Gina Chick is a “rewilding” facilitator and writer. The 56-year-shares her day on a plate.
4.30am The Muse has me by the throat. Soy dandelion chai and a banana.
9.30am ”Crunchy bum” eggs (fried so the bottoms are crisp) with sea salt, basil, parsley and kimchi.
12pm A stroll with my folks. I find a manuka bush (Leptospermum scoparium) loaded with tiny pale sweet fruits and scoff down quarter of a cup. The native currant bushes (Coprosma quadrifida) are also laden. Braving the nasty spines, I shake and peel the tiny ruby fruits off. Another quarter cup of yum.
2.30pm Venison and red wine pie with green salad at a cafe with Mum and Dad.
4pm The devilish ice-cream place beckons. A raspberry and cherry ice-cream.
6.30pm A stew of road-kill pademelon back-strap, root vegies and wild rice. An “everything” salad: every colour and crunch, plus almonds basted in coconut aminos, goat’s cheese, olives and white anchovies (my body doesn’t like grains). Back to writing. The Muse lets me go to bed eventually.
Dr Joanna McMillan says
Top marks for… A remarkable range of plant foods – native fruits, herbs, wild greens and that glorious salad create true diet diversity, which translates to microbial diversity. Your game meats (venison and pademelon) are exceptionally lean and nutrient-rich, especially for iron, zinc and vitamin B12.
If you keep eating like this you’ll… Continue to fuel your body with nutrient-dense wholefoods, but avoiding grains and legumes means you miss out on the full breadth of fibre types, some of which are unique to these foods. If grains make you feel uncomfortable, it may be gluten or fermentable carbs such as fructans causing symptoms.
Why don’t you try… Experimenting with naturally gluten-free, low-FODMAP grains such as quinoa, buckwheat, brown rice and oats to see what your gut truly prefers. And while you may loathe legumes, you could sneak them into your diet by blending them into pies and stews, or roasting them with bush spices for crunch, so you get their prebiotic benefits.
Gina Chick will appear at All About Women at the Sydney Opera House on March 8.
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Nicole Economos is a Social Media Producer/Journalist for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.Connect via email.
