently, Gavin Polone, producer of Gilmore Girls, teamed up with the Emmy-winning sports editor Derek Ambrosi to shed light on the use of kangaroo leather in sports footwear made by Nike.

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Another Australian industry, the reverse sequenced short film intended to educate consumers who might otherwise have been unaware that Skippy lost his life so they could score the winning goal at Saturday football. Politician Mark Pearson wholly supported the endeavour, adding that many don’t realise “kangaroo populations are declining” or that “Australia kills its own national emblem for profit”.

As a result, according to Hype Beast, Nike has been making inroads to vegan leather trainer production, their “Baroque Brown” shoe following an earlier “Space Hippie” line in 2020, including clothes of recycled materials, such as “plastic bottles and post-industrial scraps” – all part of their “Move to Zero” sustainability initiative. Conversely, where “faux leather” has often in the past been a contentious issue due to in the main being made from PVC (derived from fossil fuels and microplastic-producing), now Taiwanese company General Silicones has used natural silica in lieu of bovine skin, but been questioned over the use of coal, a non-renewable carbon, in the process of its manufacture (as well as the fact that silicon is nonbiodegradable and hard to recycle).

After a follow-up MP inquiry into the impact of “fast fashion” on the environment, it was found that the UK throws away over one million tonnes of clothing annually, with a third ending up in landfills and/or incinerated. But, while Greta Thunberg might have announced her intention to refrain from future clothes-buying (opting if necessary for second-hand or borrowing off of friends), the rest of us might occasionally like to indulge in the mental uplift that comes from a purchase of that new shirt or skirt. Yet, with clothing of old estimated to “take over 200 years to decompose”, according to Vegconomist (because of plastic fibres), it’s not surprising that there has been a surge in more sustainable options.

One such eco-minded company is Kent, based in Los Angeles. With “the world’s first verified compostable underwear”, founder Stacey Anderson should be proud of her “plant your pants” concept. Entirely organic, Kent underwear “composts in 90 days” and is good not only for the soil and the plants of today, but those that will grow on a cleaner planet in the future as well. Indeed, a multitude of companies are exploring the “vegan leather” sector: from mushrooms and cacti, to apples and other plant-sources, vegan leather is seemingly here to stay. So much so that Eurofins | Chem-MAP, the “leading provider of chemical management testing and auditing services” has developed a testing programme in line with the Vegan Society’s Vegan Trademark for clothing in general, after it was found that “animal derivatives” had been found in “dyes and glues” in products labelled vegan. Meanwhile, New York-based AlgiKnit aims to make yarn from seaweed.

With Vegconomist reporting that “the global ethical fashion market is [set] to reach $8.25 billion [c.£5.84 billion]” by as soon as 2023, AlgiKnit’s plan to replace polluting fibres like polyester and nylon with algae-based fibres (which help to absorb and offset carbon) is timely indeed.

The Eco Labels to Watch Yasmina Q A Saudi Arabian label with only small edits at a time, all fabrics are sustainably sourced, including EcoVera viscose and recycled deadstock materials.

Etikette Offering one jacket in three lengths (cropped, mid-length, and long) for wardrobe staples only, all fabrics are UK-sourced, 100% vegan, and use only low-impact dye.

Mashu London-based accessories, their structural and architectural handbags consist of recycled plastic and polyester, plus toxic-free natural materials (pineapple leather; hemp jute). Further, the handles are wooden offcuts from a Greek furniture brand. This is the epitome of circular economy.

Baile Their jumpers are 80% organic cotton and 20% recycled polyester. Each piece has been eco-washed so as to reduce water waste. Packaging for postage itself is made from 100% recycled materials and the mailing bags are compostable. The clothing labels are made with 100% organic cotton.

Hemp Tailor This label specialises in downfree and wool-free outerwear for men and women using organic cotton, recycled plastic, and – you guessed it – hemp. There is now knitwear, too (made from hemp and recycled cotton).

Luztra Ashoka Made from apple leather (literally, driedup apple peel) that comes from apples grown in an orchard in Bolzno, Italy, all bags are lined with recycled plastic bottles.

A London brand specialising in creating bags from leathers of pineapple, apple, and mango.

That is to say, pineapple leaf leather (Pinatex), apple Frumat, and the Dutch innovation 90% mango.

