Well, who wouldn’t? And if you could make changes to your lifestyle now, to keep yourself healthy in the future, knowing that this would be helpful - and more specific than just ‘eat less, do more exercise’ - would you?

I was lucky enough to receive a review copy of Dr. Peter J. D’Adamo’s latest book The Genotype Diet a couple of days ago, and this is exactly what it promised.

I’m usually very skeptical about diet books - and about many self-help books in general - but this was very interesting indeed, even if a rather quick read.

The idea is that we all fall into one of six groups (or genotypes): Hunter, Gatherer, Warrior, Nomad, Explorer or Teacher.

Exactly which you are can be assessed by taking a series of body measurements and tests, all with Yes/No answers, so there can be little doubt about which category you end up in.

This was gently hilarious as my husband and I measured each other and tried to assess each others genotype. We were entertained by the suggestion that we should pop down to the local police station and ask to pay to be finger-printed … here in the UK, we’d probably be cautioned for wasting police time, once they’d stopped laughing. (I gather things are different in the States, so this is just a cultural difference.) So we used the children’s printing equipment - and were astonished to find that we both have consistent patterns of white lines breaking up our fingerprints. There is apparently a correlation between this and coeliac disease, which our eldest daughter has, and which occurs in my husband’s family. Mine is a strongly reactive gene-pool (asthma, psoriasis etc.). We stopped laughing at this point, and started concentrating. Once we’d got all the red ink off our hands.

It turns out that I’m a Hunter, and he’s an Explorer, both of which are ‘reactive’ genotypes, liable to lead to autoimmune disease (and, as I said, both of us have this kind of genetic history). But he was delighted - Explorers usually are quirky entrepreneurs with above-average intelligence. Hunters are detail-oriented, with a heightened sense of fair play. Both those are true …

Dr. D’Adamo proposes a different diet plan for each genotype. The recommended Hunter diet appears to be high in certain meats, and suggests eliminating wheat. Now, I’ve been vegetarian for about 27 years, for philosophical reasons, and will not be adopting the eat-meat suggestion, but it might well be worth eliminating wheat. I have lived gluten-free in the past, and found it to be helpful.

What isn’t given enough explanation in the book, and what I would have found interesting, are the reasons why, for example, it is suggested that I should eat beef and lamb, but not pork, or eat almonds, but not brazils. And why does the Hunter do poorly on most cheeses? What is the difference in these foods?

I’ve only had the book for a couple of days, so can’t tell you whether the plan is effective or not yet - but I may well implement some of his suggestions, and let you know how I get on in a few months.

And if you’re intrigued, and would like to find out more about your own genotype, you can buy The Genotype Diet from Amazon, and find out more at www.genotypediet.com. Do let us know how it goes!

Not very, is probably your automatic answer, and you’d be right. But there are a few steps you can take to improve it slightly.

We had a birthday party last night for my 9-year-old son, and it was only afterwards that I wondered how I could have improved the nutritional value of the meal. At the time, I was just pleased to have fed them all after a hard play session, and with a sleepover still to come …

This is what I offered them, together with some ideas that, with hindsight, I could have used.

What I gave them: Pizza
I served them thin crust margharita pizza, as it seemed like the one they were most likely to eat. I was right - I couldn’t get it out of the oven and cut up fast enough. Looking at the label, though, it was 12% protein, 13% fat and 27% carbohydrate.
How could I have done better?
I could have added some vegetables to the pizza, but this might have meant that they didn’t eat it. In fact, though, this was one of the healthier options on the table.

What I gave them: Hot Cocktail Sausages
These were reasonably high quality pork party sausages, and were gluten-free. Not because of any of the guests needed to be gluten-free, but because that’s what I had in the house. (My gluten-free daughter had decided to stay over at a friends to avoid the party - wish I could have done the same.) But they were 30% fat, 12% protein and 4% carbohydrate.
How could I have done better?
It might have been possible to find lower fat sausages. But I did what I could by cooking them in the oven, rather than frying them.

What I gave them: Mini Sausage Rolls
These were ready-made frozen party sausage rolls in puff pastry. They were 6% protein, 24% fat and 33% carbohydrate.
How could I have done better?
Not easy. Perhaps I could have made them from scratch, so that they would have had fewer preservatives etc. But perhaps it would have been better just not to serve them at all …

What I gave them: Crisps/Chips
I bought a standard multipack of a variety of flavors. These were 6% protein, 50% carbohydrate and 33% fat.
How could I have done better?
I could have bought low-fat or baked versions of the same thing, or offered popcorn instead. Thing is, I know that the standard high-fat version is what they wanted.

