Easy Food Swaps, Snacking Smarter & Anti-Inflammatory Supplements

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0:33Welcome to the Wellness Scoop, your now twice weekly dose of health and wellness inspiration and as always we are both here as your hosts of the show. I'm Ella Mills and I'm Rhiannon Lambert and we love this particular episode because it's when we get to dive into questions that you have sent us and share our favourite tips and tricks. So let's go! First of all, Rhiannon Lambert, have you got any good recommendations for us? I would say I was so heavy on them the last few weeks that this week's a bit sparse but I saw that Rivals is coming back in May and I'm just so excited I just had to share it oh my god I was obsessed with Rivals love it even the soundtrack I've even been singing the soundtrack I am so obsessed with Rivals it's brilliant and you know what I have been getting my kids into the Winter Olympics I put it on the last few nights oh my gosh I loved it it's so unbelievable but I mean what people can do when it comes to athleticism is just boggles the mind I am sat on a panel once with um Kemi who is one of our um Olympians winter Olympians skiing and I just find it boggling the big jumps I saw the huge big ski jumps they're doing it's so high up like my son my five-year-old was just his mouth like jaw was wide open like oh mommy they're not going to really jump off that I was like yeah they are oh my gosh I totally agree I have been loving it yeah so that's all really I don't really have any other recommendations how about you surely breath work now is getting into a nice rhythm it is I'm like a month into my course we've started teaching each other which the first time was obviously very nerve-wracking but actually kind of went back to my yoga teacher training and kind of feels like a continuum of that so I'm loving it I really want to get back into teaching yoga this year as well so that's my one of my other focuses I told you I was going on a fitness journey maybe that'll be part of it I mentioned also last week that I started watching the summer I turned pretty I am addicted are you I couldn't get into it maybe I need to try again oh my gosh it feels very reminiscent of the OC I never saw that either my husband goes on about that oh my gosh you never watched OC it's gold but Misha Barton's coming to the local town misha barton's doing like a theater production she's from the oc yeah yeah yeah marissa she was like the main character well there were two marissa and summer and seth and ryan oh my god it's so good right okay i know you're literally the busiest person in the world right now but if you ever have any downtime or like a long train journey okay 10 up 10 okay but the summer i turned pretty i'm just finishing season two i am obsessed one recommendation we had into the inbox this week that is an excellent one came from Katie.

3:19She said, we are in agreement tea, pigs, peppermint and licorice tea is top tier. You guys might remember Rhea and I are both obsessed with them. She said, I have quite a big selection of different teas and every night I pop to the kitchen to decide what I fancy that evening. Love that Katie. Will it be manuka, honey and ginger, pear and elderflower? Katie, you have an excellent tea selection. Pear and elderflower. I just love it. But she said, okay, when pushed, terms to shove though I'm never going to choose those delightful ones because I'm always choosing my beloved peppermint and licorice but I've recently discovered that Lidl do their own version and it tastes exactly the same as that so the peppermint and licorice one that we're all obsessed with and ogling over here is the tea pigs one but what Katie's saying is that Lidl have the exact same product and it is a fraction of the price so if anyone else wants to try it get down to Lidl for their version of peppermint and licorice or the tea pigs one if you got that but it's excellent i love that i absolutely love it now we have our first question from amy today on the podcast she said i love the pod i've listened to every episode and thank you so much for making sense of the crazy wellness world for us oh she said i eat a pretty varied plant heavy diet lots of oats nuts seeds beans pulses whole grains fruit and veg daily i hit 30 plus plant points a week and i think i'm usually getting my 30 grams of fiber one thing i worry about though is micronutrients in my diet?

4:44How do I know if I'm getting enough of the various nutrients like calcium, magnesium, zinc, iodine? Do you have any tips to ensure we're getting what we need throughout the week? Yeah, no, I think it's really, really important because, you know, it's one of the areas I don't think we talk about. We talk about the key vitamins. Everyone knows where vitamin C hopefully comes from, you know, your fruits, your veggies, but we don't really talk about those other ones. But while it's a thoughtful question, I would say as well, I don't want you to panic because without blood tests and, you know, clinical context, it is kind of impossible to know for sure, you know, 100 percent what your actual current status is.

