Niki Bezzant: A year of wellness wisdom

"Focus on adding healthy things to your day instead of cutting out 'bad' things," recommends Bezzant. Photo / Getty Images

In her first year as Be Well's health and nutrition columnist, Niki Bezzant imparted a plethora of approachable health and wellbeing tips with our readers.

From the truth about detoxing to intuitive eating and the foods that work better than vitamin supplements, here are 10 of Bezzant's best nuggets of wisdom to carry through into 2020 and beyond.

1. Diet tweaks

"There's an easy tweak we can make right now to boost the health of our diets, and that's to add more vegetables and fruit. Just think at every meal and snack opportunity: how can I add more plants?"

2. Detoxing naturally

"Our bodies have a well-designed system to detoxify us. This includes our liver, kidneys and colon - all of which help keep anything resembling a toxin from harming us. There is no evidence that any of the products or diets marketed as detoxes serve to do anything more than lighten our wallets.

"Instead of a detox, go for a re-health. Focus on adding healthy things to your day instead of cutting out 'bad' things."

3. Skin food

"A skin-friendly diet is... a lot like a Mediterranean pattern of eating; a diet of nutrient-dense, whole, unprocessed foods. Which as we know is anti-inflammatory, and also has lots of benefits for our health overall."

4. Intuitive eating

"Nowadays nutritionists are more likely to promote the idea of intuitive eating for health. This is more along the lines of listening to your body; of tuning into its natural signals and following them: eating when you feel hungry; stopping when you feel full.

"Stopping for a beat and asking yourself if you really want to eat that thing can be a useful way to become a more intuitive eater, and to get better overall nutrition."

5. Red meat reminder

"The EAT-Lancet 'planetary health diet' recommended one small serve (of red meat) a week. OECD data for 2017 has us eating six times that.

"We know that we don't have to have red meat to be healthy. But it is good food. It supplies high-quality protein and it's a really useful way to get iron, which for some people – young women in particular – can be a real issue. It's also a good source of zinc and vitamin B12."

6. Natural vitamins

"If you're not including nuts and seeds regularly in your diet, they're a great thing to add in. They're like super-tasty vitamin pills; Much more fun to eat and much less expensive than a supplement."

7.The breakfast club

"If we don't have breakfast then we have to really power-pack our other meals and snacks to make sure we get the best and healthiest stuff into the day."

8. What's in a label?

"The best shortcut to understanding labels is to avoid labels altogether. It's a generalisation, but mostly true, that the healthiest food is the fresh, whole stuff that's usually around the outside of the supermarket; food that usually doesn't need nutrition labels at all."

9. Booze rules

"Low-risk drinking guidelines say we should have at least two alcohol-free days a week. I like the "123 rule": one drink a day; no more than two drinks at any one time; no more than three times a week."

10. Nutrition for kids

"Teaching cooking is one of the greatest gifts we can give our kids. When we know how to do that, we are able to take control of what goes into our own bodies. If we don't have those skills, we have to hand over that control to other people: the people who cook food in restaurants, fast-food places and food factories."