What I gave them: Cheesestrings
Oh dear. 28% protein, no carbohydrate and 24% fat. Nobody ate these anyway.
How could I have done better?
Cubing a variety of better quality cheeses might have been better.

What I gave them: Cakes (mini swiss rolls, flapjacks and millionaire’s shortbread, and a shop-bought chocolate birthday cake)
OK, so I was very short on time, and was enjoying the luxury of not having to cook everything gluten-free. But still, these were all bought in ready-made, and I am now officially a Bad Mother (as if I was a Good Mother before …)
How could I have done better?
I’d have been happier with the nutritional value if I’d made all these myself, which I could have done. At least I’d have known what the ingredients were.

What I gave them: Chocolate Fountain with Apple Slices and Marshmallows
OK, my only excuse is that they are 9-year-old boys. Apple slices are the only contribution to a healthy diet here - and if you’ve ever used a chocolate fountain, you will know that the chocolate is made runny by the addition of a lot of extra cooking oil.
How could I have done better?
Not offer one! But realistically, I could have offered more fruit for dipping - orange segments, grapes and strawberries, all of which I have done in the past.

Missed opportunity
I could have offered cherry tomatoes and sticks of cucumber, carrot, celery and red/orange/yellow pepper. These usually go down well, but I just forgot.

I could have increased the fruit and vegetable intake, and reduced the fat a bit. On the other hand, all the food was eaten (I deliberately didn’t offer sandwiches, because in my experience they get left) and everyone enjoyed themselves.

Was I right to lie awake later, thinking I could and should have done better? What would you have offered a party of small boys?

Some suggestions:

• baked potatoes with a variety of toppings - these would have been easy
• corn on the cob - this would have been popular
• a proper meal, such as lasagna, that I could have prepared in advance

What else? If you’ve found the perfect solution to party for a bunch of hungry children, please comment and share it here! You might just be helping somebody out with a great idea.

Photo: SXC

Nutrition Data has a number of clever tools for you to use to fine-tune your diet for your own health needs, whatever they are - heart care, newly diagnosed diabetic, dieting, trying to gain weight, or just plain wanting to identify super-nutritious foods. You can:

• Find out what a healthy weight for you would be
  I should be between 104 and 141 lbs (quite a wide range) and my current BMI is 25, which is right at the top end of normal. Another ounce, and I’ll be officially overweight.
  In fact, I’d be more comfortable a stone lighter, which I’m aiming for, but the BMI tools are notoriously inaccurate, assigning Olympic athletes and rugby players to the obese category
• Find out how many calories a day you should be eating
  Apparently I should eat 2050 calories a day to sustain my current weight, but I’m not going to get any lighter eating that amount. Someone weighing my target weight would eat only 1750 calories a day.
• Generate a list of foods that are high in up to three nutrients but low in up to three others
  So you could look for foods that are high in iron or calcium, but low in fat or cholesterol - or whatever dietary needs you have
• Find a list of foods based on the proportion of carbohydrates, fats and proteins that you wish to consume
  If, for some reason, you wanted a lot of carbohydrate - perhaps you’re running a marathon tomorrow? - you can find ideas for good foods for your goal.
• Find a list of foods based on their ‘fullness factor’ versus their ‘nutritional value’
  This is very useful for someone trying to lose weight, as I am
• Use the nutrient balance indicator to create balanced meals
• Look up any individual food to find out more about its nutritional value.
  For instance, sweet potato, baked in its skin without salt is low in sodium, and very low in saturated fat and cholesterol. It is also a good source of dietary fibre, vitamin B6 and potassium, and a very good source of vitamin A, vitamin C and manganese.
• You can also register to keep track of what you are eating, and analyse any recipe - perhaps the most valuable feature.

On the downside, the site is American-oriented - for example, today the home page says: did you know a cake cone has half as many calories as a sugar cone? Being British, I have no idea what a cake cone or a sugar cone is. I know that sugar used to come in cones in the eighteenth century (and, delightfully, you can still buy it in cones in the US, together with sugar nippers!), but I suspect that this refers to ice-cream cones …

Also, the conversion tool is based on American measurements (for example, it tells me that one pint = 16 fluid ounces … but here in the UK, one pint = 20 fluid ounces), and the processed food products listed are American brands.

