SIX golden rules to live by
AS ANYONE who reads a newspaper knows, nutritional advice can be confusing and controversial, particularly at the cutting edge.
So rather than promoting fad diets, we prefer practical advice with recipes where you know what you’re getting and why. That’s why we wrote our new book, The Midlife Kitchen.
As two hard-working mothers — both approaching 50 — we’ve written four nutritional books between us, including Mimi’s bestselling diet plan The Fast Diet, which she co- wrote with Dr Michael Mosley.
In The Midlife Kitchen, which is being serialised exclusively today and all next week in the Mail, we have brought together the tastiest recipes we’ve ever created and super- charged every mouthful with nutrients to support midlife health.
We’ve targeted everything — from skin and bones, to heart and hormones — so you can be sure every spoonful packs a nutritional punch.
Over the next week, we will reveal your midlife kitchen-cupboard essentials and the ingredients that should be on your shopping list every time you stock up.
It’s all part of a fresh, positive approach to middle- age, which we hope will empower women — and men — to put the best possible fuel into their bodies in the most delicious way.
Our mission is to cut out jargon and bring together the good foundations of established nutritional advice that become so important as we reach midlife.
We’re naturally wary of buzzwords, so you won’t find references to superfoods, detoxing, ‘ free- from’ or restriction. We prefer a simple, assured and grown- up approach, so we have devised a basic set of principles that we apply when we are creating our recipes . . .
VARIETY IS VITAL AND KEEPS US WELL
RESTRICTIVE diets aren’t just a bore; they reduce the diversity of microbes in our guts, which can lead to all manner of health issues.
In the West, the average person once ate around 150 different foodstuffs; now it’s 20, repackaged in 50 ways. So our banner is inclusion, not exclusion; a welcome sign, not a ‘keep out’ notice.
NATURAL, HONEST AND FRESH RECIPES
A BALANCED diet rich in fresh produce and low in processed foods and refined sugars seems to be the most effective long- term health insurance. So we aim to maximise the use of natural, whole plant foods in every Midlife Kitchen recipe.
GOOD CARBS, BETTER FATS... AND LESS SUGAR
WE’RE well aware that decades of low- fat diet regimes have got us nowhere — rates of obesity, heart disease, stroke and cancer haven’t decreased — so we’re looking elsewhere for clues.
Good fats (the unsaturated omega-3s, olive oil, coconut oil and, yes, a little butter) are very welcome at the midlife table. The only foodstuff we would limit is sugar.
There’s good evidence to suggest that curbing your refined sugar intake and sticking to slow- burn carbohydrates can help control blood sugars and improve insulin sensitivity, which lessens the risk of developing type 2 diabetes.
That’s one reason why our recipes embrace good grains and slow-burn cereals such as brown and black rice, quinoa and oats.
For sweetness, we generally try to stick to fruit sources, such as date syrup, honey and a little maple syrup.
TASTE SHOULD ALWAYS COME FIRST
HEALTHY eating must, ultimately, be built upon foods we love to eat, not those we hate. The point of every recipe — each one honed through experience, experiment and quite a lot of tasty research — is that you’ll want to come back for more.
SPEEDY, SIMPLE MEALS TO MAKE LIFE EASIER
WHILE we want each recipe to look and taste wonderful, we also want them to be perfectly doable.
We’re not in the business of adding to the pressure that already exists around food, so our recipes are purposefully simple and speedy.
Midlife is no time to be soaking butter beans. We really have better things to do.
If it tastes great, that’s a good enough reason to eat it
INGREDIENTS YOU’LL KNOW AND LOVE
THERE’S nothing too freaky or weird in our recipes — we’ve gone out of our way to make the ingredients comfortingly accessible, ensuring that most items are basic and easily available.
We want these recipes to become part of everyday life — a habit, not a one-off dinner where leftover ingredients then languish at the back of the kitchen cupboards for months.
But if we really believe an unusual ingredient will make a difference, we’ve included it with a clear explanation of why.
WANT TO START? HERE’S HOW. . .
IN MIDLIFE, our health is no longer something peripheral that we can afford to take for granted.
It is central to the quality of life we enjoy. We want all of our recipes to be utterly delicious and full of goodness, so we are wholeheartedly ingredient-led.
We have researched the health-giving properties of most of the foods you can think of, plus a few other newcomers, too, and cherry- picked the best to form the basis for our recipes.
Nutritional advice does, of course, tend to be in constant flux, with new theories, discoveries and opinions often conspiring to cloud the view (sometimes depending on who is funding the study).
At the Midlife Kitchen, we’re also keen on accumulated wisdom — for example, where particular ingredients have been used as traditional remedies for generations.
We take a pragmatic ‘best odds’ approach, based on the weight of evidence: if there is plenty to suggest that an ingredient has certain health benefits and it tastes great, then we think that’s a good enough reason to eat it!
We are not doctors or chefs — we are regular midlifers, just like you.
All our nutritional information has been approved by registered dietitian and nutritionist Dr Sarah Schenker.
If you have a particular medical concern, please consult your doctor.
Otherwise, grab a fork and dig in.
You’ll be doing yourself the world of good.