New rules for gluten free foods

February 3, 2009 By 1 Comment

Bread crumbsUnder the new EU regulations, only foods that contain less than 20 parts of gluten in a million will be allowed to use the term ‘gluten-free’ on their packaging. Recent evidence has shown that this extremely low level offers better protection for those with an intolerance to gluten. Previously, a food labelled gluten-free could have contained up to ten times more than this.

In addition, some foods made using cereals that have been specially processed to remove most of the gluten, but which contain less than 100 parts in a million, will be able to make the claim ‘very low gluten’. These include substitutes of certain staple foods such as bread.

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Filed Under: Featured, Special Diets Tagged With:

Tune up your digestion

December 1, 2008 By 5 Comments

Patrick HolfordThis article is taken from Patrick Holford’s 100% health Newsletter available to members of his 100% health Club – for more information visit www.patrickholford.com.

You are not just what you eat. You are what you can digest and absorb. The fundamental design of the human body is a tube – like a doughnut with a hole in the middle. We, like other animals, spend our physical lives processing organic matter for waste. How good you are at this determines your energy level, longevity and state of body and mind, as well as your digestion.

Over a lifetime, no less than 100 tons of food passes along the digestive tract and 300,000 litres of digestive juices are produced by the body to break it down. Our ‘inside skin’ – a thirty foot long tract with a surface area the size of a small football pitch – is only the thickness of a quarter of a sheet of paper. Amazingly, most of the billions of cells that make up this barrier between us and the inside world are renewed every four days. It’s also where we make many key brain neurotransmitters and hormones that change how you feel.

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Filed Under: Health, Tips Tagged With: , ,

Cracking the Christmas cocktail

November 30, 2008 By Leave a Comment

Ben Reed (2) The festive period is already in full swing and as the drinks begin to flow during the ultimate party season, how can you be sure that your Christmas party shines brighter than the rest? Throwing the perfect party and making sure your guests have a good time is always stressful but worry not because help is at hand to make sure your Christmas do is that little bit different.

Mixologist and cocktail expert Ben Reed is giving top advice on preparing the perfect tipple, in this live webchat. Wondering which liqueurs go well with a mince pie or what cocktails are best to serve during winter? Well this is your chance to have your questions answered live by the master.

Forget Grandma’s old sherry, spice up your winter warmer with a cocktail list to make even Tom Cruise jealous. Log on and find out how to make your guests’ taste bud tingle make your yuletide bash a night to remember!

Mixologist Ben Reed will be live online, on Thursday 4th December for tips on making the perfect cocktails for the Christmas period.

Click here to submit questions before the chat

For more information visit www.firstdrinks.co.uk

Filed Under: Beverages, Events

Bake up a feast of family fun

November 28, 2008 By 1 Comment

annabel_in_kitchen (2) There’s a real concern among today’s mums and dads that the essential life skills they were taught as children aren’t being passed on to their own kids. It’s especially justified when it comes to cooking. With home economics no longer a compulsory part of the school curriculum, it’s up to parents to teach their kids to cook and bake. With this in mind, kid’s food expert Annabel Karmel is hosting an exclusive webchat, packed with simple recipe ideas and tasty tips designed to encourage parents to get creative with their kids in the kitchen and have loads of fun while they’re at it.

Teaching children to cook both encourages them to eat well and equips them with one of the key skills they’ll need when they grow up. Seeing the fruits of their labours emerging from the oven gives kids a real sense of achievement, and it hardly needs saying that that the messier the ingredients that go into their culinary masterpieces are, the more they like it. Baking is especially good fun, and that’s why Annabel’s chosen to share scrumptious baking recipes with you that are a piece of cake for kids to make. She’ll also be telling you about The Kellogg’s Big Bake, a new campaign that aims to get children cooking up a storm all over the country with the ultimate prize of appearing in a Kellogg’s TV advert in May.  Log on to the chat and get ready to join in the yumminess with your young ‘uns.

Annabel Karmel joins will be live online, on Wednesday 3rd December from 3pm to 3.30pm to discuss how to get your kids baking.

Click here to submit questions before the chat

For more information visit www.thebigbake.co.uk

Filed Under: Events, Featured, Kids

Dinner for one?

November 27, 2008 By 2 Comments

KnifeForkSpoon Being a singleton gives you the freedom to do what you like, when you like. But it also has its challenges. As a couple or a family you get to share the shopping and choice of what the family eats. As a singleton the choice is yours alone. But what do you cook?

Having to cook for just yourself has a way of sapping the inspiration from mealtimes. For most singletons, no matter how well-intentioned at first, it usually winds down to a choice between beans on toast or a microwave dinner in front of the telly. But now food companies and supermarkets have responded by developing ranges of dinners for one. Major manufacturers are also introducing scaled-down versions of their products specifically with singletons in mind.

singles_cookbook And just because no one is coming to dinner doesn’t mean you can’t treat yourself. That’s the rationale behind a new cookbook devised by celebrity chef Alan Coxon – The Singles Cookbook, “With so many single households, I thought it was essential to have a cookbook that delivers dishes to please one person,” he says.

PrawnsLurpack Alan’s also enthused about the appearance on the shelves of single-person sized versions of food products. He singles out new 50g sized ‘Mini Blocks’ of Lurpak Butter as an example of how such bijou products are helpful not just to one-person menus, but to the environment. “They ensure people cut down on food waste whilst retaining product freshness,” he says, “they also cater to singletons who love to cook and eat well but don’t need to cater to an entire household. It’s perfect.”

For more information visit  www.lovelurpak.co.uk

Filed Under: Books, Featured
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