5:20And some minerals and vitamins don't measure well on blood tests. For instance, you can't measure for calcium and different elements like that. So and also different periods of our life. I think as well, she added here that she is in her early 30s with three young children. Wow. And currently breastfeeding her 10 month old twins. I mean, that in itself is a different phase of your life. And I can see exactly why you're really interested in understanding that because you do have higher nutrition demands when you're breastfeeding and when you're pregnant. So this is when a varied diet comes in, Ella, all the different parts that we talk about and try and think about the patterns of your diet across the week.

6:01And if you are breastfeeding, it's the rare time I might say it might be useful to take a particular multivitamin to support breastfeeding. But first, calcium comes from, of course, your dairy foods, but also your plant milks, your yogurts, tofu that's set with calcium. I know the brand that sets with calcium is called Cauldron, I think. But you want to check its calcium set because that's the fortification you need. Then there's sesame, of course. So tahini, me and Ella love tahini, leafy greens, magnesium. Think all the lovely things we discuss all the time. Even dark chocolate. Have dark chocolate every day.

6:36You're breastfeeding. You deserve it. You've got twins. and whole grains oats nuts beans again zinc is from all these plant foods too nut butters are helpful i think iodine is the most tricky one to get for most people if you don't eat dairy and fish and i think that's what's really difficult and you could buy those little seaweed crisps that me and ella discussed was it a week ago oh yeah we love those we love those and they often have extra iodine in them but i just think if you've got anyone that can support you with the cooking at home just to get a bit of variety in because i know how hard it can be when you've got babies and other children, it can be extremely difficult.

7:12So just think of little tips, like don't have your cup of tea with your food, for instance. You don't want to impair, because of the tannins in the tea, the absorption of vitamin C, for instance. You want to have a bit of a gap between your coffee and your tea when you're eating. And also you can go to your GP. Your GP should be able to do that for you for free. You could say, look, I'm breastfeeding, I've got twins. I really want to know what my micronutrient status is. I really want to get some answers just so I can have a look at my diet and they should do a blood test for you. You're right.

7:42Cauldron is the one that is calcium. So I have just checked for us. I do buy that because I know once a week or twice. Yeah, it's important. Okay. Our second question today comes from Mari. Can you give us a read for it? She said, the first is, what do you guys think of packaged grains? I live in Germany and I feel like the Germans are very strict when it comes to organic food and pay attention to certain ingredients. I started to buy these packs of express grains and lentils, and I feel they are so helpful when it comes to throwing in a salad or combining with batch cooked chilies, stews, etc.

8:17on a busy day. I kind of agree with her. I think for most people, they're really convenient. But they contain far more grains than I could cook at one time, and there doesn't seem to be anything extra in the ingredients. And then she's listed off the ingredients here, Ella. do you want to read through those and then give us a recap yeah so we've got in here cooked grains so long grain rice durham wheat red rice wild rice bulgur white quinoa red quinoa mountain lentils extra virgin olive oil and sea salt so it's a fantastic list looks so good yeah so i thought look what's helpful here hopefully for mari but for all of us is just a recap basically we talked about this on Monday is this like huge confusion over UPFs and the fact that, you know, you might see a hint of citric acid in your tinned tomatoes and don't worry about that.

9:04What we're really talking about with UPFs are these kind of industrially formulated products that don't resemble food. And just as a very quick recap, you've got a Nova score, which is really the most widely used classification at the moment. It was developed in the late 2000s by researchers in St. Paolo. I know Rhi was recently at a talk in Parliament with Carlos Montero, who was the guy that led that research. All super interesting. But basically, it creates four things. We've got over one, which is you're totally on process or very minimally processed foods. So, we're thinking like bags of spinach or carrots, et cetera, a carton of eggs.

