I originally published a blog post about the safety of soy consumption back in 2014, but as many clients I see are still concerned about soy, I decided to update and republish the post, with more of a focus on the effect of soy consumption on hormones. Soy foods Soy foods includes both whole soy beans and their products. Soy products include tofu, tempeh, soy milk, natto, miso, soy sauce, soy yoghurt, soy cheese, and textured vegetable protein (TVP). Edamame, which you may have had at a Japanese restaurant, are young green soy beans in the pod, which are usually served steamed and seasoned w ..read more

After 'where do you get your protein?', the second most common question I'm asked as a woman on an entirely plant-based (vegan) diet is almost certainly ‘how do you get enough iron? ‘. This is a valid concern, as iron deficiency is relatively common among pre-menopausal women (due to high iron requirements) (1), and the fact that the absorption of iron from plant foods is less efficient than from animal foods. However, it’s worth noting that in Australia, even for people who eat meat, the majority of iron in the diet comes from plant foods (2). Why do we need iron? Iron has many functions in ..read more

What is a ‘non-dairy’ milk? ‘Non-dairy’ (or ‘plant-based’) milk refers to a milk made from a plant source, such as soy beans or almonds. (For reference, dairy milk refers to a milk from a mammal, such as a cow, sheep, camel or goat.) While soy milk and rice milk have been around for yonks, there’s been a massive increase in the number of non-dairy milk varieties available in recent years, with relative newcomers such as oat, almond and coconut milks all firmly staking their claim on the supermarket shelves. More recently, a number of milks made from pea protein (or blends of pea protein and nu ..read more

If you are vegan (or follow an entirely plant-based diet but don’t necessarily identify as vegan), I always recommend taking a vitamin B12 supplement. Whether or not you need to take additional dietary supplements as a vegan depends on a number of factors such as your age, gender, stage of life (for example, whether you're pregnant or breastfeeding), your diet, where you live (which determines the food supply you have access to), and environmental factors (such as sun exposure), but in this post I'll just focus on vitamin B12. I've edited this post many times in the past two years since I orig ..read more

What is the Low FODMAP Diet? The Low FODMAP Diet was designed by a team of researchers at Monash University to help reduce gastrointestinal symptoms including bloating, pain, constipation, and diarrhoea in patients with medically-diagnosed Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS). IBS is a very common functional gastrointestinal disorder, affecting around 1 in 7 Australian adults. In fact, it is the most frequently diagnosed condition by gastroenterologists in Australia (1). The Low FODMAP Diet is currently the most effective dietary intervention available for patients with IBS, and has been shown to s ..read more

Many people who suffer from distressing gut symptoms such as bloating, constipation and/or diarrhoea identify gluten-containing foods (such as bread and pasta) as a trigger, and are quick to eliminate all gluten from their diet, often unnecessarily.  Gut symptoms can be triggered by any number of dietary components (such as naturally-occurring chemicals in foods), stress, and anxiety, but gluten-containing foods are commonly problematic as the protein they contain causes symptoms in people with Coeliac disease (a relatively common autoimmune disease), and they are also rich in fermentable carb ..read more

Carbohydrate-rich foods have gotten a bad rap for way too long.When we eat starchy, carbohydrate-rich foods (such as potato, bread and pasta), they break down to glucose (a sugar) which (under normal metabolic conditions) is our body's primary fuel. We then store the glucose in the form on glycogen in our muscles and liver, which we draw from in the hours following the meal, to keep our blood sugar levels stable. While many people fear carbohydrate-rich foods will cause weight gain, from a metabolic perspective, glucose doesn’t 'turn to fat' except under conditions of extremely high consumptio ..read more