Finally, although I find this site and its tools very interesting indeed, on a practical level it doesn’t help with a gluten free diet - something that matters a great deal in our house. For this, you need to look elsewhere. But this is a site crammed with information, and you may be able to make good use of it to help with the details of your own healthy diet.

I love Jerusalem artichokes so much we planted some in our garden last year, and are just harvesting the results now. Not, perhaps, particularly successful, but then we are beginners …

As I expect you know, Jerusalem artichokes are not related to artichokes at all, but to sunflowers. If you look at the picture taken by Paul Fenwick, you can see how similar they look! They are native to America, so I expect there are many more traditional recipes in America than there are here.

They are high in potassium and iron, and excellent as a source of fiber, because the inulin in them , but I should point out that some people find digesting these difficult because of their inulin content, and they can cause discomfort and flatulence as a result.

You can use these artichokes in a variety of ways, perhaps treating them like potatoes, mashing them with butter or serving them as a dauphinois. You can make a coleslaw type salad with them (equal amounts of carrots and jerusalem artichokes, grated or cut into thin matchsticks, and dressed with olive oil and lemon juice). Or you could get more complicated and cook jerusalem artichoke and mushroom pithiviers.

But I like this recipe for soup, which I received in an Abel and Cole veg delivery box once:

JERUSALEM ARTICHOKE SOUP

1 oz butter
1 onion
1 clove garlic
1 lb Jerusalem artichokes, scrubbed and sliced
16 fluid ounces of semi-skimmed milk
16 fluid ounces of stock
1 oz cornflour
Salt and pepper
2 dessert spoons fresh parsley
2 dessert spoons single cream

Melt the butter in a large heavy based saucepan and soften the onion.

Add the garlic and artichokes and stir for a few minutes.

Add the vegetable stock and milk, cover the saucepan and simmer for 25 minutes or until the jerusalem artichoke pieces are tender.

Process in a liquidiser or food processor until smooth then return to the rinsed pan.

In a cup or small bowl, blend the cornflour with 2 tablespoons water . Add this mixture to the saucepan and bring to the boil, stirring continuously. Remove from the heat, season, and add the chopped parsley and the cream.

Anyone who has ever baked a cake, cookie, biscuit or pastry, knows that baking needs fat, and traditionally, the best fats to use have been butter or lard.

These are saturated fats, and have become deeply unfashionable in the popular mind as being unhealthy because saturated fats increase the level of bad cholesterol (LDL) in the blood, increasing the risk of heart disease.

Saturated fats are usually obtained from animal sources, but can also be found in plants, such as coconut oil and palm oil.

So what have people used instead?

Polyunsaturated fats are liquids at room temperature and come from vegetable sources like seeds, such as sunflower oil. Liquid oils aren’t usually very easy to use in baking (though there are some recipes and techniques for this).

Liquid vegetable fats (sunflower oil, olive oil) can be turned into solid fats through a process called hydrogenation, in which hydrogen is pumped into a blend of polyunsaturated fats to harden the oil.

Hydrogenated fats became popular last century. Solid saturated fats were convenient for manufacturers, could be made from cheap oils, and prolonged the shelf-life of the products made from them. Margarines were developed for use as alternatives to the saturated fats like butter and lard, and were - unfortunately - promoted as being healthier.

Why ‘unfortunately’?

Many of the margarines and shortenings that were manufactured last century contained trans fats.

Trans fat, or partially hydrogenated fats, are a byproduct of the hydrogenation process. These trans fats became notorious because while both saturated and trans fats increase levels of LDL cholesterol, trans fats also lower levels of HDL cholesterol (the good cholesterol). A double whammy … it is now generally accepted that trans fats are worse than the saturated fats they were intended to replace. These have been banned in America for a while now, and have recently been banned in the UK too.

Some trans fats occur naturally in the animal products like butter, cheese, beef fat … but it is thought that in the low levels that these occur, there is no health risk.

So … what now?

Well, manufacturers have worked hard to reduce and remove trans fats in their products, though this does have cost implications.

