EM-Fitness

Perfecting our Instagram profiles with and ;
Or when 3 foodies meet at the table 🥰😛😝

How to make your daily cooking easier?

- Plan your meals;
- Keep a well-stocked kitchen with spices, cans of chopped tomato, cans of beans, frozen veggies, onions, garlic …
- keep basic cooking equipment on hand, I have a small chopper I absolutely love ❤️
- Prep food ahead of time: marinate your meat, fish…
- Take advantage of pressure cookers, slow cookers, air fryer ( don’t use one yet);
- use simple recipes: stir fries, curry, one pot food.
- Repurpose leftovers ❗️

Hope this helps !
Have a good week end
X em ❤️

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Friday food with the pic of this lovely vegan curry with aubergines, chickpeas and squash 😋 I made a bit too much so I froze some too.

FOOD LABELS Part 3 - FATS

Fats are an important part of a healthy, balanced diet. The provide essential fatty acids and carry the fat-soluble vitamins A, D, E and K.

Fats can be divided into saturated and unsaturated types:

- Saturated fats are usually solid at room temperature because of their chemical structure. Foods high in saturated fats include fatty cuts of meat, full fat dairy products including cheese and cream, butter, coconut and palm oil, cakes, biscuits, pastries and chocolate. Too much saturated fat can increase our cholesterol, which increases risk of coronary heart disease.
- Unsaturated fats can be monounsaturated (such as in olive oils and nuts) or polyunsaturated (such as in vegetable oils and spreads). These are liquid at room temperature and mostly come from plant sources such as rapeseed, olives, nuts and seeds.

Saturated fat should be listed on the nutrition label, as well as the total fat. 
Check the nutrition information per 100g to see whether the fat content is high, medium or low:
Low fat means: 3g or less per 100g
High fat means: 17.5g or more per 100g
Low saturated fat means: 1.5g or less per 100g
High saturated fat means: 5g or more per 100g

❗️Beware of low fat products ❗️
Reduced-fat or low-fat versions of foods aren’t always the healthiest options. Sometimes manufacturers replace fat with sugar, which isn’t a healthier choice. So read the nutrition information to compare sugar and fat content on the original and the reduced-fat product.

Studies have shown that a 'low fat' label can trick us into eating more❗️

Have a good week end ! Enjoy your lovely homemade food 😉
X em

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If you can’t fly, run
If you can’t run, walk
If you can’t walk, crawl,
But by all means keep moving.
- Martin Luther King Jn

Food & Colour 🌈
FOOD LABELS part 3 - food colouring additives

Food colouring or colour additive is a pigment that gives colour to your food. They are found in almost everything that draws our eyes on the supermarket aisle - from beverages and cookies to flavoured yogurt and sweets.

When foods are processed they not only lose nutrients and fibres, but the texture and flavours are also distorted. Colouring agents are frequently added to restore the natural color lost, make food more appealing, add color to colorless foods and to provide consistency in colour.

There are three main categories of food colourings: natural colours, browning colours, and artificial colours.
🌈 Natural colours are extracted and purified directly from nature. The most important natural colours are chlorophyll, carotenoids and flavonoids, which include anthocyanins.
🌈 Browning colours are produced during cooking and processing, ie caramel
🌈 Artificial colours - they are 6 artificial colourings:
* sunset yellow FCF (E110)
* quinoline yellow (E104)
* carmoisine (E122)
* allura red (E129)
* tartrazine (E102)
* ponceau 4R (E124)
Food and drink containing any of these six colours must carry a warning on the packaging. This will say ‘May have an adverse effect on activity and attention in children’ as research is showing possible links between food colours and hyperactivity in children!

Also some dyes have been implicated with health concerns: cancer…

So my advice always read the Label 🏷️

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This week I added butternut squash in my salad 😊

If you are not a great fan of bananas like me, you have good source of potassium in:
- sweet potatoes;
- avocados;
- spinach;
- pumpkin & sunflower seeds;
- almonds & peanuts;
- tomatoes…

Part 2- FOOD LABELS “SUGAR FREE”

Lower or no calorie sweeteners are substances used instead of sugar to sweeten foods and drinks.

They're found in products such as drinks, desserts and ready meals, cakes, chewing gum and toothpaste.

Sweeteners approved for use in the UK include:

🍬acesulfame K (E950)
🍬aspartame (E951)
🍬erythritol (E968)
🍬saccharin (E954)
🍬sorbitol (E420)
🍬steviol glycosides (E960)
🍬sucralose (E955)
🍬xylitol (E967)

All approved sweeteners are considered a safe and acceptable alternative to using sugar.

Health benefits linked to sugar substitutes

🍬if you replace added sugar with sugar substitutes, it could lower your risk of getting tooth decay and cavities.
🍬sugar substitutes also don't raise the level of sugar in the blood.
🍬For adults and children with overweight or obesity, sugar substitutes also might help manage weight in the short term. That's because sugar substitutes often are low in calories or have no calories.

🍬But it's not clear whether sugar substitutes can help people manage their weight over the long term.

In conclusion, it's most important to eat a healthy diet and get exercise.

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