 Welcome back to Morning Baraka, nutrition food. Excellent, favorite topic so this morning we're gonna have vitamin boost and a food that's good for energy and obviously boosting our vitamins, the goodness of the food that we're extracting. So we have so many pills on the market. Yes and everything and then we've got an array of natural foods. So what's your experience? I think it's better to have them in eat as healthy as we can and then perhaps supplement or is it okay to take the pills and then sort of not to? I am an advocate of the natural so I'm not really a fan of pills personally. I mean some people gain benefits cod liver oil tablets whatever but I prefer making that your food is your medicine. Making the actual diet or the nutritional intake that you have is healthy and that is the key. So on a daily basis do you have a lot of vegetables, protein like fish, oily fish, what do you do to make sure that you're hitting your vitamin? Well they always talk about a balanced diet so it's about having the right proportions of carbohydrates, healthy fats, I'm stressing the healthy fats because not just fats but healthy fats and also your proteins having a good mixture. Okay so for the sake of the viewers carbohydrates what are the examples? So we've got brown rice, my favorite is brown rice, people like brown pasta, I don't eat pasta myself but brown pasta is cool, sweet potatoes and you have... So you're emphasizing on the brown? Home meal, you know more than more of the whole meal so even people who do eat bread again I try to stay away from bread but brown bread, whole meal bread these are the better types of bread for your carbohydrates. Okay and then what about the white ones, the white bread? It tends to be a bit starchy but you do need some starch in your diet but I'm just a little... Nutrition is healthy if you have the brown version. Honestly there's nothing that beats white toast and butter I have to say and on a cold day in England and a nice cup of tea. So when we look at sort of like, so that's your carbohydrates and then you said protein, what's an example, good protein for a daily... Old fashioned chicken, nice protein, you have your red meat so no people say you shouldn't eat too much red meat but red meat is pretty good. You know you've got your turkey, your beef you know and fish, there's such a wide variety of fish from Omega 3, you're talking your salmon. Yeah so when I think about healthy food and you're saying about meat and fish, things like that, I would think that you'd probably have seasoning and grill it or something and rice. Yeah, coaching, grilling, avoiding deep fat frying food, preparing your food in that way because then it's higher in not so good cholesterol. And then even rice, what's the best way? Because we have plows and you know quite sweet rice. Well plain boiled rice or you know if you might want to jazz it up with a little bit of seasoning and a little bit of spinach, you know that's pretty cool. So what kind of the carobines eat it? Rice and peas, plain rice or different peas, you know black-eyed peas, what they call kidney beans, what we call it red peas, stuff like that and always with coconut, the coconut and the thyme just to give it down. And what about other cuisines then? So for instance we have pilau which is you know you could fry an onion, you'll put some chicken in there or lamb and then put the rice in there, white rice and then you cook it and then you... is that healthy, is that something that you you know you sort of say go for the simpler version, not go for the food like that? Yeah I think the simpler versions are less complex, plainer, you get your carbohydrates in and you're good to go. But nothing wrong with a bit of spices to make, you know to bring the food alive. So would you say... Healthy food doesn't have to be bland, I'm no chef but I could vouch for that. Okay well I'll take your word for it. What about things like, so if we had sort of like people that are used to sort of curries and they're quite you know... I like curries, I like curries. Would you say you limit that to sort of once once a week or or something that like people can have regularly and perhaps with salads, how can they balance that? Yeah but I think I think it depends on what people want to or people are trying to obtain the nutritionally because some people want to bulk up, some people want to stay trim, some people they're eating for energy boosts, what type of meal you know like we prepare different smoothies for different purposes, all to obviously feed the body but you know with different goals in mind or different emphasis in mind so depending. Okay so let's talk about this energy boost, vitamin boosting smoothie. Or say an American vitamin you know, let's get into it. I'm sure we have some viewers from America vitamin. That was to make them feel at home. So we'll get our container like voila and we have... What's what's that? This is coconut water and it's a very you know like very rich nutritionally rich food. How does it benefit people? As opposed to plain ice water, you know water or energy? Yeah. Cleanser. Mm-hmm. There you have it. Okay. What else? We've got some pine apples, nice healthy unprocessed sugars. That's a bit like a pina colada then isn't it? Oh I wouldn't know I mean. There are... Virgin ones. Yes that's the word, yeah totally halal pina colada. It's really good actually you get quite anyway I'm not talking about. What else? Oh we have melon. Water melon. Cleanser. Okay so water melons, it's a food that a lot of people eat during Shahar Ramadan. Yeah it's because it's an energy food isn't it? It's a super food and full of antioxidants you know good for the immune system. It's good for the hydration as well I think. Yes definitely definitely definitely hot kind. They love water melons you know like in hot countries yeah yeah. What's amazing fruit isn't it? How much in there? It's beautiful, absolutely beautiful. Okay so you've got your watermelon. A little bit of spinach. It's all swivel. What's the benefit of spinach in there? Spinach, super food, alkaline food. So neutralizing anything? Yeah neutralizes the acid in the stomach you know good for people. Is pineapple quite acidic? Yeah like it it reminds me of like citrus family. Yeah you know that little bit as tangy isn't it? Yes. Right what else have you got? Bit of green apple, bosh, fish and banana. Right so they're gonna be and children please don't try this at home without supervision of an adult. Yeah that's uh I'm just thinking