Non-hydrogenated vegetable shortening can be made from palm oil, but this brings its own problems . Palm oil does contain oleic acid, a healthy fatty acid, as do the ‘healthy’ olive and canola oils … but it also is high in saturated fats. Also, the increased demand for palm oils is endangering the habitat of some of our best-loved wild animals, such as orang-utans. Do you really want orang-utans to become extinct so that you can have a cheap cookie?

There’s also the new kid on the block: interesterificated fats. These are vegetable oils that have been chemically modified so that they are more solid - like hydrogenated fats, but without the trans fats. However, research is beginning to show that these fats increase the level of sugars in blood, and reduce the insulin levels, increasing the risk of diabetes. And it reduces the level of good cholesterol.

Confused?

Everyone needs some fat in their diet. But which kind to choose - saturated, poly-unsaturated or interesterificated?

There isn’t a right answer - you’ll need to make your own mind up. But why not choose one of the following, depending on what you’re using it for:

• butter (my choice for baking and spreading)
• a margarine high in poly-unsaturated fats (not hydrogenated) and oleic acid (my husband’s choice, though you can’t bake with his preferred spread)
• or olive oil (my choice for frying and bread-making).

But it might be worth investigating coconut oil, which is apparently very good for you because it:

• is active against pathogenic viruses, bacteria and fungi
• is a good source of lauric acid, which boosts the immune system
• protects against heart disease and cancer
• has the lowest energy content of any culinary oil - and so it is less fattening
• guards against premature aging and wrinkles
• is loaded with antioxidants
• has anti-inflammatory qualities.

For more information on coconut oil, I’m going to look at The Coconut Diet but it sounds pretty good to me so far!

Are the foods you are eating making it worse?

It’s all too easy to fall into the habit of eating unhealthily at this time of year, either because you’re determined to lose weight, or because the cold and dark outside leads you to comfort-eat. Eating unhealthily can cause stress, and when we’re stressed, our levels of cortisol rise, leading to cravings for foods high in fat, sugar and salt.

Then we’ve fallen into the vicious cycle of eating badly because we’re feeling stressed because we’re eating badly because …

Stop! Stop it now … and here’s how.

1. Eliminate (or at least reduce) foods that can add stress to your life

• caffeine in coffee, tea and cola. If you drink too much caffeine, you are likely to feel jittery and hyperactive, which will raise your stress level.
• alcohol. Although it can help you feel relaxed, alcohol can disrupt your sleeping pattern, which can add to your stress level. (And we won’t discuss the often stressful situations caused by behavior changes due to over-indulgence …)
• sugar. This raises the energy levels in the body short term, but then your body will release insulin into your blood to reduce the sugar levels causing a fall in your energy level, resulting in the well-documented sugar highs and lows and adding stress.

Your body can also be stressed by over-eating or under-eating - so even if you wish there was a bit less of you, don’t rush to crash-diet. A healthy diet will help. Not too much food, nor too little.

2. Eat natural

Aim to find food as close to its natural state as possible, so that it still contains the vitamins and minerals, and hasn’t had dozens of extra ingredients added which you don’t understand. If you don’t understand the ingredient list, don’t eat it!

3. Eat stress-busting foods

Look for foods rich in antioxidants (like vitamins A, C, E and lycopene), omega-3 fatty acids, and folate:

• antioxidants, to reduce the risk of heart disease and cancer - pumpkin, sweet potatoes, carrots, kale, grapefruit (red and pink), blueberries, strawberries, watermelon, cantaloupe, oranges, peppers, tomatoes, broccoli, sunflower seeds, almonds and olive oil.
• omega-3 fatty acids, to help control high cholesterol and regulate your immune system - linseeds, ground flax seeds, walnuts, salmon, soybeans and pumpkin seeds.
• folate, to help keep your brain alert, promote healthy blood cells and keep your DNA intact - dark green leafy vegetables, beans, asparagus, Brussels sprouts and okra.

4. Eat to feel comfortably full

Aim to eat high-fiber, carbohydrate-rich foods. Carbohydrates help us produce more serotonin, a hormone that relaxes and soothes us. Fiber helps prevent late-night binging, because you’ll feel full. Examples of healthy comfort food include baked sweet potatoes, sautéed vegetables and brown rice.