9:42Number two, you're processed culinary ingredients. So that's like, for example, creating butter or olive oil, you know, olive oil, you've had to do something to the olives to create the oil. Number three are processed foods. And that's really where we're bringing group one and two together. So you're making soup while you're using an oil or you're using a butter and you're using vegetables and you're using a tin of chickpeas or something and you're cooking it and you're bringing it all together or a flapjack or something like that but number four ultra processed foods this is industrial formulations with additives like emulsifiers flavoring stabilizers modified starches etc this is the group linked to poorer health outcomes not processed foods in group three which is where your grains for example here would sit and those are not bad for us generally speaking these are often very very good for us and this is a fantastic example of that like this has done so much heavy lifting for you.

10:39You've got seven different plants in there, which is, you know, it's almost a third of your 30, which is fantastic. I mean, if you then just were at your desk and you had five minutes and you added some avocados, some salad leaves, some tomatoes, even that you've suddenly got a third of your weekly plant intake, which is just so cool. You know, you've probably in a portion of that got six or seven grams of fiber. So again, and then you add on a few more bits and you're probably over a third of your daily intake, which is fantastic. So that is basically doing a lot of heavy lifting for you because the reality is on a busy work day, most people aren't going to prep something that has two different types of quinoa, two different types of, well, three different types of rice, et cetera.

11:22So these things are fantastic. And to me, and Rhi, I know you feel really strongly on this. I feel like this is the problem of the conversation on UPFs is that that makes us scared of anything in a packet, which is so not what we want. I completely and utterly agree. These are positive examples of foods that we need to be including. And they're not going to be addictive. And they're a healthy part of your diet, for sure. Because we discussed on Monday, the addictive nature of UPFs as well. And this is where it becomes, I think, very confusing for everyone. My only drawback to pouches is just environmental.

11:56And I think it's about time we had recyclable pouches and potentially a little element of plastic. But, you know, what can you do? I think these are brilliant. And I've been actually using these types of pouches when they first came out 12 years ago in the clinic. I was using these microwave pouches for clients. I think they're great. They're absolutely fantastic. They really, really are.

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14:15Lauren has another fantastic question. She said she recently started a new job and she's in the office five days a week. And whilst I largely bring in a lunch based on whole foods, wow, you're doing so well, Lauren. She said soups, tray bakes. She said, I have a habit of having an afternoon snack. You often talk about lots of ideas that sound great, but I'm allergic to nuts, which I find rules out a lot of whole food snack options. I think she is right there Ella I think a lot of bars and things often do have nuts in do you have any suggestions for a healthy mid-afternoon snack that's not based around nuts that I can take to work so Ella over to you because there are actually tons when you think outside the box there really really are and I think there are also increasingly more ready to go options um that are nut free because obviously now so many environments like schools for example are no nuts for everybody at school yeah interestingly of our bars at delicious yellow the nut free ones are our biggest sellers and i think that's probably why anyway so loads of different things you know things like roasted chickpea mixes are absolutely delicious like make them super crunchy with some soy sauce some chili etc or crunchy corn there's a brand called love corn oh my gosh i'm obsessed with theirs i don't know if you've tried it re yeah um they've got lots of different flavors you can get almost like a replacement for a pack of crisps like um cheese and chive and things like that exactly you can make um which i think is a really great option if you want something that's really like genuinely filling is making easy dips obviously you can make a classic commerce but just things like a white bean dip you could add miso you could add some leftover roast carrots or peppers or beetroot or something great for your plant points our books have got loads of recipes of snacks as well and so many check those out so yeah dips i think are a really nice one and obviously you can have crudités with it or just like nice crackers rice cakes oat cakes etc i think for a kind of day-to-day snack that's genuinely really filling that's a really good option cheer pudding is also a nice thing you can prep for the week i would just do like sort of two-thirds to 75 % chia seeds with and then oats for the rest and then just mix in some yogurt a little bit of whatever milk you can use or want to use obviously a no nut one you could add some chopped dried fruit like apricots or dates on the top a little bit of honey or maple and ella a nice replacement for nut butter i don't know if you can have seeds or if it's just a nut allergy it is tahini it mixes in the same way as nut butter into lots of snacks yeah exactly so i would say yeah you've got like your crunchy chickpeas corn if you want something crunchy really good dips um for something that's really quite filling chia pudding for a little sweeter thing oat based flapjack so you can use like dried mango, for example, no nut option.

