The SLOW Principle.

Hello everyone!

It turns out I didn't get to go to New Zealand after all, but I had a nice Tasmanian holiday anyway, of which today is my last day. So back to blogging!

During our nutrition section of study, we learnt that the basis to a solid, healthy diet is to follow the SLOW principle.

Seasonal

Local

Organic

Whole

To be honest, if I had to make them in order of priority, I would put them in the opposite order, but WOLS isn't as good an acronym.

I completely agree with this principle, but it's like an 'in an ideal world' type principle. To eat only (or even mostly) locally would be quite difficult. If I restricted myself to eating only Tasmanian products I'd get by, for sure, but there would be a lot of resisting temptation going on. Even though Tassie has some great produce, it doesn't have the climate for a lot of the things I love, like coconut or bananas. But I think it's a good idea to choose Tasmanian over imported where you can to support local business and reduce your carbon footprint slightly.

Some Tasmanian things you can find in my pantry: Miellerie Prickly Box Honey, Organic Quinoa, Ashgrove Bush Pepper Cheese, Tas Flour Mills Wholemeal Flour and Blue Banner Pickled Onions - the onions are grown in Tassie but I think pickled in NSW... so not entirely Tasmanian, but delicious.

Seasonal is more about eating fresh foods, which I don't completely agree with. Snap frozen foods can have more nutritional value than fresh sometimes because they've been sitting in the supermarket for ages whilst veggies such as peas are frozen within 24 hours of being picked.

Organic is great where it is a) affordable and/or b) available. Organic foods found in my pantry - Melrose Organic Unrefined Coconut Oil, Elgaar Farm Organic Milk (also Tasmanian) and Lotus Organic Chia Seeds.

Whole is, in my opinion, the most important of the 4. Over processed foods, even though they are often delicious, are the bane of the current Western diet. Is that too harsh? Probably. Enjoy in moderation! Choose wholegrain breads - wholemeal isn't wholegrain, by the way, read the ingredients for 'wholegrain flour'. Try to get your 5 serves of fruit and veggies in a day. My favourite wholegrain bread is Ancient Grains Wholegrain Organic Spelt which is sooo yummy as well!

And to leave you with this weekends photo (totally on topic) - Oby enjoying himself amongst our recently pruned 4 fruit trees (greengage, apricot, peach and apple). This is their 2nd year in the ground so hopefully we'll get some mature fruit.

Cheers,

Jacqui.