ROUTINE FOR PUTTING ON WEIGHT

Plenty of rest and exercise, a good diet of fattening foods and no worries—those are the essentials

PUTTING on weight is very much more difficult than taking it off. Even thosefew extra pounds which can make all the difference to the appearance, comfort and, no doubt, general health, can be quite a problem.

Before embarking on a diet, it is always advisable to seek the advice of your own doctor. This is particularly important if there has been a sudden or prolonged loss of weight for no good reason and without affecting normal appetite. Where loss of weight is the result of an illness or operation, it is usually quite quickly and easily regained after recovery. The routine to be described will help in such cases, subject to the approval of your own doctor.

We are concerned here chiefly with that large army of men and women who are anxious to put on weight but who are the thin type by nature. Such people are born worriers, with excitable and energetic natures and over-active bowels, whose food does not remain in the intestines long enough to be properly absorbed.

Essential in the fattening process are:

• Keep calm and stop worrying. That is obviously a counsel of perfection to those who easily get worked up, but it can be achieved by cultivating outside interests that take your mind away from the source of anxiety (it may be professional, domestic, financial, or all three).

• Take plenty of rest. A minimum of between 8 and 9 hours in bed at night, plus between 10 and 30 minutes after every meal.

• Avoid rushing about, but take regular exercise. On no account jump up immediately after a meal; take life at a leisurely pace. Strenuous games are good if you really enjoy them, because they create appetite; so does any form of outdoor exercise, however mild.

• Eat well and regularly, and concentrate on the fattening foods (list follows). But be careful not to stuff between meals or you will defeat the whole object and be unable to eat your main meals, which are far more important. You must also avoid over-eating, with the inevitable danger of indigestion and biliousness. Aim at three good meals a day, plus any extras (such as sweets, etc.) which you really fancy and a hot, preferably milk, drink last thing at night. The housewife should take as many meals out as she conveniently can because she will not have the worry of preparing them.

• Cut down your smoking. It diminishes the appetitite, so, if you must smoke at all, only after meals, please.

Sugar, sweets, jam, marmalade, fruits in syrup, treacle, honey, Golden Syrup.

Cakes, scones, pastry, cereals, bread, biscuits, puddings.

Thickened soups and gravies, sauces made from flour, butter and/or milk.

Fried foods, cream, salad dressings, butter, dripping.

Pork, duck, goose. All fat meat and bacon. Tinned fish in oil.

Sweet wines, beer, stout, spirits, sweet aerated waters.

Dried fruits. Bananas, grapes, plums. Potatoes, peas, dried beans, parsnips, beetroot.

Cod-liver oil, Virol, olive oil.

Salt with food.

Foods with very little fattening value

Meat extracts. Marmite. Clear soups. Gelatine. Egg-white.

Green vegetables and salads. Vinegar. Tea. Coffee.

SPECIMEN DIET FOR PUTTING ON WEIGHT

Minimum: 1 pint of milk per day

On waking: Cup of tea, preferably with milk and sugar.

Breakfast: Cereal or porridge with milk and sugar or honey or syrup.

Bacon, egg, fish, etc.

Toast, butter and marmalade.

Coffee or tea.

11 a.m.: Coffee, cocoa or milk and a biscuit, or try this cocktail: One teaspoonful Spanish olive oil sandwiched between layers of orange juice in a wineglass. You can increase the quantity of olive oil gradually.

Lunch: Thick soup, if liked (if this makes it impossible to eat main course, substitute tomato or orange juice as an appetiser instead).

Meat, fish, game, poultry, etc.—both fat and lean. Serve with gravy, roast or fried potatoes and a green vegetable or salad with plenty of oily or cream dressing.

Pudding and / or cheese, butter and biscuits.. Coffee.

Tea: Tea with cake or bread and butter or banana sandwich.

Dinner: Thick soup (see Lunch).

Fish, meat or poultry, with gravy, at least one vegetable from list of Fattening Foods; one green vegetable or salad with cream or oil dressing.

Steamed or boiled pudding or milk pudding or ice cream.

Cheese with bread or biscuits and butter.

Coffee.