16:56But also you can make things like energy balls without nuts. So there's one I make that I really like that sesame and vanilla, if sesame is okay for you. So that's pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, oats, some vanilla, tahini, sesame seeds, and medjool dates. Absolutely delish. So yummy. I mean, all of these things sound divine. They take a bit of prep, but I think it's, if you're already prepping your lunchbox, they can just be something to look forward to. I find mid-afternoon snacks really are my highlight. A hundred percent. And also you can just kind of make them in one go ready for the whole week.

17:28So, you know, do a big batch of the energy balls or do a big batch of your dip, for example. Or just save your favourite dark chocolate for the mid-afternoon snack. I mean, I'm all about just to wipe out that bar of chocolate. Emma, we've got a lovely question from you now. She said, I just want to write in again to say I'm loving the wellness scoop. It's a little joy I get to experience two a week. She's so grateful for our second episode, Ella. I love it. I love our second episode too. I love it. And she said, now this subject has been covered before, but I would like to ask more about bloating.

18:00I eat a very balanced diet full of fiber, et cetera, but I'm bloated constantly from the moment I wake up until I go to bed. I've tried low FODMAP supplements, probiotics, and eventually decided to get a private test, which has revealed low gut diversity, very high inflammation levels and low butyrate. Considering I eat a healthy diet and I try to eat a range of plants, how else can I reduce inflammation and what are your thoughts on butyrate supplements? Great question, Rhea. I'm going to hand this one straight over to you because I don't know a huge amount about those supplements. Well, she's also added that she loves grating carrot and mixed spice into oats.

18:34So she liked that tip, which is good. I think that was yours actually, Ella. I just want to remind you of the analogy I've used before that you can't just add supplements onto an engine that's not working fully. So you can't add petrol to a car that's engine isn't fully healed or fixed. And I would also love to know if you did the FODMAP diet under supervision correctly, you know, reintroduction over a period because it's hard. I mean, it takes a lot of discipline. It's really difficult to extract foods from your diets and then slowly reintroduce them again. And FODMAPs are essentially different types of strains of fiber in foods and elements of foods that can trigger different reactions in our gut.

19:16And sometimes we need to reduce those foods first and then slowly reintroduce them again. But there's just so much nuance. And what age you are, hormonally speaking, what's going on, the stress in your lifestyle. We know that estrogen and progesterone affect our gut motility. Just look at what happens around your cycle. for as a female, like when you feel like your stools are looser or when you feel more bloated and when you get potentially more diarrhea-based symptoms than other times of month, or if you're going through perimenopause and menopause and you're noticing more bloating because the estrogen fluctuations, more water's being drawn into the gut and gas in different areas.

19:54So this is humongous when it comes to being a question. And what I want to say is many nutrients and compounds behave really differently in whole foods versus supplements, because supplements are often synthetic. You know, it doesn't matter if they say they're from a whole food, they still had to be processed. You know, you have to process anything to put it in a pill form and they're not going to work in the same way. So what I would do is readdress your FODMAP stage initially. It's hard to know about you being my client in clinic, but I would definitely go back and look at reintroduction elimination.

20:25It's the safest thing you can do for me to offer generalized advice without seeing someone on a one-to-one basis understand what's working what's not butyrate supplements i mean mimicking and trying to create a synthetic form of a compound that's produced by your gut bacteria the short chain fatty acids in your gut is tricky instead re could you have a really concerted effort for example on fermented foods as you know so like a really delicious snack for the bugs yeah i I probably wouldn't start with fermented foods if you're already experiencing a lot of bloating and digestive issues. But you can build that up smally and 100 percent.

