By: Judy Davie - The Food Coach
 Even as a child I loved food so much that I earned the nicknames Pood, Jood the Pood, or Pudding. Like many sensitive young girls I became self-conscious and in an attempt to lose weight I ate half a packet of Riveta crispbread because it was "diet food": I thought the more you ate the thinner you would become!
The other week I visited a raw food cafe and was amazed at the number of cakes on display: They were stunning. What amazed me even more were the number of people ordering them. Forget the beautiful savoury salads, most people were bypassing those healthy options and heading straight for the cakes. It occurred to me at the time that some people may think, as I did with the Riveta , that raw cakes, because they are full of natural ingredients may help them stay or even become slim.
Take a fairly typical raw cheezecake (notice I use a z instead of an s because raw, vegan, gluten and sugar free cakes have no cheese). Most of them are made with cashews, dates, agave, coconut oil, fruit, lecithin and an average slice lands around 2,500 kJ into your body. I would expect to consume that in a whole meal not an after dinner dessert or mid afternoon snack. Be warned, raw cakes are a lovely treat and they are better for you than traditional cakes full of flour, cheese, cream, sugar and butter but they are not your friend if you want to lose weight. Nor will they help you if you're trying to save money because they're jolly expensive!
Cacao fudge sounds delicious; made with almonds, almond butter, cacao, agave and walnuts, it's easy to make too. Just whizz it altogether, press it into a baking tray and refrigerate it for 2 hours. Cut into 16 squares it's a delicious all natural sweet treat with more kJ's than a chocolate Tim Tam! Yes of course it's better for you than a chocolate Tim Tam but can it really be labelled health food? Two squares of dark chocolate has 10% the energy and is vastly less expensive by the time you fly most of the ingredients over from the other side of the world.
Speaking of expensive, what about chlorophyll? This concentrated green pigment is marketed as an alkalising natural antioxidant and a body deodoriser which can sweeten breath and neutralise bad perspiration odours.
A 500 ml bottle will cost about $24.95.
Being Scottish I don't like paying too much for anything and frankly I don't understand why anyone would pay $24.95 for a bottle of slimy green stuff when a bunch of spinach costs about $2.99, brushing your teeth costs nothing, nor does taking a shower ( which I imagine most people will do anyway).
If you remember your basic school biology, chlorophyll is the green pigment found in most plants including spinach, kale, broccoli and any other edible green leaves - all of which taste nice and are relatively cheap. Spinach and the other leafy greens also contain xanthophyll, carotenoids, and anthocyanins, powerful antioxidants which play an active role in significantly reducing the risk for cataracts (up to 20%) and age-related macular degeneration (up to 40%), and they help to protect against cancer, high blood pressure, inflammation, arthritis and degenerative disease.
Nutritionist Dr Joanna McMillan agrees: "there is no scientific evidence to taking chlorophyll separately as a supplement - the benefits are better if you have a green smoothie made with spinach or kale or watercress or any of the green leafy veg because you're getting all the phytochemicals from the plant nutrients rather than one isolated nutrient plus the fibre"
What I'm saying here is don't be fooled. Health is a massive business and people like to be caught up in the latest trend.
On my desk ( for research purposes only) are two powder packs - both ridiculously expensive. Mesquite powder is marketed as being high in protein - one serve (10 g) provides 1.6 g of protein and costs 51 cents a serve. For more protein and less money you could eat 7 almonds - even activated almonds are cheaper. Lucuma powder is another Peruvian superfood and is evidently a good source of carbohydrate fibre and minerals - one serve (10g) provides 137 kJ costs 79 cents and even while I type this I'm not sure why anyone would need to buy it when rolled oats, barley, brown and black rice, quinoa, and potatoes all serve he same purpose.
The point of all of this is to ask you to be discerning. When you go into a health food store or raw food café consider what you are buying and whether it's really doing you any good. By all means have a cake, enjoy it but don't be fooled into thinking it's anything other than an occasional treat. At the end of the day the healthiest foods that you can be eating today are unprocessed, grown in this country and in season now.
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