NOTE: Cocktails, wines. etc., may be taken as desired and obtainable. Stout or beer is good.

Bedtime: A hot drink, preferably containing milk.

My recommendation: The 3-step dietary programme Do what I did, look the results

The dietary plans that follow offer simple, nutritious and delicious recipes on a staged regime that should take you from overweight to optimum weight and enhanced well-being.

The reason many people depend on junk and convenience foods is because they lead such busy lives. Most of the recipes in these plans are quick to prepare, and should be within the capabilities of even the most reluctant cook. There are exceptions: preparing the Chicken Soup will take a couple of hours, but it makes a lot and you can freeze separate portions, ensuring that you can have a nutritious low-carb meal even when the clock is ticking away.

So blitz your cupboards and discard any foodstuffs that don't fit the bill. The journey to a healthy, lean body begins here.

The Plans

The 3-step programme includes 3 eating plans. The Fast-Track Plan will help you lose weight quickly and give you that all-important boost on a 50 per cent protein/20 per cent carbohydrate/30 per cent fat regime that will initiate benign dietary ketosis. It should last for 7-21 days, after which you are ready to move on to the next stage. Your weight loss should be around 2-5.5kg (4-121b) if you are a woman and 4-7.25kg (8-161b) if you are a man, depending on how long you remain on this plan.

During the Keep on Tracking Plan you increase your levels of low-tomedium GI carbohydrates and move into a 35 per cent protein/35 per cent carbohydrate/30 per cent fat regime. You still monitor ketosis and watch how introducing higher levels of carbohydrates affects your weight loss, which should now even out to 0.25-1 kg (¹/2-21b) per week.

The No Backtracking Plan is your eating regime for life. You can gradually introduce fruit and vegetables, grains and pulses from the higher GI ranges, in moderation. It is important to keep an eye on how your body reacts to these and to establish your perfect weight-management level.

If you are a vegetarian, there is plenty of advice on how to adapt the plans and recipes to suit your dietary requirements. Granted, your choice isn't as varied as that of a non-vegetarian, but don't use this as an excuse not to give it a go. If you follow the basic guidelines and make simple changes to the recipes where necessary, you should lose weight and eradicate insulin resistance successfully.

FOOD TO THROW OUT

• White flour and sugar
• Honey
• Biscuits
• Crisps
• Sweets
• Sugary drinks
• White rice, bread, pasta
• Processed foods high in carbohydrates
• Ready-made sauces
• Gravy mixes

Customize the plans to suit your lifestyle and dietary preferences

The suggested menu plans are not set in stone - they are templates to encourage you to eat the right sort and amount of food.

If you wish to change a recipe - because you don't like lamb and would rather have chicken, say - it really doesn't matter. Just try to use foods of a similar dietary value. When swapping vegetables and fruit, go for ones in the same GI category; try to exchange meat for meat, or fish for fish, in the same amounts. If you change a recipe from meat to fish, you may need to use slightly more fish to give you the same level of protein. For example, 125g (4oz) of poultry or lean meat should be replaced with 175g (6oz) of fish.

Simplify the recipes

If you are short of time, or like your food a bit plainer, simplify the recipe. If you don't fancy Baked Tuna with Tomato and Herbs, adapt the ingredients, ensuring that you still have sufficient protein, carbohydrates and healthy fats - have a tuna salad with tomatoes and dark green leaves.

On a budget

If money is short and you find some of the suggested ingredients a little expensive, use some budgetary ingenuity to bring down the cost. Fresh salmon can be replaced with coley or whiting, or even tinned salmon.

Use the suggested meals as inspiration. In order to manage your weight in the future, you will have to experiment and be prepared to adapt.

Essential fats

If you have been doggedly avoiding fat in an attempt to lose weight — this approach is WRONG. You need fats in your diet. Your brain consists mostly of fat, and your intelligence, heartbeat and muscular movements all depend on it. The only way in which your body can send electrical messages through living tissue is via your nerve cells and their connectors, which again are made of fat.

The fact is that some fats (known as lipids) are essential. They act as the second energy reserve behind glycogen, providing most of their energy at around 70 per cent of maximum heart rate. Endurance athletes utilize fat as an energy source more than other sports people and this is why they tend to be lean.