21:05Once you've gone back to that FODMAP stage and then you reintroduce, it is hard work. I'm so sorry. This probably is not the answer that you want to hear, Emma, from me. But I hope you can appreciate that what we need to do, first of all, is get back to your basic patterns of eating before we can then introduce the fermented foods and the different areas of the diet there. but have small amounts have small amounts build it up have a bit of kefir every day don't go for a vat of it have a little bit with your food and slowly slowly go from there but um my advice would be FODMAP then looking at diversity of gut foods um with this type of case love it so difficult Ella it's so not easy okay our last question today comes from Amelia who said I've been loving the wellness scoop and already feel better by implementing some of the tips and tricks you've talked about, which is so great to hear.

21:53So thank you, Amelia. I'm a big fan of pasta because of how easy and versatile it is. Sorry, Ella, you've got to stop. She skipped over this. She said, I've been trying the recipes from Ella's book, Quick Wins, and I love them. The whipped greens are now a staple in my fridge. Ella skipped right over it. But you know what? We have had such nice feedback on the book, Quick Wins. And Amelia, I would say that whipped greens is one of my favourite. We actually, obviously, just a few questions ago, we're talking about easy snacks you could have during the afternoon the whipped greens is so nice you've just got you literally just boil up some peas and edamame together and then you pop that in a blender with some um just fry some garlic and olive oil quite a lot of olive oil as well so you've got some garlic oil and then you're mixing up the garlic and the oil the garlic oil your peas um edamame tofu um salt lemon juice and it makes a super creamy protein rich which if you can use your calcium set tofu, extra points for that, but it's just super delicious, very balanced and a really nice afternoon snack.

22:54But we digress from Amelia's question. Amelia is a big fan of pasta because of how easy and versatile it is. I think we both are too. I'm able to make different sauces for different plants and nutrients. In my journey to eat healthier and more balanced, I've recently become obsessed with my chickpea pasta. I was wondering if chickpea pasta is a better alternative for regular white pasta. and I'm curious if the same amount of nutrients as whole chickpeas in it or is some of it lost through the processing. Do you know what this is the type of question I love that we raised I know that all plants Ella you've got an amazing chickpea feasibly for instance you know 100 grams of it dries like five grams of fiber and proteins 18 grams whereas you compare that to regular white pasta it's still good you know the fiber's two to three grams but you're getting five in the chickpea version and the protein's only six to seven of course in the white refined pasta and in chickpea it's 18 grams.

23:43So gram for, you know, chickpea, you know, it's double. You know what? It links back to having all sorts of linking today, but we links back to our second question from Mari about kind of processed versus ultra processed. You know, very few of these lagoon based pastas have got emulsifiers or anything in there, generally speaking. It's either R1, for example, at all plants, which for me, just obviously I'm biased, but taste-wise works better is it's a mix of Italian wheat and lentils or chickpeas etc because it's when you cook it the texture that's what's hard with these alternative pastas we found trying every different ratio under the sun when you're roughly half and half between wheat and legumes you get the al dente kind of mouthfeel that you get from normal pasta but with that health boost I'm not a huge fan of 100 % lentil pastas because I just don't love the texture where it turns into mush and i find it really difficult when you sieve it through and then you've got your end product um that's what's hard about the variations yeah so the half and half does work super well but anyways obviously i'm biased on that side because i helped develop it but um it is a great question for the fact that it's um as i said this sits like mari's um mixed grains and pulses in the sense that you know this is a great thing in my opinion as opposed to something to feel worried about because you know yes you lose a little bit versus a tin of um chickpea but ultimately you get so much more than plain pasta as we said like it's probably it's more than double the amount of protein it's almost triple it's more than double the amount of fiber like gen z you say it delivers ella just you know delivers but it does and if you literally like having a busy work week and you just mix that with a tablespoon of pesto from your cupboard, some fresh tomatoes, some rocket, just the simple things you probably have in your fridge anyway.

