EATING YOUR WAY TO HEALTH AND SEXY

Eating With the Seasons – How Eating Seasonally Helps Boost Your Gut Microbiome and helps you in getting back your sexy.

Have you realised that during winter strawberries and blueberries are usually more expensive than they are in Spring and Summer?

This is because they are out of season! I love using berries in my protein smoothies, so I am always looking for berries. During the autumn and winter months I buy Australian grown frozen berries. Buying them frozen is the same as buying them in season because as soon as they are picked they are frozen, allowing them to retain all their nutrients.

Living in the Southern Hemisphere we can now welcome great prices and quality taste on things like apples, asparagus, avocados, bananas, carrots, celery, kale, kiwi, citrus fruits, strawberries, pineapples, spinach, turnips with the upcoming spring months.

What does it mean to eat seasonally?

Eating seasonally means to change one’s diet in accordance to the foods readily available by nature.

Not only will eating seasonally save you some dollars on your grocery budget, it will provide you with the most delicious, freshest, belly (and environmentally) friendly foods.

Benefits of Eating Seasonally:

1. Best Flavour– fresh, fully ripened produce has the best flavour, texture, and colour. It is just how it was meant to be.

2. Superior Nutrition – compared to being picked early or grown in less natural conditions, the foods ready in each season have a higher nutrient value because they’ve been given the right amount time to grow and obtain nutrients from the sun and soil.

On average, produce travels anywhere from 3000 to 10000 kilometres to get to us and our supermarkets! The nutrient density of the foods declines as soon as they are harvested so you can imagine what we are left with. Studies have shown upwards of 70% of nutrients being lost by time we get to it.

3. Abundance = lower price – When certain foods are plentiful, the price won’t be as high. Say goodbye to your $8 strawberries! It’s also cheaper for farmers to produce. Cash in on this.

4. Local/Organic – seasonal food is more likely to be grown closer to home which allows you to know where your stuff came from! This also reduces the use of pesticides, herbicides, and genetic modification because it doesn’t need as much ‘help’ to grow or transport.

5. Variety – eating seasonally allows you for your tastebuds to explore new flavours, helps you pick things you may never have tried, and get creative with making them into your dishes!

6. Diversity – eating seasonally allows you to provide your gut microbiome with a diverse array of foods – which it loves. Having diversity in the gut helps boost the immune system.

7. Harmony – once we begin to eat and live by the tune of how nature intended, not only do we become more aware, appreciative, and connected to our food supply, but our bodies thank us.

The foods ready in specific seasons provide exactly what the body needs: detoxification from the long winter of heavier foods (as seen in the plethora of leafy greens in the spring), hydration (as seen with more berries, watermelon, cucumbers in the summer) and cooling (as seen in the emergence of apples in the fall to help rid the body of heat to prepare for winter).

These foods were here before us and will remain here after us – they must be on to something.

Below are a list of foods for Spring and Summer. Print these and put them on your fridge or shopping list!