THE MIDLIFE KITCHEN

No fads. Just delicious health-boosting food

MIDDLE AGE, now rebranded ‘midlife’, is a time to rethink your diet to ensure you are brimming with health and vitality in the years to come. At the forefront of moves to improve midlifers’ nutrition are Mimi Spencer and Sam Rice — both nearing 50.

All week we’re serialising their new book, The Midlife Kitchen, and its recipes which are packed with ingredients to help rejuvenate your body.

WHEN you find yourself reaching the age of 50 — or hovering perilously close, like us — slowing the ageing process can become a bit of an obsession.

If it’s not the irritating aches and pains, the digestive niggles, night sweats and worries about your parents’ health, it will be waking up after a bad night’s sleep, or a few glasses of wine too many, to find time is tramping all over your face.

Midlife is a crucial time to start taking extra care of yourself. Sadly, there is no magic potion that can stop time in its tracks, but we firmly believe that eating good, nutritious food is your best bet for ageing well.

Skin, for example, can become the big age giveaway as the inevitable wrinkles start to appear. It might be the indentation of last night’s pillow still creasing your cheek, or the suddenly noticeable creping of the skin on your neck.

This is a perfectly normal development as collagen — a protein crucial for skin strength and elasticity — starts to deplete when we hit midlife.

But this is easier to accept if we know we are doing everything we can to slow the internal ageing process. And there is no doubt that a great diet is crucial.

Healthy skin, hair and nails also rely on a good supply of vitamins: vitamin A ( from carrots, sweet potatoes and spinach, which contain beta- carotenes that are converted into vitamin A in the body) is crucial for cell renewal and repair, vitamin C (abundant in berries, red peppers, citrus fruit and green veg) helps even our skin tone, and vitamin E (found in almonds, seeds, avocados and broccoli) helps our skin fight off the free-radicals that cause visible ageing.

So, give your skin extra protection by eating plenty of brightly coloured fruit and veg. Our Raw Pad Thai recipe in this pullout is packed with delicious vegetables — full of flavour, crunch and colour, and a great example of the variety and vibrancy we love in our cooking.

And you must try the Peach And Mozzarella Salad, served with a glorious pistachio pesto — brilliant for a quick beauty boost.

Not only are vitamins A and E critical for healthy skin, they’re also fat-soluble, which means we need to eat plenty of healthy fats for our bodies to assimilate them. Avocados, oily fish, nuts and olive oil are all excellent choices.

Hydration is another quick win for good skin. Drinking enough water not only improves your complexion, it can also boost energy levels and works wonders for digestion and circulation.

If your thick, glossy hair has always been your crowning glory, it can be tough to discover that, like our skin, hair can take a midlife hit, too. A good cut and colour is a fast track to feeling fantastic. But you can give your hairdresser a helping hand by eating foods such as oily fish, tomatoes, carrots, sweet potatoes, quinoa, garlic and dark-coloured berries.

It’s a good idea to be aware of the impact the ageing process has on the senses, too. You may start holding your phone a little further away to read texts or muttering about the poor light in

certain restaurants. While genetic factors will influence how eyes change as you age, there is plenty you can eat to promote eye health — carrots, tomatoes, red peppers, leafy greens, eggs, citrus fruit, berries, almonds and oily fish are all known to help.

Try our Smoked Mackerel And Dill Pate, a fantastic way to boost your omega-3s.

It’s worth bearing in mind that agerelated hearing loss often begins in midlife, too. And it affects 30 per cent of adults over the age of 65.

The mineral potassium plays a role in cell interaction in the inner ear, but our ability to absorb it tends to decline as we age.

Prevention is our midlife mantra, and there are plenty of potassiumrich foods you can include in your diet to help guard against hearing loss — such as spinach, beans, bananas, citrus fruit and yoghurt.

A healthy and varied midlife diet can do a great job of shoring up your immune system. Fresh foods rich in essential vitamins, minerals and antioxidants do help.

With so many tasty foods to help boost skin, senses and immunity, don’t panic when you spot grey hairs. Beauty really does come from within. And the wrinkles? Let them come. As Mark Twain put it, they merely indicate where smiles have been.