The Foodwatch Blog

A "natural" sweetener, Stevia was approved for use in late in 2008 in Australia and the US and the first Stevia products are now appearing on the supermarket shelves.

It's not considered "artificial" and marketing for stevia makes much of it being 100% natural - which appeals to consumers - compared to aspartame or acesulphame-K which are often regarded as "chemical" and can't escape the cancer-scare rumours that have been circulating for years.

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BARLEYmax. It's being touted as the greatest super food of all time and the king of cereal grains. BARLEYmax has finally appeared in our food supply in the form of two new breakfast cereals, the first products to be made with the super barley. It's been over 12 years in the making with scientists from CSIRO devoting their life work to breeding it, testing it, growing it as a commercial barley harvest, and finally working with a food company to create interesting novel food products to showcase its benefits.

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People often ask me why we nutritionists keep changing out minds! One year, carbohydrate is wonderful, the next year it's not. One year, fat is a no-no, the next year, it's only saturated fat that we should worry about, the other fats are ‘good' fats that are OK to eat and enjoy. Protein was ‘forgotten' for some years, now it's back and considered important for satiety and weight loss.

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Sugar. We all love its soft sweetness but it's clear we overdo its consumption. As a nation, Australia has a collective sweet tooth that sees us consuming ¾ of a kilo a week of the stuff. From soft drinks to ice cream, doughnuts to dessert, sugar is everywhere. While it's not the cause, it's certainly contributing to health problems such as tooth decay, and being overweight .

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Finally a Crust pizza franchise opened up near me. I'd read all about these amazing ‘health-conscious' pizzas that had managed to secure the Heart Foundation red Tick of approval. Yep, you're reading right! Here was a pizza that was guaranteed to be low in saturated fat (read ‘bad', really ‘evil' fat), bounding with veggies and - most amazing of all - low in salt.

As you can imagine, I was hopeful but a tad skeptical when I approached the Crust counter. The sales guy was helpful. He steered me away from the lavish array of choose- your-own pizza toppings to a chart on the wall where the six Tick pizzas were featured and photographed in all their glory.

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I'm in flavour heaven

My taste buds died and woke up in flavour heaven! I've just bought my first bottle of pomegranate molasses and can't believe how magnificent the flavour is! How come I got to the ripe old age of 50-something and never ever sampled this before? Something as basic as a marinade for lamb, pork or chicken now sends me into raptures. A salad with a teaspoon of the molasses in the dressing has me drooling. Even sipping a ‘cordial' made pomegranate molasses in a glass of water is refreshingly divine.

I know you'll think I've gone insane but I've never tasted anything so sublime. Honestly. It's the combination of understated sweetness with that astringency that you only find in balsamic vinegar or too-strong tea (must be those amazing polyphenols - aka tannins - which the tea blenders tell me is what makes you mouth pucker).

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Do your kids like to snack on fruit leather or fruit straps, those sweet long thin flat pieces of dried fruit? They come individually wrapped in single serves like muesli bars. They're easy to throw in a kids' lunch box as they're so light and thin. And they add a pleasant sweet treat to a wholesome lunch. But each time I spy some at my fruit market (placed tantalisingly at the check out), I have to ask myself: are they really a healthy snack or just confectionery in disguise?

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