Today we're going to talk about food, we're going to talk about food to nourish our bodies. As we mentioned, in the first episode, when nourishing the bodies, we're thinking about the building blocks, we're thinking about what we're eating that our body needs, that is essential for our body to do everything that our body needs to do.So let's have a little think about the last meal that you had. What were you aware of it consisting of? So let's take a sandwich, for example. Was it white bread with some carbs, and maybe it was fortified? Or was it whole meal or whole grain bread with all those, the whole grains with all the vitamins with all the wrapping with the wheat germ? What was in the sandwich? Was there some protein? Were there salad vegetables, like tomato with its vitamin C? Or salad leaves with folate and B vitamins? So let's think about some of the mechanisms we talked about last episode. We're gonna think about the dopamine pathway that we mentioned. Now, dopamine is created from amino acid. These amino acids, we need to gain them from protein. We need to eat the protein for those essential amino acids to create the dopamine. But in addition to those amino acids, we also need things called cofactors. Cofactors are the essential vitamins and minerals that we were talking about, such as vitamin C, D, some folate, which is B nine, and also some vitamin B six in this case. So all those nutrients with those proteins are needed to kind of mix all together through the various stages of the reactions to create the dopamine. And then we can also think about the clearance of the dopamine, when we are finished with it, we want to recycle it and to do that we also need other cofactors such as magnesium, zinc and B two. So you could start beginning to see that if we have a more selective diet, we're maybe not eating as very diet as we could perhaps eat, then some of these nutrients that we're needing to do these essential jobs, we could maybe be having not as many as we could in our diet, and which could be then having this effect, an effect on our ADHD.So how can we start supporting all this through diet? Well, we could start thinking about the protein for start, we need to always make sure we're including some good quality protein. Animal based protein is about 90 to 99% digestible, whereas plant protein is only 70 to 90% digestible. So we just could bear that in mind I think that if we're if we're having mainly plant proteins, then it's something to bear in mind to potentially increase the quantities just that little bit more to make up the difference. And then we want to think about the cofactors that we could support through our diet we could think about our folate, which is found in dark green, leafy veg like rocket and spinach and kale. And also then the vitamin C that we could find in citrus fruit of course, but then also in peppers and berries and avocado and spinach as well. B six that we mentioned, that's in milk and cheese, carrots, salmon, chicken chickpeas there's quite a lot for that. And then good news is magnesium and zinc, dark chocolate is a really great source of those so you can treat yourself to a little bit of dark chocolate. Magnesium and zinc are also found in avocados again and cashew nuts, almonds, brazil's and flax, pumpkin seeds, things like that. Legumes, such as chickpeas or edamame beans, lentils and peas, they have some zinc in them, but unfortunately, it's not quite as bioavailable to the body, not quite so accessible for the body, so meat sources are really good sources for zinc for us. So always look to buy the best quality that you can afford, because the better the animal is looked after, then the better it can nourish you. And the same goes for, kind of, cheese and milk and egg products as well. Vitamin D can be found in food sources like salmon, sardines and herring, which are also great for those Omega three oils that we mentioned in the last episode. But the best source of vitamin D is safe sun exposure. In the summer months, we can really build up our levels of vitamin D. It's a fat based vitamin, which means we can store it which means we can store over the winter ready for the next year. But if you find that you maybe have an indoor job, you don't go out as much in the, in the summer months to, kind of, build up that that safe exposure, then you might want to be thinking about a vitamin D supplement through the winter months to, kind of, tide you over for the for the winter.So that was a lot of food listed and it could be a bit overwhelming. So what we really want to do is just try and have the greatest variety in our food as we can and then it takes the pressure out having to overthink it really. So we're looking for a few portions of good quality meat in the week, three or four portions of fish, lots of lovely plant based protein and eggs in between all of that. A few nutritious carbs such as whole grains, quinoa, sweet potatoes. And in the government guidelines of five a day, we as nutritional therapists really want to look at about 10 a day, seven veg, three fruit. So if we think about the lunch, we thought about, the sandwich before, if we think about the vegetables in the sandwich, some tomatoes, some cucumber and some leaves, that's three we've added to our sandwich. Maybe breakfast could be an omelette with spinach in it, that's another one, we're up to four, and you could put some parsley on top, maybe, that will be five. So we're already doing quite well by lunchtime. And then don't forget snacks. Snacks can be handfuls of berries, which would count with our vitamin C, some citrus fruit, maybe, some portions of nuts and seeds, and maybe even a little bit of dark chocolate in the afternoon to kind of fill in all those nutrients. And then by the time you get to dinner, you're nearly almost done for the day. And you could just make sure you just include a few lovely vegetables maybe with your, your curries or some salads. So we've got lovely salads with all the rocket and the spinach and the watercress to support that folate.So I hope you found that interesting, and I'll speak to you soon.