MH: So what’s a day in the life of in your family? Do you tick your boxes in terms of nutrients or do you look at what your body is craving?
MT: A little of both. I do try to listen to what my body is asking for. I let a lot of vegetables and generally when you eat that way your body craves more of that, rather than if I was eating KFC or donuts all day I would crave that, or the sugar.. I just try to listen to what I feel like on the day – as long as you rotate and don’t eat exactly the same thing everyday. Even if all you’re eating is green vegetables all day, every day – yes they are wonderful and have lots of wonderful qualities – but they bring their own set of problems if you just eat them all the time.
A varied diet of whole, real food that’s my main philosophy.
MH: Ok so in an ideal world. If you had to plan something for the average person who doesn’t have any outstanding health issue, what would that day look like?
Meg Thompson:
Breakfast: Preferably in the morning to have something fairly substantial with a nice balance of protein and healthy fat. Could be anything from a cooked porridge with nuts and seeds and fruit or it could be yoghurt with nuts and honey or a smoothie with lots of goodness thrown in. It could be a lovely sour dough toast with avocado, feta, tomato. Eggs are another really great one because they are super easy and have everything you need in one little egg.
Probably a morning snack of either a handful of nuts, piece of fruit or a granola bar.
Lunch: generally I find most people do leftovers for lunch, I often encourage people to make a big batch of things. So a big bunch of lentils or chickpeas, something like that.
Dinner: again depending on preferences but definitely a source of protein, a meat source, or an egg or tofu or tempeh style, or legumes, with lots of fresh seasonal veggies.
And lots of water, for me about 2 litres. A lot of the time when we’re hungry we are just thirsty so always have a glass of water first if you’re feeling hungry.
There’s a lovely saying. “If you’re feeling hungry have an apple, if you’re not hungry enough to want an apple then you’re not really hungry.”
MH: If there was one change we could make which you believe would set the readers onto Kale coloured greener healthy fields, what would that be?
MT: Just to eat whole, real foods as much as you can. To cook it yourself as much as you can, to get that connection to where it’s from, and the seasonality of it. I think that it’s really important to connect with food and to eat mindfully.
MH: Are you firmly in the “always organic” camp or do you ever get to Coles?
MT: I’m very fortunate that I have a wonderful, wonderful health food shop near me which is price competitive and I have a sad enjoyment with Farmer’s Markets. So I do try and eat organic when I can but at the end of the day that’s not the deal breaker. There are certain foods or vegetables, like bananas or avocados with skin we are going to take off anyway, they aren’t vital. If you can eat organic fabulous, if not; seasonal and fresh.
MH: Do you do a daily shop to your health food store or a weekly shop?
MT: (laughs) I would love to go everyday, but unfortunately I can’t!
MH: I pictured you going daily with a beautiful basket!
MT: I manage to pump quite a lot of veggies out of our own small space, you can do a lot of growing out of pots too. Probably twice a week I get to the markets or shops. There’s also wonderful fruit and vegetable boxes you can have delivered.