you've got a mixture of vegetables of fruit in there. Yep. So spinach is that something is that quite common ingredient for smoothies? Yeah yes that's one of the interesting things about smoothies that people you know kind of originally just thought of smoothies as you know it's just some fruit whipped up but now you know we're getting more creative with the combinations and then people are surprised because they think oh does that go together you know but they do. Yeah you'd be amazed. Do you think you can just mix anything like you know if you were just having one of those days you've got lots of ingredients just chopping it all up and I don't know if um or is it something that you should really have some progress too? Yeah I think you can probably if you if you don't know what you're doing there's no there's no danger you're not in any danger but you might put but you might put sort of acidic with alkaline and you know things like that we wouldn't want to put like I don't know milk with orange or something that would be antagonistic and curdle so yeah you know okay so you're putting in so we're just getting in the bananas in yeah and the banana makes it quite gives it body you think so yeah makes it rich right it looks good doesn't it? Yeah it does. It's almost just good to eat I almost don't want to blend it really important about daily intake so what about people you know sort of like the mood it puts people in you know if we're lacking vitamins for instance they're quite important for people to have on a regular intake of a variety of vitamins so in terms of mood how does it how do vitamins actually affect mood if you become deficient in something it does show up in certain characteristics doesn't it in your behavior I mean you could have people that have you know vitamins that I'm lacking you know A you know C vitamin C yeah yeah yeah and vitamins are quite important to the body I mean I even know that for example that if you have certain bone conditions scoliosis for example you know curving curvature of the the spine you know if you don't have vitamin D for example that it can even affect you know you can actually increase the spine the actual curve yeah so it's that important about food in general food affects mood there's been a lot of research out about food and mood certain types of foods that are addictive but it's more to do with your processed food because there's all these different chemicals that are in the food that we don't know about and that's why I when people talk about Muslim say halal food but I always say what about pay why does the Quran talk about pure food you know because there's certain additives that they might come under the halal banner but I don't know in terms of making our sugars crash and you know rise and spike and crash and things like this so you know it can and for children growing and elderly as well exactly pregnant women these all these medical conditions okay well it's really nice actually let's have a blast then of your smoothie and while you are doing that I am going to just quickly narrate a hadith about let's see how this goes okay so food possesses full qualities and if we have them they are that makes food perfect so it's being halal eating it with other people so you're talking about you know cultures sharing cultures and sharing food starting with the name of Allah and ending it with a praise and that's that's the holy prophet peace be upon him who's you know not just telling us how to eat food like be maturing it's halal it's a sharing as well and then remembering Allah that he has given us this blessing give it a whisk it's interesting it looks nothing like that spinach overpowers it doesn't end does indeed it's all green and the apple the apple as well yeah it's good to does it make a difference which apples kind of use in smoothies like red or only slightly only slightly I would say it's quite different aren't they yeah yeah but apple a day yeah does keep the doctor away they say our poor grandma got their mouth watering I can smell the apple in this actually the apple is quite rich here which is good and you put in about half into it yeah all right exciting bosh bish excuse me thank you all right three two one miss me quite sweet very earthly taste it takes a lot of apple I like the coconut water I like the coconut water I like it I think it makes it quite light doesn't it look like water whereas that banana thing make it a bit heavy so that was it's nice yeah the apple coming through smooth texture it's quite um it's quite runny isn't it so you can see it yeah and you can moderate the texture by adding for example an extra banana I mean the ingredients will be up on the website but just say for example you know okay I like it with a lot more body yeah a little bit extra banana or a little extra water if you like it would you serve smoothies to your guests if you had people over I would I would um encourage a kind of smoothie culture amongst the Muslims and people in general but amongst the Muslims would be nice to you know say I've got a particular type of you know wholesome drink you wouldn't try out you know it's like try and develop a new like we bring back dinner parties if people eat together and discuss things yeah bringing people together with food I think why not hey bring smoothies yeah okay come to my house you'll get Oreo milkshake okay sounds good so in terms of um you know what's your sort of favorite um my favorite blitz is uh banana I stick to my banana yeah porridge titcha peanut butter I keep it I keep it simple yeah so would you add blueberries into that sort of mixture uh only sometimes because I I'm funny with my sugars I don't have any medical condition but I just I have a sweet tooth so I don't want to um trigger trigger that that sweet that sweet rush that I like so much so how do you control that like in your willpower how do you have something like perhaps dates what do you have natural food that's got sugar in what do you yes I just eat vegetables I try to concentrate on vegetables and a little bit of fruit but as you know when you process fruit that it does create a bit more sugar so you always need to be aware of it it's not bad but it just means that there's you've now created more sugar in this in the food right thank you so much that was uh nicely thank you for your effort and um hope for the viewers to try it at home yeah definitely they should try it out they should try it out inshallah next up we have um this is the amy with the politics of all things