Fats are not just for energy, though. Their many other functions include insulating important organs, carrying fat-soluble vitamins and regulating hormone levels. If you're a female athlete and you experience a loss of your periods, this may be due to extremely low body fat, for this plays a vital role in the activation of the female hormone oestrogen.

Fats also contribute to health in many other ways — provided they are of the right kind. In an attempt to warn people about the risk of consuming toomuch fat, certain groups have created the impression that all fats are bad, but this simply is not true.

Are you eating the wrong fats?

Many people in the Western world are getting 45 per cent of their calorific intake from fats, but these are junk fats that the body cannot use, so these people are just as fat-deficient as those on extremely low-fat regimes.

THERE ARE TWO MAIN TYPES OF NATURAL FATS:

1. Saturated fats come primarily from animal sources such as meat and dairy products, and from coconut and palm-kernel oil; they are solid at room temperature. They provide the body with a stored form of energy in fat cells.

2. Unsaturated fats are found in vegetables, nuts, grains and seeds, and in fish and game; they are liquid at room temperature. They contain two fatty acids that are essential to life and, more importantly, that the body cannot produce itself. These are linoleic acid (omega-6) and linolenic acid (omega-3) From these two 'essential fatty acids' your body can make all the other fatty acids it needs.

Is it just a case of cutting out saturated fat?

Saturated fat gets a bad press, and a diet too heavy in it has been closely linked to cardiovascular disease. However, there is another fat with an equal capacity to harm: hydrogenated fat.

Hydrogenated fat is solid or semi-solid at room temperature (the best example being margarine). It is created when a liquid oil (such as corn oil) has hydrogen added to it, changing its chemical structure. This in turn can interfere with the metabolism of some essential fatty acids. Research has shown that the trans fats in hydrogenated fats can increase LDL (poor) cholesterol,decrease HDL (good) cholesterol and thus raise the risk of coronary heart disease. Hydrogenated fat is found in almost all processed foods, plus frozen convenience foods and deep-fried fast food. This is another good reason to say goodbye to junk food and hello to fresh produce.

If you usually ingest high amounts of processed fats and use commercially altered oils for cooking, then you are certainly not getting the balance of fats that your body needs.

Why don't food manufacturers use healthier oils?

Even though the food industry uses vegetable oils that contain a reasonable amount of omega-6 fatty acids, they avoid omega-3s because these are more susceptible to oxidization — in other words, they go rancid quickly and don't have a long shelf life.

Ironic, isn't it? Food manufacturers quite happily promote food under the guise of lowering cholesterol and reducing heart disease, but they are ignoring one of the fats essential to health. So unless you are eating high amounts of fish, fish oils, leafy vegetables, nuts, unrefined olive oil, tofu or flaxseed oil, your ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 fats is probably screwed up, and this in turn will be screwing up your health.

The current Western diet is much higher in omega-6 fatty acids than omega-3's. Remember those healthy Palaeolithic people we were discussing earlier? They were eating equal amounts of both.

How is this relevant to body weight?

If you are eating a diet with a good balance of omega-6 and omega-3 fatty acids, this will affect your body in beneficial fat-burning ways:

• Your metabolic rate will be increased, as will the metabolism of fats, so more stored fat will be burned for energy
• Your cells' sensitivity to insulin will be increased, so that it regulates blood- sugar levels more effectively
• The ratio of insulin to glucagons will improve, which will unlock the fat- storage banks and again allow fat to be burned as energy
• Natural appetite suppressants will kick in.

So if you want to improve your chances of losing weight, you need to up your intake of omega-3 and other healthy fats.

Essential fats Q&A

Q. How often should I eat oily fish per week if I want to consume enough omega-3 fatty acids?

A. You should aim to eat oily fish a minimum of 2-3 times per week, or ensure you use flaxseed oil regularly on salads to raise your levels. Try to eat fish from as safe a source as possible as many coldwater fish are contaminated with heavy metals and pesticides.

Q. How can I avoid hydrogenated fat?

A. Cut out processed food and only use cold-pressed un-refined oils such as olive oil, or coconut oil for cooking. Don't eat fast food that has been deep-fried and avoid butter type spreads. If you did this, then you should be able to avoid consuming dangerous trans fatty acids.

