Peanut butter enthusiasts – buckle up. There’s a new healthier alternative in town. I love peanut butter. I remember when I was younger, I’d go for spoonful after spoonful of this sinfully-wonderful-peanut-y-creamy paste after school. Yes, “glutton” I hear you say. But as I grew older, I soon realised that this spread isn’t too innocent afterall.

What do you think about the Foodwatch website?  We'd like to know. What do you want to read? What do you use the Foodwatch website for? What would you like to see more of? How can we make it more relevant and helpful for you? That's why we're undertaking this website survey.

To show our appreciation for your participation Catherine Saxelby has created a Help Kit that you can download at the end of the survey. It contains a free Foodwatch Guide to Healthy Office Snacks for Busy, Working Women plus a new self-assessment tool to help you gauge how healthy your daily eating habits are.

Give us three minutes of your time and take the survey now! Click here.

Scroll through the archive of tweets from our lively online Twitter chat on what the big new trends are for the year ahead. From Wed 20 March 2013.

EatKit is run in conjunction with dietitian Emma Stirling from ScoopNutrition.

We invited foodies, chefs, culinary trend spotters, dietitians, food technologist and marketers to gaze into their crystal balls and have a stab at what will become big in the coming months.

Last week I was invited to a fabulous lunch put on by McCormick (makers of herbs and spices among other things) to hear how they've looked into their foodie crystal ball and are brave enough to predict five key global food trends for 2013. Known as the McCormick Flavour Forecast®, they've pulled together the best hunches from their chefs, sensory scientists, dietitians and culinary trend trackers to have a stab at forecasting what will be in fashion for the year head.

Eating a healthy, balanced diet based on whole foods can help us achieve optimal health throughout life. But knowing exactly what to eat can be confusing when there's so much conflicting advice from books, websites, TV programs, magazines and celebrity chefs. The National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) has released the latest 2013 Australian Dietary Guidelines based on scientific evidence on what we should all be eating. Here's my handy summary to make things easier to digest:

Our first New Look Foodwatch Newsletter is now out and it's packed full of interesting articles. You can read about Love and Chocolate, Red Foods, The Health Bloggers' Conference - Healthivate and my road test of Plum Amazins. 

How many times have you heard this: “It’s better to eat the box than the cereal”? That’s fine if you’re after fibre in the form of cellulose (and I get the cereal joke), but it doesn’t address the needs of busy women who are after something quick in the morning rush, that makes a decent contribution to nutrition, and solves the problem of how to get the kids to eat something rather than nothing before school.  Oh and one that tastes good too!

I find it pays to plan for the week ahead especially if you’re trying to lose weight or maintain a healthy weight. On a Sunday night, for instance, I like to make up one of these five healthy, high-fibre lunches to grab as I head out the door the next morning. It saves me time and money and keeps me out of the food court and away from fattening and fatty nachos, fries, pizza and other fast food.