For the Love of Our Home-Grown Berries!

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Huge thanks to Food52 for pointing out that this week is Blueberry Week and providing a fabulous selection of recipes that champion these little dark balls of deliciousness and greatness! If you don't already subscribe to the Food52 newsletters, I urge you to do so now - it's inspirational!

However, if you live 'this side of the pond' I urge you to celebrate the incredible wealth of home-grown berries that are crowding our shelves right now - particularly strawberries, raspberries and blackberries (or brambles as we call them in Scotland).

Blueberries have 'bagged' a superfood spot - they are low in calories, high in fibre, chock full of immune-boosting vitamin C, offer good levels of bone-building vitamin K and are believed to contain the highest, health-protective antioxidant capacity of all commonly-consumed fruits and vegetables BUT how often do you find 'locally-grown' blueberries on your supermarket shelf? In my experience, occasionally, but not often, WHEREAS just yesterday, the minute I walked into my 'local', I was greeted by an overwhelming, almost 'jammy' and extremely enticing aroma of strawberries, grown only around 50 miles from my city dwelling so there was no competition - the strawberries won hands down for tomorrow's breakfast! Furthermore, the strawberries were around £5 per kg and the blueberries were around £11 per kg - not a difficult decision! 

I read somewhere that not only has the European love affair with blueberries come as a direct result of health reports hailing them as one of the world's most beneficial superfoods but also that we appear to be more than happy to gorge on them because unlike strawberries, they don't require any work - you have to 'hull' a strawberry and that seems to be too big a task for some - what?? 

Just so you know... strawberries, raspberries and blackberries all offer more vitamin C than blueberries and when in season and locally-grown, pack a health-protective punch not too far behind blueberries (particularly those poor little mites that have had to travel a good many miles over a number of days to get onto our shelves)! 

Bag your home-grown berries while you can - the season is short. Have them early doors with creamy-smooth yoghurt and a handful of nuts and seeds, top a couple of crisp breads with nut butter, berries and black pepper or add them to salads for lunch, whizz them up into a smoothie with a dollop of delectable crème fraîche or have them on their own when you need a little sweetness in your world mid morning or mid afternoon or make a spicy berry sauce and serve it with meat or game for dinner (delicious) or when nothing else will do... dip them in melted, deepest, darkest chocolate and tell yourself you are benefitting from even more superfood superiority! 

Going Bananas!

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It’s certainly not news that high blood pressure and a deficiency of the mineral, potassium are linked (or perhaps more often recorded is too much sodium and not enough potassium) so it’s vital that our diet includes plenty of potassium-rich foods to get the balance right.  Many people immediately think bananas when they think potassium, but you would have to eat a lot of bananas in a day (around 9!) to get close to the recommended daily dose. 30g of leafy green vegetables (particularly swiss chard, spinach and bok choy) provide around twice the amount of potassium so in addition to the occasional banana which makes a filling and splendidly-portable snack (the greener the better to get plenty of gut-friendly resistant starch as long as you chew them really well), go leafy daily! 

Help for Migraine Sufferers

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A study on Co-Enzyme Q10 found that more than half of migraine sufferers who took a CoQ10 supplement reduced their migraine episodes by almost 50%. Even those who still suffered, saw the duration of their migraine drop by half. The dosage level for CoQ10 was 100mg three times a day.

An additional tactic is to get more magnesium-rich foods such as spinach, chard, avocados, almonds and cashews into your diet as research indicates that migraine sufferers are very often deficient in this mineral.

And... very dark chocolate is another good source of magnesium so when a snack-attack threatens, have one of those mini bars with a handful of nuts and a mug of green tea!