Supporting Health & Wellbeing with The Doctor's Kitchen

We spoke to The Doctor's Kitchen and they shared with us some tips for eating and living well along with a simple, nourishing Spring Onion and Ginger Broth recipe.

We recently spoke to The Doctor's Kitchen about how we can all support our health and wellbeing as NHS Staff. Here's Dr Rupy's tips for eating and living well, along with an easy recipe to try at home! :

Dr Rupy Aujla, MBBS,BSc, MRCGP, is an NHS GP working in Emergency Medicine and completing a masters in Nutritional Medicine. He is the founder of ‘The Doctor’s Kitchen’, which strives to inspire and educate everybody about the beauty of food and medicinal effects of eating well.

 

Mind

It is without doubt that mindfulness is a health promoting tool that could benefit a lot of adults and children alike. Ten minutes of active rest is really all that you need. Mindfulness could be as simple as deep breathing, listening to your favourite music, simple walks in green spaces without using your phone or some of the new guided meditation apps - try using these with the kids and make it fun. Some of the benefits of practicing mindfulness techniques can be: improvement in attention and memory; lowering blood pressure; Improvement in mental resilience; improvement in immunity; reduction in inflammation and reduction in stress levels.

Colour

Look for the colours in your meal. I suggest at least two different vegetables at every mealtime, vary them throughout the week and experiment with seasonal veg. Orange carrots, Red swiss chard, purple broccoli. The possibilities are endless - try getting the kids involved too, encourage them to help choose the veg for the week and cook along with you.

Fibre

Don’t forget fibre as it is key to longevity, the functioning of your gut microbes and general health. We find fibre in all vegetables but particularly whole grains, pulses, legumes and beans like chickpeas, black beans and red lentils.

Whole

Try to limit refined food from your diet: Eat whole foods as much as possible such as roasted root vegetables with the skins on, whole grains such as oats or brown rice and less convenience foods that are high in sugar and salt

Exercise & Movement

Thriving and keeping healthy in a modern sedentary life involves challenging your body and remembering that you’re not designed to be sitting for long periods. Get creative and think of daily movement hacks – it’ll help boost your metabolism and energy levels throughout the day. Try taking regular screen breaks in the office; walking the kids to school in the morning; getting off a stop earlier on the daily commute. All small steps but together they can be hugely beneficial.

--------------------------------------

SPRING ONION & GINGER BROTH

A light broth with ginger, garlic and aromatic tones. The spring onion is a welcome addition that mellows into the warming flavours.  Whenever I feel a bit run down, this is my go-to broth. Simply throwing in the ginger, garlic and onions into a saucepan and allowing the aromatics to work their wonders.  Give it a try tonight!

INGREDIENTS

150g Spring onion, sliced into 2cm discs

150g Asparagus, sliced into 2cm discs

1 Stock cube, veg

3 x Thick slices ginger

1 tsp Freshly ground black pepper

1  tsp Red chilli flakes

1 Star anise

150g Rice noodles

INSTRUCTIONS

Bring 750mls boiling water to a simmer in a saucepan with veg stock, ginger, red chilli, black pepper and star anise. Add asparagus, spring onions and simmer for 3 minutes. Add rice noodles, simmer for another minute and take off the heat. Serve when the rice noodles have softened.

Click here to subscribe to The Doctor’s Kitchen newsletter for tips like this to help you live the healthiest and happiest lifestyle possible along with regular podcasts and weekly science based recipes.

--------------------------------------

The Doctor's Kitchen

Dr Rupy creates healthy and delicious recipes using carefully selected ingredients, explaining the clinical research behind them and sharing across his media platforms (Instagram, Podcast, website, YouTube, Facebook). He is a Sunday Times bestselling author, with two cookbooks published by Harper Collins - The Doctor’s Kitchen and Eat to Beat Illness and often appears on BBC and ITV.

In addition, he is the founding director of Culinary Medicine, a non-profit organisation which aims to teach doctors and medical students the foundations of nutrition, as well as teaching them how to cook.

In his role as clinical adviser to the Royal College of GP’s and more recently being accepted as a fellow on the NHS Clinical Entrepreneur Programme, Dr Rupy has big aspirations to bring this concept to the profession globally.