5. Add in some extras, to help your health:

• garlic and ginger support the immune system.
• sea vegetables, such as kelp and kombu, and river plants such as watercress, support the thyroid gland, so helping to combat the effects of stress
• many fruit and vegetables - especially citrus fruits - contain vitamin C, needed to replenish your adrenalin levels (often depleted if we’re stressed)
• skimmed milk & low fat yogurt, because milk contains both magnesium and calcium, which help release muscle tension. That’s why your grandmother suggested hot milk at bedtime.
• And apparently carrots & apples will also reduce stress - but any crunchy fruit or vegetable is good. Apparently the crunching noise alleviates our stress levels!

6. Do eat breakfast - your mother wasn’t wrong when she said it was the most important meal of the day!

Start the day with oats and some fruit juice for vitamin C (orange, cranberry and grapefruit are all high in vitamin C). I like to soak oats in fruit juice, but I know others prefer to add milk or yoghurt. Oats contain vitamin B, will help regulate blood sugar levels, fill you up, reduce your cholesterol - and taste good!

Try to cut down on the coffee - why not try some calming herbal tea?

7. Most importantly: enjoy your food

I know you’ve heard moderation preached a lot - but I believe eating is one of the big pleasures in life. So enjoy - just don’t overdo it.

You can’t do better than to follow the advice given last year by Michael Pollan in the New York Times:

Eat (real) food. Not too much. Mostly plants.

Here are a few reasons why ‘giving up chocolate’ should NOT be on your list, even if you do want to lose some weight …

• Chocolate is an anti-depressant

Serotonin, endorphins and phenylethylamine are all lurking in your chocolate bar, and these are mood-enhancers as well as alleviating anxiety.

• Chocolate is good for your heart - and your blood pressure

Chocolate contains flavonoids and other anti-oxidants, which help maintain a healthy heart, keep your blood circulation working well, and reduce the blood clotting which can cause heart attacks and strokes.

• Chocolate helps you concentrate

Chocolate contains a small amount of caffeine, but also theobromine and phenylethylamine, which are also stimulants. These increase the activity of neurotransmitters in the brain which control our ability to pay attention and stay alert.

• Chocolate soothes your cough

One of the stimulants in chocolate, theobromine, is a third more effective at reducing persistent coughs than codeine, according to researchers at Imperial College London.

• Chocolate is good for your skin

German researchers have found that women who drank flavinoid-enriched cocoa had better skin after three months … and all those anti-oxidants have to help, don’t they?

• Chocolate can relieve your migraine

Yes, really - though not for all migraine sufferers.

• Chocolate is an aphrodisiac

According to the Aztecs, anyway … I can’t find any evidence for this, but there must be a reason why chocolate is part of the standard seduction ritual here in the West. Perhaps it’s the power of marketing; perhaps it’s psychological - or probably just the sensual pleasure of melting chocolate.

So what else has chocolate got going for it?

• A wide range of vitamins and minerals: iron, fluorine, magnesium, copper, potassium, sodium, zinc, phenols and vitamins A, B1, C D and E

• and - perhaps most importantly - it tastes good!

Note, though, that for all these, it is serious dark chocolate that has the real goodness in - not milk chocolate nor white chocolate. And, of course, too much won’t be good for you. So choose a brand of dark chocolate with a high percentage of cocoa solids in - and enjoy a small square every day. The good news is that you only need a tiny amount of this kind of dark chocolate to satisfy your tastebuds, so you shouldn’t be adding too much to your calorie-load.

Who needs New Year resolutions, anyway?

First, check which variety of vegetarian they are: a lacto-vegetarian will eat dairy products, but not eggs; an ovo-lacto-vegetarian will eat eggs as well as dairy products. If they’re vegan, you’ve got a whole different set of issues to consider. A vegetarian will not eat animals or fish, but will eat products made by those animals (e.g. milk, eggs, honey). A vegan won’t.

The thing to remember if you have to cater for a vegetarian at Christmas is that they will still be able to eat most of the bits and pieces that traditionally go with the turkey. This does make things easier, because you only have to produce something to replace the meat.

However, there are a few things to keep in mind if you want to be kind to the veggies:

• don’t roast the potatoes in goose fat (or lard, or any other animal-based fat)
• don’t make a sausage-meat stuffing - and don’t put the stuffing inside the bird, but cook it in a separate dish
• if you’re offering mini sausages alongside the turkey, you could consider finding some vegetarian sausages, but don’t wrap them in bacon. However, some vegetarians (and I’m one) don’t like the fake-meat offerings of some suppliers
• if the vegetarian menu you’re providing is quite dry, you could offer a sauce - but not gravy, unless it is a vegetarian version
• please consider using a vegetarian mincemeat for your mince pies (or buy vegetarian ready-made ones) because otherwise these are a no-no
• and don’t put suet in the Christmas pudding (you can buy vegetarian versions of this, too).