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Menstruation & the Modern Working Woman:

Understanding the Complex Power of the Female ach year on 28th May, Menstrual Hygiene Day takes place, opening minds to the truth of female physiology and what that means throughout the month (or 28-day cycle). What of ongoing understanding, though? Indeed, what of a “period policy”? Vice reported in 2016 that Bex Baxter, manager of Coexist, had sent a female employee home on “human rights” grounds due to period pain that meant she was unfit to stand up, let alone perform her job properly. In Baxter’s mind, that meant the employee was entitled to sick leave (i.e. paid period leave).

However, “paid period leave” has a very rocky history in getting off the ground. Japan implemented it way back in 1947, but a proposal in Russia in 2013 for a similar set up received backlash from women’s rights activists who foresaw a backwards step in workplace discrimination eventuating from the move. Due to Baxter’s instinctual reaction, though, Coexist became the first English company to put in place formal paid period leave in 2016: however, again, responses were not wholly positive and actually perceived the policy as “anti-feminist”.

Bewildered and frustrated, Baxter organized a conference in order to explain, in partnership with Alexandra Pope, founder of the Red School and author of The Wild Genie: The Healing Power of Menstruation. As Pope has said in the past, “menstrual awareness is about sustainability; it’s about creativity and women being able to celebrate themselves. To me, that’s the most feminist thing I can think of”. She does not condone the modern mentality of “just keep going” through anything that falls across our paths, particularly not the negatively impacting physical denial that is powering through the “winter phase” (i.e. menstruation). Instead of a period policy, then, a “menstrual movement” is 66

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proposed, focussed on awareness of the entire monthly cycle and its phases: re-empowering the modern woman with that ancestral wise connection to the body she was born with.

The Red School’s “Menstruality” concept encompasses not only the menstrual cycle, but the earlier menarche and the subsequent menopause and mature years phases, also. Conceived (for want of a better word) of as a “biological, psychological, and spiritual process of maturation within the female body”, Menstruality seeks to substantiate the current global focus on harmonious oneness for reparation with the natural world: a revolutionary “reawakening of feminine consciousness”.

By this method, those companies who have implemented such a move have found that female staff tend to take fewer sick days overall. But trust is a tricky thing when it comes down to reproductive health disclosure and many feel there is a considerable gap between being able to tell one’s employer you’re simply ill and informing them of the highly personal intricacies of the monthly cycle and current state of affairs of one’s sexual organs. To this end, Baxter did not make Coexist’s period policy mandatory, while widespread implementation of such a policy is still slow on the nationwide uptake.

Yet, these are peculiar times and the “new normal” we’re properly stepping out into now should surely make room for such adaptations. For instance, earlier in the year it was reported that some women experienced “heavier, early, or otherwise irregular” periods after receiving their Covid vaccines.

A Twitter survey by Dr Kate Clancy received many responses noting “heavy post-vax” periods, as well as unexpected spotting, having periods with an IUD, even menopause starting after having a coronavirus jab. From Twitter, Dr Clancy graduated to a proper scientific research study on the topic and this is currently ongoing. Yet, Dr Heather Bartos believes it could simply be down to the relief of stress over finally being vaccinated, though she has mentioned that oestrogen levels mean those “who menstruate are more likely to experience a stronger immune response and more powerful side effects” in general when faced with a virus.

While some 65% of respondents to Dr Clancy’s survey on the vaccines’ effects on the monthly cycle did suggest a correlation, in general symptoms of menstruation and the other phases of the lunar cycle are much more chartable and easy to correlate and explain. And that is why implementing a “paid period leave” policy in the main can work very well for both employer and employee alike. Regardless of gender, everyone has heard of the rough ride that PMS (Pre-Menstrual Syndrome) can be: with greater self-observation, by becoming aware of the monthly rhythms and by looking to a woman’s diet, she can start to keep her hormones more in balance and slowly rein in any more outrageous symptoms.

During the monthly cycle, a quintet of hormones are in flux: oestrogen, progesterone, FSH (Follicle-Stimulating Hormone), LH (Luteinising Stimulating Hormone), and testosterone. When one rises, another ebbs, orchestrating a rhythm that can impact energy, mood, and nutritional needs. The conductor of all this is the self-aware female, with an understanding of the minor changes she needs to make in her diet as each stage of her cycle comes round. By listening to our bodies, being in touch with our individual patterns (and by permitting ourselves adequate sleep each night!), hormonal balance is well within reach of most women. So, in addition to turning to the comfort of a hot water bottle to ease abdominal pain when menstruation comes round, a month-long consciousness of body (and mind) might be a more informative and practical path in the future…

Organic Kitchen Sauerkraut 330g £1.99

The Follicular Phase This occurs just before ovulation. Lasting up to 10 days, the follicular phase is when FSH rises, signalling to the ovaries that they should prepare to release an egg. At the same time, oestrogen levels begin rising (having been their lowest at the end of the preceding menstrual phase). Due to this, energy levels are often depleted during the follicular phase.

