You’re not failing at nutrition – you’re just drowning in noise. We chat to My Food Bag co-founder Nadia Lim and nutritional biochemist Dr Libby Weaver about the crushing mental load of healthy eating, what you shouldn’t be paying attention to and how to go back to basics when it comes to your health. Plus, keep scrolling for a discount code you’ll be veeeery interested in!
Creatine. Bone broth. Keto. Paleo. Carbs! There are SO many theories out there – particularly in our social media feeds – that all seem to insist that they’re the silver bullet for health. Fads and trends are now a constant hum of noise that are screaming for our attention – but my GOD, it can be overwhelming.
It’s a feeling both Nadia Lim and Dr Libby Weaver agree on, and as they tell Capsule, the mental load of trying to eat the healthiest we can – especially when it comes to feeding your kids – is getting heavier.
The noise is the problem
“Nutrition is incredibly simple,” Dr Libby tells Capsule, “but we’re being shouted at right now. There’s just so much noise.”
Most of that shouting is about gimmicky fads, trends, and things designed for very specific people (like someone who’s very into weightlifting) but presented as though everybody needs them. “Your brain and your face and your bones and your muscles will all fall apart unless you’re buying 4,000 extras,” she says of the messaging. “And it’s just not true.”
The result is that, understandably, we’ve lost sight of the basics. The overload of information – oftentimes from people whose lived experience has been awesome for them but has no guarantee or, at times, scientific backing that it’ll work for you – means that it’s easy to throw our exhausted arms in the air and chuck it all in the too-hard basket.
Nadia and Dr Libby, determined to help others go back to healthy basics, have joined forces to cut through all of this noise, producing a new episode of Dinner with Nadia to chat all things nutrition: you can watch it below!
You can’t hack your way healthy
It’s very easy to love a shortcut when you’ve got a whole household’s mental load on you – and it’s in part how a booming industry of supplements, powders and pills has taken hold.
Says Nadia, “People are always looking for a hack. But unfortunately, you can’t hack your way to healthy.
“At the same time, it actually is very simple,” she adds. “But because it’s simple, and everyone kind of already knows it, it’s not really anything new, so it’s almost not that attractive.”
Dr Libby agrees. “The media plays a big part in this. They’re always after soundbites, and something that is more extreme is going to get more attention than something that everyone kind of knows deep down inside and is pretty normal.”
Yes, they’re talking about the stuff your gut tells you (figurately and literally) – the power of simple, balanced, healthy eating. Veges! Wholefoods! Protein. It’s not sexy, but it works.
Watching people battle for health with hacks leaves Dr Libby, in particular, sad. “So many people have a belief that they’re not okay the way that they are,” she says. “It feeds on the inadequacy that sits beneath the surface for a lot of people with their self-perceptions. And so you feel like this next thing will be the thing that solves the problem for you.”
Conflicting information is making us spiral
One of the biggest issues when it comes to trying to make nutrition-based decisions is, for sure, conflicting information, the pair tell.
Think about your feed on any given day: Someone says don’t eat carbs, someone else says you absolutely need carbs. You’ve got well-meaning experts with genuinely different opinions, and then you’ve got influencers sharing their own personal experience. That’s before you’ve got slick marketing that knows just how to prey on a busy mum’s guilt and insecurity – is it any wonder we’re all a little overwhelmed over here?
Right now creatine is having a moment, alongside protein and “fibremaxxing”. Are you supposed to be doing all that?
Short answer, no, says Dr Libby.
She says, “Ok, so let’s talk fibremaxxing – the idea of maximising your daily fibre intake. If you take something like fibre to a huge extreme, you start to block the absorption of minerals and you can become deficient in zinc or iron. Or, you’re not absorbing magnesium, because fibre binds those things. When we take anything to an extreme, there are consequences.”
And if you’re all of a sudden confused about creatine, then you’re not alone – but tread with a little caution and really understand what it is doing to your body, she says.
“Your body makes creatine. Your liver, your kidneys, your pancreas make it. Your brain makes its own. We make between one to two grams a day inside of ourselves.”
She explains there’s solid research showing creatine can benefit muscle mass, particularly for people who lift heavy weights, but as for the brain-boosting claims, the research simply isn’t there yet.
“The mechanism of uptake into muscle is very different from the uptake into the brain. The brain is highly regulated as to what it allows in. It was typically by people who lifted heavy weights, men or women, and you were told to train really, really hard for quite a long time – year – and then when you plateaued with your muscle growth, you would use creatine for one month to then boost your muscle mass further.” It was a tool to break a plateau, not an everyday supplement for everyone.
“There’s a big push right now, particularly to women, that they’re going to fall apart without it. That is not the case.”
Marketing v Science v Gut Feelings
And here’s the thing that makes it so hard for us regular people to navigate: “A lot of marketing is touted as science now,” Dr Libby nods. “It’s very hard for people to discern between actual nutrition science and marketing.” I mean, this tracks – when you’re standing in the supermarket aisle trying your absolute best to NOT toddle over to the chocolate section and instead you’re in the ‘healthy foods’ aisle and you read ‘brain boosting’ on the side of a tub, why wouldn’t you grab one?