Just like the gluten free diet we follow so strictly for my daughter, where wheat pops up in all sorts of unlikely places, meat products can appear in unexpected places as well. Examples:

• gelatin is made from animal skin and bone, and can be in both savoury and sweet dishes (I found some in yogurt the other day - why?)
• rennet, which is made in the stomachs of calves, and used in some cheeses.

You may find that your vegetarian visitor declines some dishes for this reason … so perhaps it’s best not to offer a trifle, unless you know that a vegetarian version of gelatin was used.

I’m a vegetarian (of the ovo-lacto variety), as are 5 others of the 23 we’re feeding at Christmas. Because the Christmas meal is so traditional, we’ll be cooking a mix of things so that the meat-eaters can continue the tradition and the vegetarians won’t feel left out. Luckily, someone else will be cooking the meat, so I don’t have to deal with that. I plan to cook the following:

For Christmas Eve:

Delia’s Mediterranean Lasagne (which I shall make using gluten free lasagna sheets, and serve with a green salad and a range of breads including gluten free for the celiac among us)

My sister’s Drunken Fruits, which I’ve previously posted about here. If I’m organized, I might make some vanilla ice-cream to go with these - but I will offer Greek yogurt as well. Some people aren’t big on ice-cream …

On Christmas Day

While the turkey is cooking for the meat eaters, I shall be assembling a Goat’s Cheese and Red Onion tart. Again, I shall use a gluten free pastry shell, because my eldest daughter is both celiac and vegetarian.

This will be based on a recipe from Good Housekeeping, and basically involves a pastry shell, ready-made caramelized red onion, and goats cheese on the top. How easy is that for Christmas Day! For 8 people, they suggest:

• 7 oz of pastry (buy ready-made to save yourself stress at this busy time of year)
• 310g caramelized red onion
• 300g soft goats cheese
• 1 egg
• 1/2 oz Parmesan cheese.

Roll out the pastry, line an 8″ tart tin, and bake blind for 10 minutes. (This means covering the pastry with greaseproof paper and filing the case with beans - ceramic beans if you have them, but dried beans will work.)

Remove the paper and beans and baking for another 15-20 minutes until golden.

Spoon the caramelized red onion into the pastry shell, spreading it out evenly.

Beat the goats cheese and egg together, season and put on top of the onions, spreading out evenly.

Sprinkle with grated Parmesan, and bake for about 25 minutes at 200C (180F) until the filling is set and going golden.

Let it cool for 15 minutes and then remove it from the tart tin.

Enjoy with a tomato salad - or with all the trimmings from the turkey!

On Boxing Day
On Boxing Day, we’re having a brunch, which will include a range of dishes - some suitable for vegetarians, some not. For this you could consider:

• pancakes and/or waffles with maple syrup
• sausages and bacon for the meat-eaters
• scrambled eggs
• a stir-fry mix of colorful red, yellow and orange peppers and onions
• smoked salmon (for anyone who’ll eat fish)
• kedgeree (for anyone who’ll eat fish)

But obviously here, you can mix and match whatever suits your guests - one of the reasons we’re doing it this way. With 23 people to feed, there must be something on the list that they’ll eat!

Oops – that’s not me. I refocused on the section for people in their forties, and then realized that in a few years I’m going to need to be reading the next section up … that was a bit of a shock.

Every year over the age of 40 our basal metabolic rate slows down just that bit more. That means that if you keep eating what you eat now, you’ll gain weight because you won’t be burning it off so fast. Plus, your dietary needs change as you get older.

So, the first thing to do will be to make sure that you’re eating a healthy diet – and not too much of it. The next will be to increase your level of exercise. (You knew I was going to say that, didn’t you?).

Healthy diet for the over-forties

The good news is that the over-forties tend to be more conscious of what they eat, and more inclined to eat a healthy diet.

