We’re officially past the halfway mark in January and hopefully you’re starting to feel the benefit from implementing my challenges:
- Drink the recommended eight glasses (two litres) of water a day.
- Introduce two new fruit or vegetables a week.
- Walk/jog up and down your stairs at home ten times a day.
This week I focused on introducing mint into my diet, a herb that I don’t regularly consume even though it’s cheap and easily accessible in the UK. Like all plants it’s a good source of fibre and polyphenols, both essential in maintaining good gut health, it contains particularly high levels of Vitamin A, a fat-soluble vitamin critical for good eye health [1] and folate which is vital for cell growth and metabolism and particularly important for women who are pregnant or planning to conceive as it is known to protect against birth defects [2].
I introduced mint into my weekly meals by adding it to salads, pasta dishes and curry as well as combining it with cucumber and natural yoghurt to make Raita, a delicious accompaniment to curry that further boosts it’s supportive capacity for gut health.
Mint can improve the taste of water and aid your daily intake, I froze leaves in ice cubes along with blueberries to use in my morning glass, this is a particularly good way of utilising fruit and vegetables coming to the end of their shelf life. I also discovered that I could make a delicious virgin mojito by muddling mint leaves with chunks of lime and a teaspoon of brown sugar before adding plenty of ice and topping with soda water, it was amazingly hard to tell the difference from a real mojito and a great alternative if you’re trying to cut down on your alcohol intake.
1. Brown, N.A.P., et al., Nutrition supplements and the eye. Eye, 1998. 12(1): p. 127-133.
2. Refsum, H., Folate, vitamin B12 and homocysteine in relation to birth defects and pregnancy outcome. Br J Nutr, 2001. 85 Suppl 2: p. S109-13.
MLT Nutrition 