High-quality protein continue...

Soya's starring role

Soya is another star player on the protein front, and although it doesn't have as high a BV as whey protein, meat, fish or eggs, it has a multitude of health benefits which more than justify its inclusion in a low-carb diet; and it is a great vegetarian option.

Soya contains all-important isoflavones, which can reduce insulin levels, decrease arteriosclerosis (thickening of the arterial walls) and lower levels of LDL (Low-Density Lipoproteins, or poor cholesterol). It has also been shown to reduce the risk of osteoporosis (softening of the bones), increase bone mass and enhance the body's ability to retain calcium.

Soya is also of particular benefit to women, as the isoflavones it contains mimic the action of the female sex hormone oestrogen. It is believed that a diet high in soya can reduce the density of breast tissue, therefore lowering the risk of developing breast cancer.

Make it organic

The quality of the meat and fish we consume has dropped dramatically during the last century. Gone are the days when we were eating meat that came from animals allowed to graze freely on nutritious grass, and fish caught inunpolluted rivers and seas. Today, most farm animals are fed on grains that are high in carbohydrates and omega-6 fatty acids, then pumped full of antibiotics and hormones. And fish are being farmed in restrictive conditions, rendering them more fatty than their wild counterparts.

The only real answer is to buy the best that you can afford - the organic option being the healthiest and most nutritious. Organic is better because the quality of the food is better. It isn't loaded with drugs and hormones, isallowed to graze naturally, and quite often comes from wild sources, so that the level of omega-3's is higher, levels of saturated fats lower.

Protein Q&A

Q. Where does whey come from?

A, Whey comes from milk. During the process of turning milk into cheese, the whey protein is separated from the curds.

Q. Why use whey?

A. It contains the perfect combination of amino acids, in just the right concentrations for optimal performance in the body. Both hormonal and cellular responses seem to be greatly enhanced by whey supplementation. If you are trying to increase muscle mass, whey protein is invaluable in building and retaining muscle tissue.

Q. How do I know how much protein I need?

A. Easy-just follow these simple calculations. If you are sedentary you need 0.8g protein per kilogram of bodyweight (0.36g per pound of bodyweight). If you are active, you need 1.4g protein per kilogram of bodyweight (0.64g per pound of bodyweight). So a woman weighing 63kg (1401b) who exercises needs 88.2g of protein per day. A woman weighing 63kg (140Ib) who isn't active would be fine on 50.4g of protein per day.

Q. Can I have all my protein in one meal?

A. No, it is best to spread it out over the day, so divide it between your three meals and two snacks. You can do this by having eggs at breakfast, a portion of nuts for your morning snack, some fish at lunchtime, a whey protein shake as an afternoon snack, and finally by including a piece of lean meat in your evening meal.

DO 'traffic light' shopping

Weight loss starts in the store. Yes, this is true - if you have it in stock, you feel compelled to eat it. So buy according to the traffic light system: green for go, orange for caution and red for stop. A typical (basic) grocery list will look like this:

Green-coded foods - enjoy in varying quantities, every day: oats, fresh or frozen vegetables, fruit, grains, dried beans and lentils, rice, pasta, non-oily fresh, canned or frozen fish, white chicken meat without skin, herbs, spices, stock powders, fat-free dairy products, cold-pressed virgin olive oil, whole wheat bread.

Orange-coded foods - enjoy in moderate quantities, no more than four times a week: canned vegetables, oily fresh, frozen or canned fish (in brine), unsalted nuts, skinless chicken (dark meat), refined clarified canola or sunflower oil, 2% dairy products, soup powders, canned soups, fish paste and vegetable bread spreads, white bread, red meat.

Red-coded foods - enjoy in really small quantities, no more than once a week: canned fruit, full-fat and cream cheese, fish canned in oil, bacon, butter, cream, chicken with the skin, offal, cakes, confectionery, anything coated in crumbs or baiter and deep fried.

