Grow your own... wherever you live...

It is consistently more and more difficult to find organic vegetables and fruits, readily available and at an affordable price, at least it is in some countries.  Other lucky people like the Americans have Farmer's Markets in most cities, something that should be promoted in all major cities all over the developed world.  Why only the developed world?  Because that is where our diet and our health is suffering in favor of accessibility to all vegetables and fruits all year round instead of just seasonal ones, and mass production to meet demand which means that most of our vegetables and fruits are picked before they are ripe and kept in cold storage until they reach the consumer.  They are treated with unhealthy levels of pesticides so that as much of the crop as possible is viable - all of which enter our bodies when we eat them.  And don't even get me started on GMO produce and the lack of labeling.

Let's face it, nowadays we know very little about what we are putting in our bodies and the potential effects that food can have on our health.  Our busy lifestyles mean that we want convenience above health.

Prices for organic foods are still a lot higher in comparison to the mass produced foods and people are now beginning to try to grow their own.  I have had a vegetable patch for the past 6 years, as an inexperienced gardener I tend to stick to the summer months for growing as I am scared of trying during the winter months for lack of a green house and the fact that where we live, temperatures do go way below freezing in winter.  But this year I have promised myself I am at least going to try and carry on after the summer bonanza of wonderful home grown produce.  I grow: potatoes, lettuces, tomatoes, runner beans, peppers, onions, egg plant, leeks, courgettes (squash), pumpkins, cucumbers, and I am still trying to grow strawberries although the birds usually get to them before I do!

My husband was skeptical the frist year I said I was going to plant a vegetable patch.  He's is not a great

vegetable eater and prefers salads as his main source of vegetables, and will only really eat fruit if it is already cleaned, peeled and cut into bite sizes chunks in a dish and put in front of him.  So, I almost jumped for joy the first time I gave him produce from our garden and he readily admitted that he'd never tasted anything like it.  I made the Spanish version of ratatouille (Pisto), made with courgettes, onions, tomatoes and peppers - he will now eat it happily and can't wait for the vegetables from our garden to be ready to eat - he has even taken on watering the garden in the evenings and is all for starting a project for a green house to extend our own veggie growing all year round.  Now if he can be convinced maybe you can too.

Now, I admit, we are lucky, we have a garden with enough space for a veggie patch and the kids still have loads of space to play without destroying the tomatoes - now if I could just get the dog to stay away... yes, it seems my veggies are so good that even the dog eats them!

Lots of people don't have a garden, and lots of city dwellers don't even have a balcony or terrace that they could use to grow their own veggies - or so they think.  However, you really don't need that much space to have your own little area to grow vegetables.  You would be surprised as to how much produce you can get from a small number of plants.  Quite often I have so much produce that I end up giving it away to friends and neighbors and turning it into tomato sauce and preserving it for the year to come.

One of the major requirements for your vegetables to flourish is sunlight, so as long as you have a sunny room, terrace or balcony you can put them on your are ready to go.  However, in hot countries such as Spain, be careful with the summer heat if your plants are on a cement terrace or balcony it can get too hot for them, so best to have them somewhere you can move them with ease to the shade.  A good idea for this is to put them on a base that has wheels and you can move them easily.  You will need containers of at least 10 inches wide and 12 inches deep - the bigger the pot the better as they need space to grow.  Make sure the containers you use have drainage wholes in the bottom to stop the roots from rotting.  You can also get very creative and make the containers into decorations too.


Tomatoes are ideal for home growing, especially the baby or cherry variety as your will get lots from just a couple of plants, peppers are also good and lettuces just keep producing as long as you cut them
and eat them leaving the roots in the soil.  Courgettes need a lot of space as the plants can grow to be quite big and I wouldn't recommend pumpkins or cucumbers unless you have space to let them crawl... you can train them to grow up and over a trellis and go vertical instead of horizontal to save space.  Lots of people are using hanging baskets to grow vegetables nowadays and therefore economizing on space, believe it or not some can even be grown upside down.  Another way of economizing space is to use walls!  Yes there are even ways to grow veggies on walls - but I would recommend them being outside walls!

So who is going to give it a try?  I'd love to hear about your experience.

Useful Links:

Grow Food not Lawns
Gardening Know How

Social Nutrition:
You can make an appointment to improve your health with Social Nutrition either in person (Madrid) or online (Skype).  Just send an email to lucycarr@socialnutrition.com

The honest truth about our diet.

There are so many different diets out there that I wouldn't know where to start...