In order to regain a little get-up-and-go, then, iron and vitamin B12 are most important at this time of month. For those who are omnivorous, organic red meat or game, as well as free range organic eggs and wild fish are recommended. Meanwhile, vegans should increase consumption of beans and lentils, nuts and seeds, and dark leafy greens (eaten with vitamin C-rich foods, such as citrus, peppers, or berries for maximum absorption of the iron content). Equally, think “light, fresh, and colourful” and consider adding a little gut-friendly probiotic-dense portion of sauerkraut or kimchi to your elected lunchtime or evening meal.

The Ovulatory Phase The shortest phase (which serves to make the journey to conceiving so saddening and frustrating for many women), ovulation lasts only between 1 and 2 days. This is when the egg is released from the ovary and travels down the fallopian tube, waiting to be fertilised. During this time, levels of FSH continue to elevate, testosterone rises up suddenly, oestrogen peaks, and LH levels also increase. This is when a woman is at the height of her sexual energy, as well as owning her body and enjoying confident social interactions.

The ovulatory phase, however, is when you should steer clear of carbohydrates. Rather, protein and fats are the order of the day (this is the time to be liberal with the natural, unseasoned seeds and nuts). Appetite should be a little less intense anyway during these couple of days, so meals should be centred around the goal of providing energy without the quickburning fuel of carbs. Select quinoa or amaranth if you really must have that “dense” accompaniment to your meals. Also, increase fibre intake so as detoxify the effects of the surge in multiple hormones: reach for steamed asparagus, stir fry some Brussel sprouts, or lean towards some chard or spinach leaves. The antioxidant content of berries will further help increase glutathione production and assist liver detoxification. justnaturalhealth.co.uk | Just Natural Health & Beauty

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The Luteal Phase Lasting between 11 and 17 days, progesterone levels steadily increase as the womb lining thickens in preparation for implanting of a fertilised egg/embryo, causing PMS. From bloating and irritability, to mood swings, brain fog, and weight gain – progesterone has a lot to answer for. An appetite booster that favours high-fat, high-calorie comfort foods, progesterone also increases sensitivity to blood sugar levels: whatever you do, don’t skip meals during the luteal phase (otherwise you might very well turn into one of those “hangry” women…). In fact, it is advisable to eat more frequently during this time, perhaps every 4 hours, essentially “grazing” healthily throughout the day in order to stave off emotion-guiding hunger.

Digestion is also affected by progesterone levels, slowing it down and causing constipation. In order to offset bloating and water retention, consider which nutrients you’re consuming and focus on the B vitamins, calcium, magnesium and – you guessed it – fibre. To satisfy cravings, this is a good time to eat more starchy vegetables, such as sweet potatoes, squash, pumpkin, and parsnips, as well as include for algae (like spirulina) to aid the flushing of excess hormones. Equally, brown rice and millet are Just Natural Spirulina Powder good options to combine with chickpeas for a complete protein meal. £2.99

To make things complicated, however, the start of the menstrual phase is referred to as the first day of a woman’s monthly cycle.

Furthermore, if you’re on hormonal birth control, you won’t have either a luteal phase (as you’ll be producing no corpus luteum) or ovulation phase (you won’t be producing any progesterone). No wonder many women experience severe symptoms of hormonal imbalance – and 98% of women in the US have used such a method at least once in their lives, with 62% of reproductive age currently doing so. Indeed, effects of extended use of hormonal birth control include PCOS (Polycystic Ovary Syndrome), adrenal fatigue (the lack of progesterone and extra oestrogen both increasing cortisol levels), and since the pill’s beginnings in the 1960s it has been known to cause digestive problems, including Crohn’s disease and leaky gut syndrome. In turn this can cause considerable nutritional deficiencies.

What to do, then?

The endocrine system, governor of hormones, is greatly affected by diet, sleep patterns, and stress management. If your body is hormonally out of balance, you will know about it. Some signs include:

Oestrogen dominance Sore breasts; swollen lymph nodes; constipation; slow detoxification; heavy bleeding; painful menstruation.