Gone fishing

Fish should not only be reserved for Fridays; it should be consumed at least four times a week. Gram for gram, fish offers the most beneficial nutrients with less harmful fat than any other animal protein foods. The oily fish varieties (salmon, sardines, mackerel, pilchards) are rich in Omega 3 and 6 oils, essential for:-

• Your brain: keeps the mind alert, brain tissue fluid levels high, regulates brain metabolism, improves neurotransmission and in short, enhances your mental functioning.

• Your looks: ensures optimal functioning of skin and nails, the formation of new skin cells and alleviates skin and nail problems.

• Your senses: maintains and protects - and may even improve-your eyes, your sense of taste and smell, your balance and hearing.

• Your heart, lung and cardiovascular systems: increases oxygen supply, boosts circulation, heals blood vessel damage, prevents arteriosclerosis and positively lowers blood pressure and cholesterol.

• Your uro-genital systems: ensures sex hormone production, reduces PMS,improves fertility, protects prostate and testes in men and improves urinary problems.

• Your nerves: protects the nervous system.

• Your immune system: supports and improves your immune system.

• Your muscles and skeleton: it is an anti-inflammatory agent and eases muscle aches and pains.

Oily fish contains on average 12 to 16 g of fat per 100 g portion. This does not mean you should avoid the oily varieties. On the contrary, study the list of benefits again and see how important it is to eat them regularly!

Non-oily varieties such as hake, sole, kingklip and tuna are low in kilojoules, tasty and versatile, they provide you with super-A protein without the risk of high fat consumption, These varieties contain on average 1 to 2 g of fat per 100-g portion, a real bargain if you're hungry and feel like a large portion of protein!

However, as is the case with all foods, the way in which you prepare fish will make the difference to the size of your dress. All varieties of fish, from the robust sardines to subtle hake, taste better if prepared simply: grilled with a light sauce of lemon and herbs. Those crispy coatings we love so much, only serve to mask their taste. Be honest, don't you eat fried fish because it is actually the batter you love so much? And guess what: its the oil-and-batter combination that loves your hips so much that it clings to them forever!

Chicken considerations

When it comes to enjoying lean animal protein, chicken is a great second choice after fish. The reason is the visibility of its fat, Most animal proteins have fat hidden in the flesh, whereas chicken has most of its fat concentrated in visible fat and of course in the skin. By removing the skin and visible fat from a chicken, you reduce the amount of fat you will be consuming by as much as half.

The question presented once a chicken is on the serving platter is "... white or dark meat?" Regardless of your personal taste preference, you might be interested to know that skinless white meat is the choice if you want to include very little fat in your meal. It contains around 4,5% fat, whereas the dark meat (skinless) contains 9,7% fat. On the other hand, if nutrients are what you are after, go for the dark meat. It contains about twice as much zinc, folate, and vitamin A as white does,

All this proves that when it comes to choosing your chicken, you have only a few simple and sensible choices to make. How to prepare it is a much harder decision to make. There are thousands of rich and tempting chicken recipes (remember the one roasted, skin and all, with chutney and mayonnaise?), so invest in a few low- fat chicken recipe books for your body's sake.

The decision whether or not to remove the skin should be determined by the method of cooking you are planning to follow. Since you will be eating according to the 'Have-a-life' eating plan, you might want to indulge in some crispy chicken now and again. For this purpose, and only this, you would leave the skin intact. It protects the bird from the heat, keeping the meat moist. Therefore, a bird with its skin must be prepared in a 'dry' way, such as grilling, roasting or barbecuing. Pierce the skin all over with a sharp instrument (toothpick or meat skewer) and roast raised, on a rack, so that the fat can be released and drip away. Cooking it in this way releases even more fat and gives it a crispier-than-usual skin - a pleasant bonus for your trouble.

Cooking a skinless chicken has the advantage of drastic fat reduction, but it can possibly become dry and stringy. Which will make you dump your diet faster than you can say: "Pass the gravy". However, poaching, boiling, cooking, stewing or making a casserole, are 'wet' cooking methods for which the skin's protection is not really required. If you cooked the chicken with its skin intact in this manner, the unnecessary (and unwanted) fat will simply leech out into the sauce, and invariably end up on your plate and in your body. There is no point in doing this, especially if you consider that you would never have eaten the fat on its own. So why eat it mixed with (or floating on top of) other juices and flavours? It will just end up floating around your thighs, somewhere under your skin. Your orange-peel skin, at that!

