The Fusion of Flavour and Function – Making Our Food Mix Business with Pleasure

A Body Without An Off Button

Are you a fan of PROPERLY switching off in the evening?  Do you allow your mind to drift?  Into a book, or netflix, or just to gaze out the window…?  And I don't mean with one eye on your smartphone, I'm talking about DEDICATED drifting. It’s not only a tendency that should be honoured in our 24/7 hyper-stimulated modern landscape, but one that allows our bodies the fullness of opportunity to recharge.  By taking our foot off the pedal, and flicking the switch from go to stop, our body sends hormonal triggers via stress hormones (or the lack thereof) to our tissues to enter a recovery phase – calming immune response, healing tissue, gently relaxing blood vessels and slowing heart rate, allowing nutrient assimilation and aiding out addled brains to commit experience to memory, making us better humans all round.  Work time and play time are ALWAYS more valuable when they’re experienced in mutual exclusivity.

Sweet Cures

By contrast though – when we think of food, we should invert the table.  Like those words immemorial uttered by a certain nanny who could fly with the help of a trusty umbrella – “Just a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down!”  – authentic “good” food doesn’t need to be and indeed SHOULDN’T be austere, bland or uninteresting.  Every food opportunity can contain two divergent philosophies – but they needn’t be at odds with each other.  Nutrient composition and flavour creation often feel like they need to take more consideration.  But it’s not always or even often the case.  In her book, The Flavour Thesaurus, Niki Segnit states that, “most of us are familiar with the concept of flavour families, whether we know it or not”.  We have instincts underlying our food choices that make us better cooks than we realise.  And when we feed and excite our body with flavour, our gut becomes alive to the opportunity of absorption.

Bad Food vs Bland Food

When I was a kid, I remember being teased mercilessly by my classmates with the strangest barbs, designed to make me feel marginalised and less than cool for my healthy lunchboxes. “Finn! Finn! Nutritious and Delicious!! HAHAHAH!!”.  Bizarre how much that hurt at the time, and it demonstrates a deep underlying association, most likely handed down from parents, who were being marketed a diet that insisted that health could not be an achievable aim (or an acceptable one for picky kids) for a busy family and hence this scorn passed onto my tiny friends in a way that came out as bizarre health bullying….ah if only I knew then what I know now…

Have Your Cake And Eat It

But things have moved on.  And one of my favourite foods to explode the myth of flavour and function making poor bedfellows, is chocolate.  Well, cacao, in this case raw.  But it doesn’t have to be. Roasted cacao, in the form of dark chocolate, contains flavanols, compounds that have been shown to radically alter and improve our cardiovascular systems’ efficiency.  And when we improve our capillaries health, basically EVERYTHING improves – from tip to dainty toe.  Improvements have been seen in subjects suffering from cognitive decline, from Raynaud’s symptoms, from the heart disease that is the most common fatality at the end stage of diabetes…this really is a have your cake and eat it sort of cure!! 

That Was Why, This Is How

So on to our smoothie of the day.  Why post it? Because it’s just PACKED with colourful, flavourful health.  For me it demonstrates the two pronged approach to eating that allows us to, even REWARDS us for eating delicious things.

Read on for the Brazilian Smoothie DIY recipe.  It’s our most popular smoothie on our menu (which we’re hoping to return to next month YIPEE!!) – so for all its fans you can now make it at home

You will need

• One Block of Frozen Organic Acai 

  • Contains a wicked dose of polyphenols to prop up your weary peepers. Also loaded with fatty acids, with a similar profile to that of olive oil – and we’ve all heard that’s the secret weapon in the mediterranean diet. 

• 1 tbsp Organic Raw Cacao Powder

  • Were you not reading the above?? It’s basically like a battery charger for your heart. AND your head.  And if you subscribe to some of the more fringe theories, its anandomide content makes it the perfect fuel for your, um, eh – well, your sex life.  We can say that right?!

• 1 (preferably frozen) Organic Banana

  • Bananas are a magic food. Not just because they come packed in their own ready-made lunchbox, but because they’re loaded with potassium to rehydrate your cells, and fibre to clear out your, um, broom cupboard

• 1tsp Organic Cinnamon Powder

  • With a protective effect on your neurons, as well as a proven ability to fight off fungal infections in your gut – that’s just where the word starts on cinnamon. Go google (safely!!)

• ½ tin Organic Coconut Milk

  • With medium chain fats like caprylic and lauric acid, coconut milk helps to balance out the bad bugs as it passes through the digestive tract and also provides a keys resource fuel to our cells.

  • The only downside is if you don’t fancy the coconut-ty flavour – but if you don’t we can’t help you, you must be nuts

• 1tbsp of your Favourite Peanut Butter

  • Wonder which one that could be…? If it’s not ours we don’t wanna hear it

• 1-2 scoops of Nuzest Protein Powder

  • High percentage protein is tough enough to find in the plant kingdom.  Nuzest have cracked the code with their European grown, 

  • It’s on 15% off this month so grab a tub right now!!!

• 200ml purified water

  • Don’t get us started on water. Just. Don’t. Or do, it’s one of our favourite topics

• A blender 

  • Blenders contain a menagerie of working parts. Don’t eat any of them

This one doesn’t even need instruction.  Put things in blender and blitz until smooth. If too stiff, either add more water, or scoop into a bowl and enjoy with a spoon and granola.  If too thin, add more PB, if too thick add water. SLLUUUUURRRP