Low Oestrogen Decreased libido; PMS symptoms; fatigue and lethargy; depression; hot flashes; vaginal dryness.

The Menstrual Phase The final stage of the monthly cycle, menstruation is of course the most famous phase of a woman’s existence. Lasting anywhere from 2 days to over 7 days, progesterone levels drop off the chart and oestrogen follows suit. The menstrual phase is, after all, essentially an elimination process, with the intense experience of shedding the lining of the uterus (what constitutes menstrual matter) closing the 28-day (or however uniquely long) cycle before it starts all over again.

This is the phase that obviously doesn’t occur if the egg was fertilised and the woman is pregnant, as the lining won’t be shed but implanted and nourishing a growing foetus.

The menstrual phase is a time to restore and remineralise the body, so focus on water-rich fruit and veg (watermelon, mushrooms, beetroot, for instance), as well as foods which provide plenty of iron, zinc, and iodine. Adzuki beans and kidney beans, together with seaweeds and algae options, are great therapeutic choices. This might be the moment to set aside time for self-care and homemade cauliflower rice cucumber sushi rolls, for instance. Additionally, flaxseed is your friend at this time, amazing as it is for hormone balancing and its anti-inflammatory properties: drizzle a little coldpressed flaxseed oil on a water-rich fresh salad or sprinkle some ground flax into a morning smoothie.

During the menstrual phase, nausea is a common occurrence, due to prostaglandins (normally an inflammatory response to pathogens) aiding the shedding of the uterus lining and its contraction. Some people even experience vomiting. By avoiding spicy foods and overly fatty meals, nausea can be reduced. Also try a ginger, mint, or chamomile tea to ease the stomach (which might be overproducing hydrochloric acid, as well).

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High testosterone Acne; facial hair; blood sugar imbalances.

Low progesterone Cramping and bloating; digestive upsets; PMS symptoms; cysts; fluid retention; infertility.

In order to maintain equilibrium in the body, thinking of nutrition in a functional manner is the first and easiest step. A healthy diet, replete with whole food plant-based produce is vital. Opt for dark leafy greens, low-sugar fruits (apples and berries), all vegetables, wholegrains, and protein sources like beans and legumes, nuts and seeds. Additionally, include seaweed and other herbs, spices, and superfoods. Avoid animal products as far as possible, as they increase inflammation in the body. If you must have some, make sure it is organic and pasture-fed, lowering risk of exposure to external hormones and any antibiotics present in the meat. Further, providing optimum quantities of essential minerals such as calcium and magnesium, as well as fibre, a functional food diet also benefits sleep habits, and by extension stress levels, and by extension digestion… You get the picture.

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Polyphenols

Jenny Carson Senior Nutritionist Viridian Nutrition

A Key Ingredient for Healthy Living

olyphenols may sound like a new buzzword but studies have shown these plant-based compounds can play an important role in supporting our health.

From their anti-allergy action to antioxidant and antibacterial activities, we explore the powerful effects of polyphenols.

Polyphenols are pigment-based compounds found in plants, berries, and seeds. These plantbased compounds have been shown to benefit health and this is via beneficial mechanisms that are triggered when polyphenol-rich foods are consumed.

Anti-allergy

Polyphenols have shown to inhibit histamine release and alleviate atopic skin inflammation associated with allergies. The anti-allergic properties of polyphenols in pine bark, green tea and apples have been demonstrated in numerous studies. Research has shown apple polyphenols to reduce sneezing attacks and nasal discharge in people with persistent hay fever symptoms (or allergic rhinitis).

Participants in the study who supplemented with 200mg apple polyphenol demonstrated better improvements in these symptoms compared to placebo. In a separate study, supplementation with apple polyphenols was shown to reduce symptoms such as skin inflammation, cracking and itching associated with hay fever.

Antioxidant

The molecular structure of polyphenols is in such a manner each molecule can store electrons. Electron donation is the core to quelling oxidative stress. The act of donating an electron is what calms the aggressive molecule. Thus, polyphenols are considered highly antioxidant.

Microbiome

Polyphenols are poorly absorbed, and although initially this may not sound like a benefit, it is. The polyphenols exert several benefits in the large intestine. They are selectively antibacterial; studies suggest that polyphenols have an antibacterial effect upon infection-causing bacteria and promote beneficial bacteria. They promote beneficial bacteria by acting as a prebiotic. Prebiotics ‘feed’ the beneficial bacteria so that they can produce the highly beneficial short-chain fatty-acids which signal to the liver, brain, and influence hormone and immune activity, plus they further ‘feed’ beneficial bacteria. It is these recently documented effects that realised the powerful effects of polyphenols on digestive health.