How Fresh is Fresh? (Freezing the freshness)

`Freezing the freshness in'

Freezing is one of the most commonly used methods and its big advantage is that it gives the consumer a year-round availability of what might be a short-season crop. In general, after cooking, most frozen food has the same nutritional value as the identical cooked product using fresh produce. Vegetables are harvested while vitamin C levels are still high and the delay incurred between harvesting and blanching is so short that there are negligible changes in nutritional quality.

A recent report from Britain (the Chipping Campden Report), evaluated fresh versus canned versus frozen peas and came up with some interesting results. For example, it was found that frozen peas do not lose protein, fat, fibre or iron through processing, storage or final cooking. Canned peas are produced from less tender peas and naturally have a slightly higher protein and fibre content. Processing had no effect on zinc levels, but both frozen and canned storage reduced these by about 25%. As regards calcium, cooked frozen peas have a higher level than cooked fresh ones, but they have only about half as much potassium - although this is not a cause for concern since potassium is present in many foods and a deficiency of it is very rare.

What about the all-important vitamin C? Cooked frozen peas have a slightly lower content than cooked, freshly picked ones, but more than cooked, fresh 7-day-old peas. The report concluded that the vitamin C level of cooked frozen peas was about equivalent to cooked fresh 3- to 4-day-old peas, probably about the age they would be if you bought them from your local supermarket for supper the next day. In other words, you can assume that frozen peas are not only convenient but nutritionally as worthwhile as the fresh variety - if somewhat more expensive. If we apply roughly the same results to most frozen vegetables, we can see straight away that they do provide us with a very good out-of-season option.

What's in a can?

Itis probably because frozen fruit and vegetables are raw and canned produce is cooked during the canning process that you may be more likely to regard the former as 'fresh' and the latter as 'processed'. Yet it is interesting that the nutritional value of freshly cooked produce differs very little from the canned variety. This is mainly because with canning, although the cooking period may be a little longer than for home-cooked vegetables, the fact that all air is excluded carries enormous nutritional advantage over our domestic cooking pots. By heating, which destroys any micro-organisms, and excluding air, food is preserved without additives. Apart from the fact that you may simply prefer the taste of fresh vegetables, the only disadvantage of the canned variety is that you don't have any say over the amount of salt and/or sugar added in the canning process.

Fresh from the sea

Fish is another popular frozen food and for many city and country dwellers who fancy something marine on the menu the frozen variety is really the only practical choice. Those who live near fishing ports and harbours (or have keen fisherfolk in the family) are lucky indeed as they will have the chance to enjoy that almost sweet, seaweedy flavour that is the hallmark of truly fresh fish. For the rest of us, frozen fish from one of the big producers is a very acceptable alternative. The fish is caught out at sea and either frozen almost instantly on the fishing vessel itself, or else packed on ice and frozen as soon as it is landed. In this way, optimum nutritional content is maintained and flavour impairment kept to a minimum.

If you are lucky enough to buy fresh fish, check whether it really is fresh, or has been shipped in a frozen state and then defrosted to be laid out on a slab in the supermarket. There's no major difference if you are going to eat it straight away, but if you intend to refreeze it for later use, you would do better to buy commercially frozen fish instead. Not only will the flavour and texture be better, but you will avoid the risk of deterioration attached to freezing, thawing and then refreezingfood.

As with vegetables, most of us would probably like to buy our fish fresh but if you have to settle for frozen, as a bonus you'll be getting consistently high quality. In the case of fresh fish, quality may be erratic, all the more so the further away you are from the maindistribution centres.

How Fresh is Fresh? (The date-stamping option)

Date-stamping may be one way out of the 'how fresh?' dilemma but this poses problems of its own. In addition to the higher cost incurred in wrapping the vegetables so they can carry a date, weight and price label, there's also the environmental factor. With concern mounting over the cost, both ecologically and economically, of wrapping (and then disposing of this wrapping), it may well be wiser to welcome a trend away from this type of labelling. However, there would be nothing ecologically harmful about enterprising supermarkets displaying point-of-sale boards above loose piles of vegetables, advising the shopper of exactly when the produce came into the store. In the absence of such public-spiritedness, however, most shoppers will simply have to go on relying on their own judgement.