25:41You know, you add in a few more lentils, you can probably very easily get that lunch to 20 grams of protein, 10 grams of fiber in 10 minutes, no faff, no fuss. And if you were using regular pasta, you just wouldn't get the same benefits. So I don't think it's that you shouldn't use regular pasta. I love regular pasta. I use it all the time. But for like easy work lunch on a Tuesday, this is going to give you a bit more. Absolutely. And so I think that was a really good question. I think we've covered a lot of nuance today in convenience items actually, and how much fiber and protein they can still contain.

26:16And not every UPF convenience item is bad. Yeah. Inherently bad. Like we discussed on, if you rewind and go back to Monday's episode, we discussed the addictive nature of UPFs, but examples of packets like grains and things, just such a wonderful, easy addition to the diet. Exactly. Loads of other things that come in packets are fantastic. Yeah. I mean, we're not anti-packets. What I would love to see, Ella, is recyclable packaging, but that's a whole story for another day. But, Rhi, I will tell you something about that quickly, which is that there is some stuff out there that's really good. Yeah.

26:49Absolutely. But the world of packaging isn't where I think collectively as consumers, we would maybe like it to be. But food waste is such an enormous issue. As we know, if food waste was a country, it would be the third largest admitter of greenhouse gases after the US and China. It's a mega, mega, mega problem. And the thing to be wary of is that if packaging isn't food safe enough, it's not sealed well enough, etc., then ultimately you end up with a huge amount of waste. So it is an interesting balance when it comes to our packaging. We had it, for example, this is back in 2005, six, when did we launch?

27:272016. We launched our first products and we were sold this compostable packaging, which like consumers loved. They were like, this is excellent. Such a kind of forward thinking brand. Well, twofold problem. First of all, it just wasn't strong enough as packaging. It opened so often. We had such a massive amount of food waste. And second of all, actually, it wasn't home compostable. like not really you know you can't just pop it out with your potato skins and so it would end up in landfill essentially anyway because you'd pop it in your bin which most people would do anyway so really the benefit just wasn't there and so after about a year we scrapped it and we had so many complaints of like you've gone back on your principles we're like no this is actually better for the environment it sounds great what we're doing but it's totally greenwashing we've realized it's not working and we have we then tried later on you know it was like a first to market recyclable option for snack bars we were the first bigger brand in supermarkets to use it it didn't seal properly no and again it's food waste so the issue here is that environmentally speaking it's a gap i'm not you know obviously like not the world's most foremost expert on packaging to be super clear but you my experience in the food industry is that i think you know whilst loads of companies do not want to reformulate their products and remove upfs from them because they make a lot of money from it i don't think you'd meet many companies who wouldn't want to use recyclable options it's such a win like customers love it there are some out there so i remember working on a baby food brand actually a very long time ago and we had the first ever recyclable pouches and but the problem for the consumer is that you have to wash it out yourself send it back to the company direct in a an envelope it comes with and most people just don't have the time i think to do that so the issue here no we need proper recycling like things we need dragon's den to come up and some clever entrepreneur to come on dragon's den and solve this massive issue for consumers i'm confident that issue will be solved yeah come on manufacturers is come on scientists get them out there anyways we might have listeners who are the world's foremost expert on packaging but it's just suffice to say i think in most cases people aren't not using it because they would prefer not to i think people aren't using it because there's actually not a best-in-class option that's actually really simple for a consumer because half the time you know i try really really hard you know i really beat myself up about it when a product says oh you have to take it back to the store to recycle it and then sometimes you're just so busy things just don't happen and then they end up in the bin and you feel really really guilty it has to become an option that is easy for everybody involved so yeah watch watch this space everyone food waste and landfill let's try and cure the world on the world exactly we can all feel great and then you can just watch the summer at 10 pretty for some easy wins guys we will see you back here on monday on Thursday next week as always please reach out to us hello at wellness-scoop.com we would love to hear from you we love hearing from you we love seeing you here every week thank you for being here thank you for listening thank you have a great weekend