Posts Tagged ‘food’

As well as the courses on macronutrients and micronutrients, I’ve also been doing a course on sport nutrition with Wageningen University. I’ve finished the course and am on track for a final grade of 92%, but even though I’ve submitted everything, the grades do not get finalised until the summer.

Earlier in the year, I completed a course on Micronutrients and Malnutrition with Wageningen University. I made it through the exams pretty quickly, but the coursework has to go through a long marking process, so I’ve been waiting for my grade for quite a while.

Thankfully, it has finally arrived, and my overall mark is 92%. which is a pass, obviously.

Completing this also unlocks my combo bonus. This and Macronutrients & Overnutrition course form part of the Professional Certificate in Food, Nutrition and Health qualification, which I have also now completed.

I’m officially a Stanford University graduate. I even have a certificate saying so. Sort of. It says “this is not the same as being a real student on campus!” at the bottom, but otherwise is pretty much says that.

I started the Introduction to Food & Health course last year. It was interesting, but not very science-heavy, hence I moved onto other qualifications such as the ones from Wageningen. For people looking to eat healthier and more interesting in improving their diet than understanding metabolic processes, this is a great course.

Cadbury produces a sharing bag of mixed chocolate buttons containing both milk and white buttons. As soon as you learn this exists you are probably thinking “are there equal numbers of each button in the bag?”

Do not worry. I have painstaking done the research. For months I have been analysing the frequency of each type of button in each bag to work out what the balance is. Finally, my research is ready to publish.

Here are the results:

A paired samples t-test to compare the number of milk and white buttons in each bag. There were more milk buttons (M = 55.38, SD = 1.30) than white buttons (M = 45.38, SD = 1.30).

Test for normality was run (p = 0.327) so Wilxin signed-rank was used (N = 8,

I recently completed my course in Macronutrients and Overnutrition with Wageningen University. I didn’t realise just how good Wageningen was until I looked them up in the league tables: around 50th in the world (Leeds is around 100th) and the top-rated university in the Netherlands.

The course covered macronutrients: carbs, proteins and fats, as well as some of the reasons we eat too much and why weight management can be an issue in the obesogenic environment.

Final grade: 95%. Pretty happy with that.

We’ve outdone ourselves this year. Usually, when we make our annual pilgrimage to buy the Christmas ham, they top out at about 6kg. But, this year, we found them all of the way up to 9kg.

We weren’t sure 9kg would fit in the oven. Or in the fridge. So, we went for a conservative 8.67kg ham. Which still beats our record by over two kilograms. Venla seemed pretty pleased with it.

We’ve really enjoyed Ken Hom’s cookbook. We’ve been working our way through the 60-odd recipes we thought looked tasty over the past three or fours months and can now conclusively say that it is a winner.

All of the recipes have been easy to follow. A lot of them start the same way: by chopping up some meat and marinating it in a mixture of sesame oil, rice wine, soy sauce and corn flour. Then typically stir-fried with a variety of other ingredients.

If you’re looking for authentic Chinese food, this isn’t the book for you. The recipes are Westernised, which makes them both easy to cook and very tasty.

Sweet and sour pork.

Chicken and sweetcorn soup. It should have been chicken and spinach soup, but I cooked all of the spinach the day before and had to rely on stereotypes to fill in the blank.

Chicken with sesame seeds.

Braised fish.

In my final blog post in my series on nutrition I’m writing about what I do after a race or training session. See the previous posts on hydration, gels and solid food for the rest of the story.

When I’m home

The first question is am I at home and do I have milk in the fridge? If so, recovery shake.

The Tribe recovery shakes contain about 20g of protein.

If I am in the mood for a change, I sometimes buy one of the ready-to-drink shakes from Tesco. These contain 22g of protein, but that is less than Tribe once you factor in that I mix the Tribe shake powder with milk, which has its own protein.

When I’m not home

If I am at a race or at the pool, I go for a protein bar instead. I use the Tribe 10 bars which are named so because they contain 10g of protein. I get them in four different flavours and rotate around them.

After a race

Post-race is one of the few times I allow myself to indulge in a bag of crisps. Delicious salty crisps.

This week, Tesco announced that it was removing “best before” dates from around 70 products including apples, potatoes, tomatoes, lemons and onions.

In 2012, I wrote about how banning “best before” dates could contribute to reducing food waste. Has Tesco taken this step because of the relentless pressure of six years of being sharing my blog post? No. But I’m pleased about their decision nonetheless.

The Schartz herbs and spices bottles are better than the Sainsbury’s ones. They’re taller and thinner, meaning that you can fit more of them within the same shelf space. The labels on the top are also clear.

But the Sainsbury’s ones are cheaper. And, in any case, Sainsbury’s have refused to stock the Schwartz ones anymore because they want people to buy their own brand ones. So, I buy the Sainsbury’s ones and re-fill my Schwartz bottle.

What is odd, though, is that Schwartz sell 20g bottles and Sainsbury’s sell 25g bottles. But, when you tip the 25g of Sainsbury’s coriander seeds into the 20g Schwartz bottle, they all fit in.