With the onset of winter comes the inevitable comfort eating. Hot, meaty stews, warm buttery bread and a little too much red wine. One has to be a little cautious of the consequences of this sort of diet. Many yo-yo through phases of diets – Atkins, the cabbage soup diet, the Apple diet… the list goes on.

With the idea of also generating a more informed opinion about NoMU’s health benfits, we thought it might be fun to enlist the opinions of a few of South Africa’s most popular Dieticians. After all, we are not the experts here!

This feature ‘theme’ will be a new vibe on the blog; chatting to dieticians to get a better understanding on how to eat well, without sacrificing on flavour or busting the waistline.

We started by chatting to dietitian and co-author of The Ultimate Diet Solution Cookbook, Nicola Duffield about healthy eating behaviours, attitudes and tips.

With 13 years of experience in private practice and a passion for the nutritional management of Poly Cystic Ovarian Syndrome or PCOS, Nicola brings a wealth of knowledge to healthy eating and dispelling the myth that eating healthily or dieting means compromising taste and flavour.

You can reach Nicola on twitter @DietitianCTor email her on nicola.duffield@gmail.com. Read on to see what Nicola says about the pursuit of a healthier lifestyle.

Nicola believes strongly in educating people about food and what they’re putting into their bodies, particularly when it comes to calorie density;

“Most South Africans don’t understand calorie density. People think that a pie chips and coke is a small meal – it’s small to the eye but calorie density wise is a whole days requirements for the average woman and people don’t see it that way, they look at the portion and say ‘but I ate a little’.”

Nicola does not believe in banning or avoiding any food groups when trying to eat healthily and takes a lifestyle approach to eating. She maintains that healthy eating is all about timing – the body needs different food groups at different times of the day, so eating an energy rich carbohydrate-loaded meal before going to lie down is not ideal because your body should be burning it off.

One food/additive she stresses avoiding however is Aspartame, an artificial sweetener used as a sugar substitute in many foods and beverages. Nicola believes Aspartame affects serotonin in the brain, which in turn affects mood and coping mechanisms for stress and depression but can also play a part in PCOS, as Nicola explains:

“What people don’t understand is the influence that food has on the body it’s not simply about energy. Our body responds to different foods in different ways and one of the responses is hormonal and one of the hormones is insulin. Insulin responds to sugar which is obviously why we don’t want to overdo the sugar. This is also why I like the NoMU Sugar-Free Hot Chocolate so much; it doesn’t have aspartame in it. When you have too much sugar in your body, in a woman’s body, you tend to over-produce testosterone. This is the counter to excessive insulin and an over-production of testosterone leads to Poly Cystic Ovarian Syndrome. Your ovary literally doesn’t know if its Arthur or Martha and so it won’t release the egg during the cycle and that then fills up with fluid and becomes a cyst.”

Avoiding sugar is easier said than done, particularly when it comes to chocolate cravings. We’ve all been there – as much as you swear you’ll give up chocolate, it’s nearing the end of the meal, the craving comes and you have to succumb to it… It is inevitable. Your’e only human after all.

Nicola explains that this could just be a habit of craving that cocoa flavour or a sign of a magnesium deficiency.

NoMU Cocoa

“Often what happens at the end of a meal is that people are so programmed that the meal needs to end with a chocolate or a dessert or something like that. It’s not about the chocolate actually, it’s about that flavour.

That’s why I love to use cocoa to prescribe for my patients at night because chocolate cravings often indicate a deficiency in magnesium and cocoa is a great source of magnesium for lower calories. So I often suggest putting cocoa in vanilla yoghurt, or sprinkling in onto oats for breakfast in the morning or a hot cocoa drink. I love your [NoMU’s] cocoa because it has that intense rich cocoa taste…”

When the word ’diet’ is thrown around, connotations of bland boiled vegetables come to mind and an empty grumbling hunger, but Nicola believes that is not the case;

“…people just want satiety in the mouth and a lot of the time people on weight management programs say that they are bored with the menus and their interpretation is that “if I’m on diet it’s got to be bland” and that’s where your [NoMU’s] Rubs and Fonds and all those come in its so helpful especially for people who struggle to be creative with food.”

“People just want oral satisfaction and that comes with flavour. You become full from flavours not from having to eat a lot. You can feel satisfied on something even water as long as it has flavour obviously calorie and nutrition, maintaining your body energy levels  it wouldn’t be good in the long run but it would stop cravings. That’s the thing with a lot of patients they say they get hungry all the time and it’s not actually hunger for food its a hunger for flavour and taste.”

We are very grateful that Nicola could spare some time from her busy schedule to open help us understand the psychology and physiology behind eating habits and attitudes towards food. Here’s to having a healthy winter full of flavour!

The Ultimate Diet Solution Cookbook

Nicola’s top tips for healthy eating:

• Be aware of calorie density
• Stay away from aspartame and additives
• If you are in a position to make the healthier choice, make the healthier choice – if not, keep the portions small
• Sometimes cravings are related to mineral deficiencies or satiety rather than hunger
• Eating healthily doesn’t mean you have to compromise on flavour or avoid any food groups
• Eat lots of fish, there’s a reason why beneficial has “fish” in the middle
• Try some cocoa in vanilla yoghurt or sprinkled onto oats for breakfast if you crave that chocolaty taste