A healthy diet consists of a varied, balanced diet, including grains, vegetables and fruit, protein and a small amount of fat. You knew that already. But did you know that you should also do all of the following:

• eat more calcium and vitamin D to keep your bones healthy and do some weight-bearing exercise to try and avoid osteoporosis
• eat fibre and do some exercise to avoid constipation (another thing that is more likely as you get older – isn’t aging fun?)
• reduce the amount of salt to help keep your blood pressure down to reduce the risk of organ damage
• make sure you get the right amount of vitamins and minerals for overall health
• keep your fluid levels up for the good of your kidneys - yes, your granny was right
• and eat a small amount of chocolate and a glass of red wine every day to reduce cholesterol and lower the risk of heart problems?

If you visit MyPyramid, you can get a personally tailored recommendation for the amount of each element in the food pyramid you should consume each day. This is interesting, but doesn’t really take into account people with special dietary needs, such as those who are lactose-intolerant, or vegetarian. A fascinating attempt to rebuild the food pyramid with healing foods only is at the University of Michigan’s Integrative Medicine site - this concentrates on the importance of a rainbow of fruits and vegetables, whole grains and water, while still allowing for dark chocolate, alcohol and personal choice. I love it!

Health tests for the over-forties

There are a number of tests that everyone should be aware of - and certainly once they get to be over forty:

• Check your body mass index to find out whether you are overweight. If you are super-fit, perhaps a rugby player, it will probably tell you you are overweight – even obese – but don’t fret about this as the BMI does overestimate body fat in athletes. If you can’t really claim to be super-fit, and your BMI is higher than 25, then just perhaps you should think about losing a pound or so.
• if female, accept that invitation for a mammogram – and do go to have a smear test every 3 years. Neither is a lovely experience, but these tests help identify breast or cervical cancer.
• if male, have your PSA level tested regularly (certainly once you’re over 50) to assess your risk of prostate cancer and check yourself for testicular cancer too - ask a doctor if you’re concerned
• have your cholesterol level checked regularly once you’re over about 45
• have your blood pressure checked every couple of years, too.
• remember to go to the dentist. You know when she asks you to move your tongue around? She’s checking for mouth cancers. And gum disease is strongly linked to heart problems.

And that article about keeping fit at 30, 40 and 50? It’s here: Decade by decade guide to exercise.

We met back in 1980, when I was just about to go to university. I decided I would learn to like coffee, and that I would learn to like it black – on the grounds that students never have milk that hasn’t gone off. And I dare say there was an element of cool involved … after all, don’t you think that adding milk and sugar to take away the taste of the coffee is a bit, well, soft?

Coffee has stuck by me ever since – through the essay crisis, then through early mornings and late nights at the office, through those mornings when the children wake up before dawn and your sleep deficit is as big as the National Debt, and – now that I’m a home-based freelancer – through those awful blank-screen moments, when the only thing to do is to make a hot, strong, black coffee.

I’ve made endless cups of instant coffee, filter coffee, espresso and cafetiere coffee. I’ve bought machines that grind beans – and I’ve hand-ground them. Even in a pestle and mortar, when desperate. I’ve bought machines that spit steam and belch boiling water. I’ve bought beans from all over the world, and beans coated in chocolate and flavored with alcohol. I’ve drunk coffee in several different countries; in airports and in train stations; in tiny cafes, swanky restaurants and from a thermos on the beach.

As our relationship has matured, I’ve drunk more, stronger coffee. I’ve ordered double espressos, and I’ve taken to adding double the amount of granules to make a mug of instant coffee – and to going to the local wholesalers to get big cans of the stuff.

And now – my love-affair with coffee is off.

Whatever happened?

Well, not much – a five day bout of illness during which time I couldn’t face eating or drinking anything much. And since then I haven’t wanted a coffee. Sure, I’ve made some, several times – but I haven’t even managed to drink half a cup.

So, I sit here at my desk, having discarded my coffee-love of over a quarter of a century, with a cup of fennel tea.

Better for me? Maybe – fennel tea is supposed to be good for the digestion.

And we’ve all heard that caffeine isn’t too good for us: research suggests it can stiffen up the walls of your arteries, and may lead to a magnesium deficiency.

But the caffeine in coffee appears to reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, heart disease, type 2 diabetes, cirrhosis and gout - as well as improving your memory. And the antioxidants help prevent free radicals from causing cell damage.

Guess I’ll just have to get my caffeine from chocolate - lots and lots of chocolate.