Polyphenols in traditional wild apples have been shown in research to reduce sneezing attacks and nasal discharge in people with persistent allergic rhinitis.

Heart Health

Polyphenols have been shown in research to have a beneficial effect upon cholesterol. Results showed a decrease in both total cholesterol and importantly a decrease in low-density lipoprotein cholesterol, which if elevated is often associated with negative outcomes.

Furthermore, through the antioxidant benefits of polyphenols there is considered a protective effect against hardening of the arteries.

Blood Glucose Management

Polyphenols are considered to improve the activity of insulin and so, the glucose levels in the blood are balanced and the cells are adequately supplied with glucose. This activity is linked to the amount of excess glucose that is transformed into triglycerides and stored as fat deposits in the body. It is suggested that the transformation of glucose to triglycerides is stalled and so may reduce the amount of visceral fat accumulation.

Sports Performance

Polyphenols are considered to promote the recovery from exercise and, similarly, research has shown that fatigue induced by multiple sustained efforts was reduced. This may allow the individual to train hard frequently and require less recovery time.

Research has shown polyphenols can benefit health in several ways. It further supports the advice: eat a variety of foods in the different colours of the rainbow.

However, there are days when this is just not an option and so a food supplement may be a useful alternative.

Contact your local health food store to discuss your dietary requirements and advice at www.findahealthstore.com

Author: Jenny Carson is a Senior Nutritionist at Viridian Nutrition. She holds a BSc honours degree in Nutritional Science and is a Master of Research (MRes) in Public Health.

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Authentically

Indian

Teas

Welcome to the Tea India Family and our delicious range of teas; created to bring you the authentic taste of India.

From rich spiced chai to single estate regional teas to wellness blends infused with authentically Indian herbs, each blend offers something unique and indulgent.

www.teaindia.co.uk

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This recipe is great for those hot summer days as it’s packed with spicy turmeric flavours mixed with the natural sweetness from the banana and perfect for vegans. Keep them in the freezer to give yourself a little lift every time the sun comes out.

Ingredients: Makes 4 Lollies 2/3 cups Oat milk 1 large banana 2 Tea India Turmeric Chai teabags 2tbsp Agave nectar/honey Edible petals for decoration (optional) Method: 1. Heat the milk in a saucepan dropping the tea bags in when it comes to the boil, then reduce the heat to a simmer.

2. Simmer for 5 minutes so the tea is a strong yellow colour and all the flavours from the teabags have infused the milk, then turn the heat off.

3. Add the agave nectar/honey, stirring so it melts. Then squeeze the tea bags out and leave your yellow turmeric oat milk to stand so it will cool.

4. Once the tea is cool put it in a blender with a peeled, sliced banana and blend into a runny smoothie.

5. Pour the smoothie mixture into lolly moulds and pop into the freezer.

6. If you don’t have lolly moulds then chai glasses or paper cups can be used. Just remember that if you want your lolly sticks to be in the centre, you will need to cut a round of paper a little larger that the top of the glass for each lolly cutting a slit in the middle for your lolly stick and so keeping it in place while it freezes.

7. It will take 6-8 hours for your lollies to be frozen and ready to eat.

8. As a final decoration use some bright edible petals to sprinkle on your lollies. Then you are ready to enjoy this tasty sweet and spicy treat in the sun.

Artichokes Native to Northern Africa, but now naturalised in Europe and in particular the Mediterranean, the globe artichoke (Cynara scolymus, a type of thistle) has a long history of use in herbal medicine, especially for supporting heart health and liver detoxification – related as it is to milk thistle (or Silybum marianum). Greek mythology tells – via the words of one Quintus Horatius Flaccus – how Zeus once fell in love (as he was frequently wont to do) with the beautiful young woman Cynara on the Greek island of Kinaros (known to Italians as Zinari). Turning her into a goddess, he whisked her off to Mount Olympus in order to have his way with her when his wife, Hera, was not at home. Nonetheless, Cynara soon became homesick and frequently snuck back home to visit her mother. Maddened when he discovered this, Zeus sent her back for good – as an artichoke.

