plant-based diet - Nourish by CH - Nutrition & Wellbeing

How Our Diets Impact Sustainability – Insights From A Public Health Expert

by Christina
01/12/202021/11/2021

You may be wondering what your everyday diet has to do with climate change… and a few years ago I sat within that same position. Until I learnt that our aggressive production of some foods is harming the sustainability of our current environment.

Today, Farihah Choudhury, a recent postgraduate of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, shares the small things we can do to improve our impact on the environment. Farihah’s interests include food policy, systems, sustainability, food justice and culture. This amazing woman is also a Public Health Practitioner in a UK county council, leading on their Healthy Weight Strategy. I first encountered her on Twitter (@NutritionFSC) in a few AfNutr monthly chats and then while remotely volunteering with Food For All UK. I have been enjoying her Instagram posts where she shares lots of insight on sustainability, thrifting and reducing food waste for people like me who are working towards a more sustainable lifestyle.

This post is the first in many on sustainability as it relates to eating habits and food systems. Farihah is also featured on this month’s #NutriChat on sustainability and diet! (details will be on my Instagram @NourishbyCH). I’m excited to have Farihah share her expertise with us!

To find more of Farihah, you can follow her on Twitter @NutritionFSC or check out her Instagram @easypeasysustainability.

There was a time many years ago when I thought nutrition and planetary sustainability were two far removed issues, neither having a palpable impact on the other and that environmental issues were more about gas-guzzling cars and single-use straws. Slowly I started to realise that our diets, and by extension, the global food system, were one of the largest contributors to global warming and climate change, as well as habitat destruction, water scarcity and a host of other environmental issues. The sheer volume and demand for food, particularly animal products, has engendered a global appetite for supplying unsustainable amounts of food.

As many local and national authorities in the world are declaring a climate emergency, it is extremely important now more than ever as practising nutritionists, to incorporate sustainable eating into our practice. Indeed, it is possible to have both a sustainable and healthy diet – which is where nutritionists come in.

“Sustainable Healthy Diets are dietary patterns that promote all dimensions of individuals’ health and wellbeing; have low environmental pressure and impact; are accessible, affordable, safe and equitable; and are culturally acceptable”
FAO, 2019

Is Protein the super-nutrient I should be having more of?

by Christina
22/10/202010/04/2023

I know it can’t just be me that has noticed this, but many common foods and recipes have been pushing the “high-protein” agenda for some time. And why is that? Should we be concerned about not having enough protein in our diet? More importantly, what is protein and do we need to include more in our diets?

Protein is one of the three macronutrients the body needs to produce energy. Each gram of protein provides us with 4 calories of energy. I like to think of proteins as the builder macronutrient because it is one of the most important building blocks for the body. Proteins are made from hundreds of smaller molecules called amino acids, which can combine in a variety of ways to produce:

Muscles
Enzymes
Hormones
Immune cells
Skin
Hair
Nails

Should I avoid Carbs?

by Christina
14/10/202009/03/2022

I always found it confusing when people said stuff like, “oh I have to cut down on bread to lose weight”. From a scientific perspective, bread is not super-charged with anything to cause weight gain. It’s definitely not like the magic bean that Jack had. If anything, bread is one of the most affordable staple foods capable of providing energy and micronutrients that you may not otherwise be getting. So, why do people think it’s making us fat? What about other starchy foods and sweet carbs? Today, we’ll talk a bit about the role of carbohydrates in global diets and hopefully, you’ll be able to determine if it’s the cause of weight gain.

Carbohydrates are one of the macronutrient trio which supplies energy to the body. CHO, or Carbs are a diverse set of molecules which are derived from organic monomers (units) such as glucose, fructose and galactose. Plants are the most diverse sources of carbohydrates because they use carbon dioxide and water to create carbs for energy and structure. Carbohydrates can range from the simplest sweet sugars like those found in fruits, to long, branched chains which taste starchy, such as those in potatoes, ground provisions and starchy foods.