Dr Libby is also passionate about something far less trendy but far more important: iron deficiency. “It’s the most common nutritional deficiency in the world, including in New Zealand. But no amount of ice baths is going to correct iron deficiency, only repleting your iron will. People are missing really basic foundations of the nourishment that comes from eating whole, real food.”
And as Nadia says, this attitude has deeper consequences, because it’s eroding our ability to trust ourselves to know exactly what we need.
“People forget how to trust, or be in tune with, how they’re actually feeling and how to be guided by themselves, because they believe that an expert or a guru knows better,” she says. “They’re not trusting their own internal judgment, and I think that’s a big key piece. Actually, out of anyone in the world, if you do instinctively listen to your own gut, literally, you’re the best person to tell yourself what suits you.”
Part of the problem, Nadia explains, is that nutrition science itself can be misleading – because it tends to isolate individual nutrients, when that’s not how we actually eat. “You’re eating combinations of foods, you’re not eating isolated nutrients,” she says.
The great 80’s and 90’s egg debacle is a perfect example – remember when we were told to have no more than three eggs a week?! “That didn’t make sense to me, because an egg contains all the nutrients in it needed to create new life, how could they be bad for you?”
“This isolated information of maxing a particular thing, or focusing on one particular thing, just is nonsensical, because you don’t eat like that. Food doesn’t come packaged like that. It’s so damaging.”
The mum guilt is real
And this is all before we get to the kids! We know the mental load is already massive when it comes to making sure your kid has the right size shoes and all the rest of it, and then on top of that there’s pressure to be feeding them perfectly.
A mum of three boys, Nadia gets this deeply. “I’ve tried to just be quite relaxed about it,” she says. “The most important thing, I feel personally, is eating around the dinner table together in a nice, relaxed environment.”
She says she’d rather her kids try a roast vegetable and not like it in a calm setting than turn dinnertime into a battleground. “The number one thing is you don’t want that eating environment to be a negative one.”
And yes, she sneaks veggies in where she can. Smoothies, obviously, but also ice cream. “Cauliflower and courgette in ice cream works really well!”
She’s also realistic about the fact that life isn’t linear. “Sometimes people have to realise they may have to go through a period where they lower their standards a bit and be comfortable with that. You’ll have periods where you’re really organised and onto it, and others where you’re not. And that’s all right.”
So what should we actually be doing?
If you’re reading this and thinking, ‘okay, I want to get back to basics but where the hell do I start!?’ here’s what Nadia and Dr Libby suggest:
Cook more at home: Dr Libby says what you buy, whether it’s a ready-made meal or fast food, is never going to be as good as what you prepare in your own kitchen. “If you live on takeaways, don’t aim for seven days a week. Maybe you have more space on a Sunday, so prepare some stuff so that when you’d normally stop and buy takeaway on the way home, you can defrost or reheat what’s in the fridge.”
Prioritise it: “When we say we don’t have time for something, what we’re saying is that’s not a priority for me right now,” Dr Libby says. And sometimes, she adds, it takes a health crisis before people wake up and go, ‘I do need to prioritise nutrition a bit more.’ She suggests asking yourself what you really care about, and making sure health and nutrition is in your top five – it doesn’t have to be number one, but if it’s in that top five, you’ll start thinking about the benefits: better energy, better sleep, more patience with your colleagues and your kids.
Trust yourself: “We know in our hearts when we need to make some adjustments,” Dr Libby says. “Part of our message with this come-back-to-basics is get back in touch, trust yourself again, and listen to that voice of, ‘I know I need to do less of that. I’ll start with change now’.”
Flip the mindset: Nadia is passionate about this one. Instead of focusing on what you shouldn’t be eating, focus on what you should be getting in. “Every time you eat, it’s an opportunity. ‘Can I get in three vegetables here? Maybe five? Can I get in some fresh herbs, a handful of nuts, some eggs?’ If you focus on getting all the good stuff in, you’ll find there’s not much room left for worrying about the rest.”
Make vegetables the hero: Dr Libby says most of us think about dinner as ‘beef, lamb, chicken, or fish tonight?’ when we could be starting with ‘I’m having cauliflower and cabbage and broccoli and potato and pumpkin – what am I putting with that?’ Less than 10 per cent of New Zealand adults get their five serves of vegetables a day, and it’s worse for children.
Get organised, just a little: Of course, Nadia gets My Food Bag. She orders three meals a week to use at the start of the week to take the pressure off feeding her busy family every night – no thinking required. It’s also helpful to use My Food Bag’s newest feature – doubling up on protein with certain dishes – to cook more for the next day, so you always have some cooked in the fridge, ready to go. Other helpful hacks from Nadia: she always has slow-cooked meat in the freezer. “It’s literally a case of chucking everything in a pot with some liquid, tinned tomatoes and spices, and slow cooking it for four to five hours. That lasts my family probably three meals.” She also swears by pre-roasting a big batch of vegetables that’ll last three days in the fridge. They work with eggs at breakfast, packed up for lunch with some salad leaves and protein and always with a really good dressing. “A good dressing makes your vegetables taste delicious.”
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