Ever since the myth-rich days of antiquity, artichoke leaf has been used not only for the good of our heart and liver, but to also support a healthy urinary system and maintain a balanced digestive system, as well as offset indigestion. Its properties include appetite boosting, choleretic stimulation (or bile flow production), and support of cholesterol metabolism. Setting aside the folklore-like belief that it would also “procure” male babies, the popularity of artichoke reached a peak between the 1500s and 1800s, when it was appropriated as an aphrodisiacal gastronomic delicacy and cultivated by French and Italian aristocracy (where it was known as articiocco).

Not without foundation, either. One medium globe artichoke comes in at roughly only 60 calories, yet provides some 4g of protein and 7g of fibre. A very good source of both vitamin C and folic acid, artichokes also offer magnesium and manganese, phosphorous and copper, as well as potassium and a host of active ingredients, such as cynarin, scolymoside, and 1,3-dicaffeoylquinic acid and 3-caffeoylquinic acid.

These days, save for the bottom of the flower buds preserved in oil or vinegar, and short of popping to the local market and buying a few globe heads to prepare on the stove, artichoke leaf tea is available for ease of use instead. Combining well with other herbs such as Devil’s Claw and Ginseng or lemon balm and ginger (both beneficial for poor appetites) – a nice cup of artichoke leaf tea is ideal if looking ahead to a long and luxurious post-pandemic afternoon lunching with friends.

Believed to help lower bad cholesterol levels, one study found that standardised artichoke extract – when taken three times per day at no greater than 640mg a dose (the equivalent of <4g of dried leaves thrice daily) – helped ease digestive discomfort (including nausea, constipation, abdominal pain, and flatulence) in over 70% of participants.

By contrast, Jerusalem artichokes (otherwise known as Helianthus tuberosus, or “sunroots”) are a nutty and earthy tuber that are naturally high in prebiotic inulin, a non-digestible fibre beneficial for nourishing “good” bacteria and thereby balancing the gut microbiome. A species of sunflower, Jerusalem artichokes are similarly supportive of the digestive system as their globe cousins are, the high quantity of vitamin B1 (thiamine) aiding production of hydrochloric acid in the stomach.

Further, Jerusalem artichokes are a low-GI (Glycaemic Index) food, which makes them useful in regulating blood glucose levels, as well.

When powdered, 2-3 teaspoons per day can easily be added to smoothies or baking recipes. Recent studies have also shown a correspondence with lower blood pressure levels, due to the potassium content, as well as offering possible dietary support for anaemia sufferers, the tubers containing 28% of the RDA of iron and 20% of the RDA of copper. This in turn, of course, aids a healthy immune system (in addition to the vitamins C, A, and E within Jerusalem artichokes).

Available in Just Natural’s 100% plastic-free Just Natural home-compostable pouches, be sure to add Jerusalem powdered Jerusalem artichoke to your daily Artichoke Powder routine today. £5.59 justnaturalhealth.co.uk | Just Natural Health & Beauty

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Superfoods for

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Spirulina

A powerhouse of calcium, magnesium, and potassium, spirulina is a blue-green algae that balances hormones and by extension minimises cramps, mood swings, sore breasts, and inflammation in general. Add a little to your morning smoothie; also nice mixed into a bowl of rice and veggies.

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Chaste Tree Berry

Helping to elevate low progesterone levels, chaste tree berry offsets PMS-related irritability or anger, depression, headaches, bloating, skin problems, fatigue, and sleeplessness. Available to take either as a tincture or tea.

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Maca

A South American tuber, hormonal imbalance should be a thing of the past when you include maca in your diet. Rich in iron, protein, fibre, potassium, and calcium, maca regulates the hypothalamus and pituitary glands. This has been shown to reduce the hot flashes of menopause. *NB: Those with PCOS (Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome) should not take maca, as it can have an androgenic effect (i.e. increase testosterone).

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Glorious Gojis

Goji berries (or wolfberries) have been a staple purchase of the health crowd for many years now.

Just 28g of dried gojis provides 50% of the RDA of vitamin A, 4g of protein, and 10% of the RDA of fibre. The fruits are low in fat and also replete in vitamin C. What you might not realise is that there are over 50 different types of goji plant. The most commonly known are Lyceum barbarum, Lyceum ferocissimum and Lyceum Chinese. Dried to a chewy, raisin-like texture, they also contain beta-sitosterol, betaine, niacin, beta-carotene, ascorbic acid, and pyridoxine.

The more adverse the conditions in which the plant grows, the higher the levels of antioxidants. Ningxia province in China has a history of goji cultivation stretching back some 500 years, with most inhabitants said to live beyond the age of 100. Goji berry use in TCM, though, has a near-2000-year history.

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