Tag Archives: jerf

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HSW 64 – Low Carb and High Fat with Sports Nutritionist Steph Lowe

In today’s episode of The Healthy Shift Worker podcast we’re joined by Steph Lowe who is a Sports Nutritionist, triathlete, author and founder of The Natural Nutritionist – a hub for celebrating the importance of real food.

Steph talks to us about the importance of eating more real food – otherwise known as JERF, which encompasses more of a low carbohydrate, high fat (LCHF) style of eating and it’s associated health benefits including balancing blood sugar.

Given blood sugar dysregulation is common in those who are sleep deprived, adopting more of this “real food” approach can be key for anyone working 24/7 as it can help to mitigate some of the poor health outcomes associated with consuming high amounts of  processed sugars and carbohydrates – which let’s face it, forms a significant part of many shift worker’s diet!

In this episode you’re also going to learn why counting calories and following a low fat diet is not ideal, and how it can contribute in the decline of our mental and physical wellbeing.

Links mentioned in the podcast:

Steph’s website – The Natural Nutritionist

The Natural Nutritionist Instagram

Steph’s Build Your Plate Guideline

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Shift Work Nutrition – Food Labelling 101.

Is It Really Necessary To Read Those Food Labels?

maple syrup2

As a nutritionist-in-training, today’s post is going to be a bit of a crash course on Food Labelling, and why it’s so incredibly important to read those food labels – or better still, purchase food which doesn’t even come with a label!

To help clarify my point, I’m going to lead in with a little story.

The other day, my gorgeous hubby offered to do the grocery shopping for me as I was knee deep in assignments, studying for exams etc. My response was – “whoop, whoop – yes please! That would be wonderful sweetheart – thank you so much”.

Now on the grocery list was Maple Syrup. That wonderfully sweet syrup which is made from the sap of a maple tree usually sourced from Canada.

When my hubby returned from his grocery shop expedition, feeling quite chuffed that he’d managed to find every single item on the list (bless his little cotton socks!), I couldn’t help but disguise the look of horror on my face at one particular purchase.

You guessed it – the Maple Syrup.

As you can see from the photo above – specimen A (on the right) under ingredients says – ‘Pure Canadian Maple Syrup’, as opposed to specimen B (on the left) has 5 lines of ingredients – and not one of them is actually ‘maple syrup’.

But what’s worse, is that some of these so called “ingredients” can have detrimental impacts on our health.

So let’s list them here:

  • water
  • sweeteners
  • sorbitol
  • natural flavours (hmmm … I wonder what these are?!)
  • thickener
  • vegetable gum (466)
  • salt
  • acidity regulator (330)
  • colour (150d)
  • preservatives (202, 211)

(more…)