'Tis the season to talk about food.
Christmas is nearing with turkey, seafood and salads galore. Not to mention all the chocolate, sweets and alcohol - and custard on the Chrissy pudding. Before we know it, we're feeling like a pudding.
Anyhow, nutrition has been the flavour of the month in the Newcastle Herald, with big articles on health advocates trying to show us how to avoid or reverse diabetes.
For those looking for some cheap and easy recipes over Christmas, the No Money, No Time website is a good place to look.
The University of Newcastle created the website, with multi-year funding from the NIB Foundation, the charitable arm of NIB.
The free website contains two free ebooks released for the festive season, titled Our Guide to The Perfect Christmas Feast and Christmas Ideas for the Kids.
Professor of Nutrition Clare Collins said "we're trying hard to create a social movement around eating healthy on a budget".
"We're connecting with lots of people. If you go on the website, you'll see resources we developed around how cheap you can feed yourself or a family of three and meet all your nutrient requirements with easy, fast recipes. Now we're following it up with some cheap and easy recipes for Christmas."
The kids ebook was created because "we figured lots of people will have to try and keep their kids busy between now and Christmas".
The other book has Christmas recipes for breakfast, lunch and dinner, along with snacks. There are tips on safe catering and how to avoid food poisoning.
"We want to show people that with a little bit of planning, you can make yummy food that's still cheap but will look amazing."
The website's philosophy is to show people they can prepare food "faster, cheaper and yummier at home, if you know how and if you get a bit of support".
A Pinch of Salt
We always remember being intrigued and a bit shocked by something that renowned journalist Michael Pollan said about a decade or so ago, when he was writing and researching his books about food.
It came to mind as we read stories in the Newcastle Herald over the past week about diets to avoid and reverse type 2 diabetes.
Pollan, who wrote The Omnivore's Dilemma, said at the time he was "fascinated by nutritional science".
But he had acquired "a healthy scepticism about how much and how little" nutrition scientists actually know. Nutrition science, he said, had "only been around for about 175 years". "Its history is of one overlooked nutrient after another. As I see it, nutrition science is kind of where surgery was in the year 1650, which is to say very interesting and promising, but do you really want to get on the table yet? [Nutrition experts say the science is progressing quickly, especially with personalised medicine]
"The larger issue is that the very nature of journalism and the nature of food don't make a good fit. Food is a really old story. The foods that we do best on are the ones we evolved eating over many thousands of years. But journalism needs a new story every week, and so we tend to play up novelty and surprise. The classic methods are to eat more fruits and vegetables. How are you going to interest an editor in that story? But in fact, that is the story. On the other hand, there is a very good fit between journalism and the food industry, which needs lots of change."
In a nutshell, we need some smart cookies to change the corporate food system so everything is cool bananas.