10 Pounds in 10 Days
100 Calorie Diet
180 Degree Metabolism
4 Week Detox Plan
3 Hour Diet
3 Day Diet
5 Factor Diet
18 Pounds in 4 Days
7 Day Diet
7 Day Fat Blast Diet
28 Pounds in 28 Days
Acai Berry Diet
Atkins Diet
Dukan Diet
Bernstein Diet
Apple Cider Vinegar Diet
Cabbage Soup Diet
Low Carb Diet
Carb Lovers Diet...

And the list is endless, it just goes on and on and on, full of diets promising to transform your body into something close to Halle Berry or Brad Pitt.

But the main problem is that there is a serious health issue going on that isn't just how we look on the outside.

Just go for a walk around any city in the Western World and you will see people who are overweight and people who are obese.  And, at the same time, there is immense pressure on us all to be gorgeous, skinny film stars or super models or no one will love us.  But first we should love ourselves.

The stark truth is that:

• Worldwide obesity has nearly doubled since 1980.
• In 2008, more than 1.4 BILLION ADULTS, of 20 years of age and older, were overweight.  Of those, over 200 million men and nearly 300 million women were obese.
• 35% of adults aged 20 and over were overweight in 2008, and 11% were obese.
• 65% of the world's population live in countries where overweight and obesity kills more people than underweight.
• More than 40 MILLION CHILDREN under the age of 5 were overweight in 2011.
• Obesity is preventable.

The common health problems associated with being overweight or obese are:

• Cardiovascular disease (mainly heart disease and stroke), which was the leading cause of death in 2008;
• Diabetes;
• Musculoskeletal disorders such as osteoarthritis;
• Some cancers such as endometrial, breast and colon.

Childhood obesity is associated with a high risk of obesity, premature death and disability in later life (Adulthood).  However, the problems for obese children do not just appear in adulthood, during childhood they experience breathing difficulties, increased risk of fractures, hypertension, early markers of cardiovascular disease, insuline resistance and psychological effects.

Source: World Health Organization Fact Sheet Nº 311 Updated March 2013.

In the western world we are constantly being bombarded with advertising from huge companies such as Burger King, McDonalds, KFC, Pepsi, Coca Cola, etc to consume their products.  Products which are far from healthy, packed full of artificial flavorings, salt, sugar and preservatives - none of which are going to nourish our human bodies.  In fact, it has been shown that our bodies are not decomposing at the same rate as before after death, our bodies are taking LONGER to decompose due to the amount of preservatives in our diets.  

Our meat often comes packed full of antibiotics and hormones and our fruit and vegetables often come covered in pesticides, and cows milk full of puss, hormones and antibiotics too.  We are constantly told that these do not effect our health, but we now know that this is not entirely true.  The people that are telling us our food is safe are the big corporations, the ones I mentioned before and Monsanto who are heavily into genetically modified foods which are dangerous to our health.

The truth is that most of us are unhealthy, many are overweight or obese and lots of us are undernourished even though we may be overweight.  We tend to associate being undernourished with famine riddled countries where people are dying from starvation.  But you can be overweight and under nourished simply because the type of foods you are eating are not nourishing your body, they do not provide the proper nutrients that your body needs to flourish.

So what can we do?  Well the answer is not to try any of the fad diets listed above.  We need to LEARN to eat properly and we need to TEACH the younger generations how to eat properly.  Nowadays in our fast food culture, many children and adults rarely eat a meal prepared from scratch with fresh ingredients.  Many families where both parents work out of necessity, rely on ready made meals or take outs and rarely do families sit down and eat together.

This western world culture that we now live in, where how much money you make, where you live, and which car you drive seems to be far more important than planning a healthy life and a healthy old age.  If we all looked after ourselves more, ate properly and took regular exercise, a lot of serious diseases wouldn't effect us.  We would be healthier, and the burden on our health organizations would be eased.

If we ate properly; lots of fruit and vegetables, whole grains, nuts, a small amount of animal protein and no trans fats, our weight would normalise itself.  There would be no need to go on any crash diet to get

into great shape for the summer as you would be in great shape all year round.  You would have more energy and stress would be easier to cope with.  Exercise has been proven to be the best stress buster, and you don't have to join and expensive gym to do it.  You can go for walks, cycle, roller blading, skate boarding, swimming, etc - all of which you can do alone or with your family or friends, if you get the whole family involved it will be better for you all on a health level and also as family bonding time. There is nothing to be said against a healthy lifestyle which can only bring you happiness and keep ill health at bay.

So, what are you waiting for?

Social Nutrition:
You can make an appointment to improve your health with Social Nutrition either in person (Madrid) or online (Skype).  Just send an email to lucycarr@socialnutrition.com