Lifestyle Changes

It’s not that easy to make sudden lifestyle changes – take it from me.  Sure, you add a 30-minute brisk walk to your day and try your hardest to walk past that carrot cake in the baker’s display cabinet and you know you should be reaching for a low-fat yoghurt or celery stick you carry around with you for moments just like these.

Grandmas Little Bakery at Fedra Olive Grove. Photo by Liz Barrett

Like many of you out there, my life revolves around not only my wonderful husband of 25 years, but also my family, friends and work mates.  Eating seems to always be at the centre of our gatherings: any excuse for a high-tea or a quick curry and pint.  You walk in through the door and the first thing you get is not a handshake but an invitation to partake in some delicious morsel!

Dinner with co-workers. Photo by Liz Barrett

Inevitable changes have had to be made – especially within our household.  Not only for the high-fat value of food and beverages but more so for the sugar levels as diabetes now runs in our family. ‘Lifestyle Diabetes’ my doctor told us. Diabetes one gets from too good a social life and very little exercise.  It especially rings true for people in our age group – early 50’s and early 60’s.

My pantry. Photo by Liz Barrett

So you wake up one morning raring to go – to change the world.  Well not exactly ‘the world’ – just the world that dwells within my pantry and fridge.  Rather than throw out anything super-high in sugar I palmed things off to family (who didn’t have health issues and were quite active) so in the end I was left with very little as you can see from my photo below.  A bit excessive – maybe. But I’m the type that has to cut my losses and start again otherwise I’d be dwelling on it forever, eating every single thing until it was all gone.Meat, fish, veggies, fruit and salad items stayed.  I wasn’t too concerned about the natural sugar content of some of the fruit and vegetable items at this stage as I could easily deal with that along the way.

What I did notice though, was that most of the products in my pantry that displayed nutritional values on the front of the package all varied in how and what facts were represented.

Sanitarium choose to only use percentages for their positive nutritional value and not the rest. Photo by Liz Barrett

Arnotts have two different symbols in their system concentrating on repeating the energy (calories) twice in two different formats and no mention of sugar.Photo by Liz Barrett

Nestle have gone to town with theirs and slide the sugar values to the bottom of the list. Photo by Liz Barrett

Nestles Drinking Chocolate only show their energy level. Photo by Liz Barrett

All the above products show nutritional value for different serving sizes so it’s not as easy as it’s meant to look and quite honestly you have to start converting and calculating each time you try to figure out what’s going on.  Yes, of course you can flip the package over and check the 100g serving for all products.  So why can’t they present the same measurements on the front of the pack?

All this talk about food is making me hungry and this is just my first post!

Lunch at Grandmas Little Bakery (Fedra Olive Grove) Collector NSW. Photo by Liz Barrett

www.grandmasbakery.com.au

I’m off for now…..!