How weird that I can make a link between the latest gut health research and the financial news on ABC this week! It is not every day that Australians gets stared down by a financial news journalist for not eating their vegetables!
ABC's finance reporter Elysse Morgan pointed out that the market shortage of leafy greens could have an impact on our health, HOWEVER, she also noted that the stats on our current intake of vegetables in Australia is ONLY 9% of the recommended daily intake! So we are having a negative impact on our health regardless of the short supply and market statistics on of leafy greens. Come ON Australia. How many times do we have to highlight the links between a healthy life and your diet.
The most recent findings in diet and gut health highlight that we need to be targeting about 20 different plants per day for optimal gut health and fibre intake. Including lots of leafy greens that made the financial news this week, in that they are in very short supply.
There is little contention about the fact that increasing the diversity and intake of plants, including seaweeds, will make your opportunity for lifelong health that much more likely.
Gut health is a vital part of avoiding inflammatory diseases. Not only did our research with our SeaFibre extracts show that for inflammatory markers and the case for psoriasis, but recent research in the journal CELL found that fibre is not only about the microbiome diversity, but making the microbiome that you have work better. This in turn supports your immune system and inflammation responses (Wastyk et all, CELL 2021).
Seaweed will make achieving adequate plant intake so much easier for you as you only need small amounts added to your regular foods to get a massive boost in phytochemical diversity and complex fibre and nutrition. We worked hard to make our superpowered leafy green seaweed ready to go in all of our food products. Just taking them off the shelf for food that you are familiar with cooking, or in concentrated form in all of our SeaFibre and Phybre blends.
Counting up to twenty plants might seem daunting, but this includes your grains (so choose multigrain and wholegrain). Imagine if you choose a wholegrain sourdough with 4 grain types, plus smashed avocado, then Phukka with sesame seeds, pistachios, almonds, cumin, peppar and seaweed! That is 11, or over half of your daily plant diversity intake requirements covered off just for breakfast in 3 easy moves.
Or take the the stress out of counting up to 20 plants a day and just add a dose of seaweed in our 3 plant fibre blend for an addition of 3, Phybre, in a smoothy or other cereal.
Please help us change the stats for the next time leafy greens and human health are featured on the financial news! I really hope that other financial reporters will be a progressive in their reporting as Elysse Morgan!