Hannie Mommers 
As you may know, Tom and I are huge advocates of organic food. Yet we are also aware that in some places organic produce is hardly available. So why not grow some yourself? And if you don’t have a garden, herbs are especially easy to grow indoors.
Some are easy growers, others need more attention. The orientation of your window is important, as well as the soil you put them in. You can sow them or use cuttings. And nowadays there are complete, highly sophisticated indoor systems.
The problem with many diets is the feeling of hunger. This gives you the idea that you are punishing yourself and you run the risk of snacking in between. Comfort food.
If you want to lose weight, it is important to find a solution that is permanent. So how to lose weight without hunger is an important part of that solution.
Losing weight doesn’t necessarily have to be about eating. There are other ways too, such as exercising or simply walking every day.
For 40+ years I had breakfast with only fruits and a little fruit juice. You might think that is boring, but as the seasons change, the fruit choice changes as well. Because we only eat twice a day since 2019, I wanted to change my breakfast to eat varied enough.
Searching “Healthy breakfast recipes” didn’t at first offer me the kind of breakfasts I was looking for. But determination always pays off as you know, so now I have added 2 breakfasts to the one I had. And I am still looking for variations.
Why is it so hard for me to decide on other breakfasts? Well, as I have described earlier I was raised on bread and sweets. Maybe, if I try really hard, I could eat an American or English breakfast, but at the moment the thought alone gives me the creeps. As I am sure that Anglo Saxons will shiver at the thought of eating just bread. Or fruits. 🙂
How to improve your diet and health is easy with white fruits and vegetables. For instance, a high intake of white food may reduce the risk of a stroke by 55%. In a healthy and nutritious diet, white fleshy fruits and vegetables are common.
Some ten years ago my father-in-law died. Ten years before that, he suffered a massive stroke. The stroke seriously impaired his speech and walking capacities. For most of the time, he sat in his chair watching TV.
My father-in-law’s stroke was a wake-up call for Tom, my husband. Strokes usually run in the male line of the family. Of course, I don’t know why my father-in-law got a stroke or why it was so massive. What I do know is that white fruits and vegetables can reduce the risk of a stroke and have many other healthy and nutritious properties.
The health benefits of antioxidants are most obvious in red food. Especially now that we’re getting older it’s important to look carefully at what we eat. We emphasize variety. The health benefits of antioxidants also get extra attention.
More in general our health is an important drive to pay more attention to our food. Tom had a couple of fierce gout attacks years ago and has kept a purine-free diet ever since. I have a tendency for arthritis, so I avoid among other things the use of salt and alcohol.
Food with a load of calories, sugar, and fat cost a lot of energy to digest. If you often feel tired, it might be a good idea to adjust your diet. Find out what the best food for energy is for you. There will surely be a couple of foods on the list that you like and to which your body responds well.
When we go shopping or walk into town, the temptation of fast food and quick snacks are lurking for us. We are wired for sweet and salt, because for our ancestors these flavours were scarce, yet provided a lot of calories and nutrients. Our environment changed drastically, but our taste didn’t keep pace with that change.
Fast food has a lot of refined sugars and empty calories. If ‘yummy’ is our only criterion to choose food, we won’t feel that ‘yummy’ ourselves over time.
From the 70s my parents went on holiday in Spain and brought Maja soap back home with them. The scent of that soap still reminds me of my sunburnt mother who blissfully unwrapped her soap.
The scent was too flowery for me, but what I liked was the paper packaging. I don’t have a soap allergy, but I want sustainable products, including their packaging. Nowadays there is hardly any soap available in Spain that is wrapped in paper. Even in the Eco store, the Marseille soap is wrapped in plastic.
“How is that even possible? I just got back from 3 months at the South coast of Spain?”
At that time I was living in the Netherlands and had been travelling to the sun in wintertime. I was in the GP’s office to get the results of my general medical test and just didn’t understand how I could have a Vitamin D deficiency despite a lot of sun I had been in.
The doctor explained to me that ageing skin does not absorb as much Vitamin D as younger skin and suggested taking supplements. Until then, I was very reluctant to take any supplement at all. I thought that a healthy diet should be sufficient.