Commonsense aside, the message for the consumer couldn't be clearer: If the fruit and vegetables in your local store leave a lot to be desired, the store manager is the one to tell. And if things don't improve, do what every consumer group in the country repeatedly advises - complain to the head office and/or vote with your feet. In other words, take your custom to another branch, or check up on the competition.

As regards the other examples of foodstuffs that we think of as fresh (such as milk, eggs, meat and fish), stringent government controls coupled with sophisticated distribution methods ensure quick transfer from producer to consumer. Meat, milk and fish produce is invariably shipped under refrigeration and some stores have in-store fish sections that can virtually promise a 24-hour service. Checkers stores in Johannesburg often have fish on the slab that has been landed early that same morning, then flown straight to the city, while coastal stores offer the same service but with a little less effort!

When it comes to eggs, smaller retailers may have a slight advantage over the larger chains. For example at a country Spar store, eggs come direct from the farm so they are only a day or two old at the most, but most larger urban stores are only a day or so behind on average.

Having examined the question of freshness, we should also consider the other side of the coin - the methods of preserving our foods that give us almost the same benefits as very fresh produce and often higher benefits than the not-so-fresh variety.

Baked Geelbek in Lemon Sauce

4 x 150 g portions filleted geelbek(Cape salmon)

4 large lettuce leaves

75 g soft butter

1 clove garlic, crushed

finely grated rind of 1 lemon

15 ml freshly squeezed lemon juice

15 ml chopped fresh dill

salt and milled black pepper

175 g whole peeled shrimps, well drained on kitchen paper (weigh after shelling)

60 ml dry white wine

dill fronds for garnish

Set the oven at 200°C. Cut four squares of foil, large enough to enclose the fish.

Place a lettuce leaf on each; this will prevent the fish from sticking, and will make serving easier. Put a piece of geelbek on each leaf.

In a small bowl cream together the butter, garlic, lemon rind and juice and dill, and season with salt and pepper. Spread on the fish and top with a scattering ofshrimps.

Pull up, the edges of the foil and add 15 ml wine to each parcel.

Turn the edges over to seal the parcels. Cook for about 15 minutes until the fish is firm to the touch.

To Serve: Remove fish and lettuce from the parcels, or simply place the parcels on warm plates and garnish with dill. Serves 4

Leonie's Snoek Tart

Delicious warm or cool, as a savoury snack with a glass of good wine. Serve with moskonfyk and seeded, finely chopped green chilli.

1 kg smoked snoek, deboned, skinned and flaked

vegetable oil

1 onion, finely chopped

125 ml grated mature Cheddar cheese

Pastry

375 ml cake flour

90 g unsalted butter, cut into blocks 45 ml iced water

White Sauce

500 ml milk

15 ml butter

15 ml flour

salt, milled white pepper, grated nutmeg

Pastry: Sift the flour into a large, chill. bowl. Rub in the butter with your fingertips until the mixture is flaky. Don't let it become oily.

Pour the iced water over the mixture and toss lightly. Gather the dough into a ball. If it crumbles, add a little more iced water a few drops at a time, until the pastry forms a ball. Dust with a little flour, wrap in waxed paper and refrigerate for 1 hour to rest.

Set the oven to 180°C. Roll out the pastry, line a greased quiche tin and bake blind for about 15 minutes. Cool.

White Sauce: Warm the milk in a small saucepan. Melt the butter in a medium saucepan. When the foam subsides, sift in the flour and stir with a wooded spoon to form a smooth paste. Remove from the heat and blend in the warm milk. Cook, stirring until the sauce thickens. Season with salt, pepper and nutmeg.

Heat oil in a non-stick frying pan and fry the onion until translucent.

Spread a little white sauce onto the pastry, then add the flaked snoek and onion. Repeat the layers once more, ending with a layer of white sauce. Cover with grated cheese and bake for about

20 minutes until the cheese is golden.

Serves 8