Transcript Disclaimer – Please note that the following transcript has been machine generated by an AI software and therefore may include errors or omissions.

Robin Daly
Hello and welcome to the Yes to Life show. I’m Robin Daly, host for this show and also founder of the UK charity Yes to Life has been advocating for integrative cancer care in the UK for 20 years. Anyone who has come across the concept of integrative medicine will know that one of the major planks of this type of care is nutrition, and so much airtime on this show has been given over to aspects of nutrition which is indeed a vast topic with many nuances and a growing body of science behind it. Today’s show is in that territory but looked at not so much from the angle of any particular diet or effect from a food type, but more from the point of view of our relationship to food and the way we choose ingredients and work for them to make our meals. My guest today is a hugely inspiring chef whose enthusiasm for and the love of cooking is highly infectious, so if you’re interested in deepening your relationship with food and nature listen on as I introduce you to Hayley North.

Hayley North
Thank you Robin, it’s an absolute joy to be here and to be doing some workshops for the Yes to Life charity. Thank you for having me.

Robin Daly
Ah, pleasure. So, it’s a bit of a first for me, I think, the first time I’ve had a chef as my guest on the show. So, at our conference, at a recent conference, you provided us with a great lunchtime cook-along. This was actually my initiation into the world of cook-alongs, I’d never heard of one before then, in which people kind of make their own lunch with you following your guidance. So, let’s be clear at the beginning of the show, you don’t make any sort of cancer expert, but you do know a massive amount about nutrition, about food preparation, and about eating that plays to the foundations of health and wellbeing.

Hayley North
Yes.

Robin Daly
This is information that’s useful to anyone wanting to live a long and healthy life, but much of it’s particularly important to those who are struggling to regain now the well-being in the face of a chronic disease like cancer. So that’s been a reasonable picture of where we’re starting from today.

Hayley North
Yeah, thank you.

Robin Daly
Good. Okay. So having watched your work, that was both at our conference and more recently in our online and wellbeing sessions, what comes through its space from you is just how passionate you are about food and cooking. And is this pattern something that you just realized was there sort of uncovered one day, or was there something in particular that sparked it out?

Hayley North
it’s something that has grown in my own life and has then gone on to become my work, which seems to become be the theme of my life, actually, that wherever my own life path has gone, it has become the work that I then go on to share with others. And food has been an absolutely enormous part of that. I mean, I worked in the general catering industry for many, many years, you know, before I came across a more healthy, nutritious way of eating and cooking. through that journey, through my own journey, and just realising how important food and nutrition is, and home cooking, and realising that for myself and my own life, and the big difference that that made in my own life, I’ve just been compelled to share that with other people, and it’s become my work. a real passion, it’s the priority of my daily life, you know, food and what I’m going to eat. And many people actually, when I’m at work, say, do you actually eat like this yourself? And it’s like, that is first and foremost. And then that’s when I then go on to share that with other people, it comes from an embodied place as opposed to…

Robin Daly
Very good, so along the way you’ve engaged in some sorts of learning or training involving footage, what have you actually done?

Hayley North
Well, I never trained professionally as a chef, but I have worked in catering since I was 14 years old, actually. So that is a good 40 years or so. And prior to, well, what catalyzed me into understanding food and nutrition on a whole other level of understanding was my introduction to yoga in 1999. the doors that that opened up in terms of, like I said, understanding food and nutrition from another place. Prior to that, I was working for many years, as I just mentioned, in the mainstream catering industry. And so it’s just become something that I’ve always done in terms of working with food. And then, as I said, through the yoga journey and then changing my own life. then through that, I started to learn a lot about what was actually happening with our food in terms of the food industry, how foods grow and how foods produced. And a lot of what’s going on behind the scenes there that was starting to come to my attention that I had no idea about the kind of pesticides and chemicals and the processing and the refined foods. I was absolutely blown away, angry, frustrated, and just yet, then it became a really big kind of mission in my life, if you like, to share what I was learning with other people because it was making such a huge difference to me.

Robin Daly
Right. Excellent. some people listening might make an elite from yoga to nutrition might not be an obvious one. Do you want to explain what the effect that studying yoga had on you that made opened up this whole world?

Hayley North
Yeah of course well through in the yoga path you know yoga is not it’s a science of life it’s a way of living so it’s not just a physical practice which can often be very misunderstood especially these days as there’s a lot a lot a lot of different kinds of the physical aspect of yoga but it’s one tiny part of the whole philosophy of yoga and the way of life of yoga and food is an enormous part of that that whole way of living food and nutrition in fact it’s fundamental absolutely crucial you know that what we’re putting into our bodies actually becomes who we are you know it makes up our skin our hair our nails our thoughts our feelings our emotions our everything it’s everything so kind of health and well-being fundamentally starts there and alongside studying yoga i also became interested in chinese medicine and daoism and qigong and tai chi and also there food is fundamental it’s like the foundation of everything yeah so through those two doorways i started to under understand what’s known as like the energetics of food and looking at the nutrition of food from a different way than we look at it in the west i mean it sits beautifully side by side by it but it’s a different lens and it’s looking more at the vitality of food from an energetic perspective um and i it just made so much sense to me and i delved deeper into that and then yeah alongside the the practices of yoga tai chi meditation qigong then and food sitting as as one of those practices as kin to those practices you know not separate from at all very much um part of the full picture and yeah it made a huge difference to my life and continues to do so on on a daily basis

Robin Daly
Yeah, it’s interesting you say how well they sit along and upset each other. That kind of East meets West is a bit like integrated medicine is as a whole, isn’t it? It’s another lens, if you like, which you can bring in and it’s not either or. It’s both. Those things are useful perspectives that can help people. as I mentioned at the start, you don’t see yourself as any kind of cancer expert. And yet you do have your own personal experience with cancer that I wonder if you’d mind sharing with us a bit about it as well as the part that nutrition and cooking played in that if any.

Hayley North
Yes well sadly over the past six years or so I’ve lost both parents to cancer and been with them both through their end of life journey and um food and cooking wasn’t necessarily an important part of their journey, my mum and dad’s journey specifically but absolutely the role I was able to play particularly within in my mum’s journey how I was able to because we cared for her at home whereas my son of hospice and there was a lot of the extended family she had a large family so that were around every single day and I was able to really nourish everybody for some reason I became the person during the day where everybody was there and everyone was around and there was a constant flow of people in and out of the house I would be there just cooking just feeding people just nourishing people and my mum would just say keep going keep cooking keep feeding them keep making everybody you know keep sustaining everybody um in the way that you do so although it wasn’t but what I was able to see actually was during their time in hospital in the hospital and in the hospice that the kind of food that was being served not to take anything away from the marvelous jobs that everyone does in those environments but I’m just constantly gobsmacked by the lack of nutrition of how that nutrition and food is not a higher priority in those environments in terms of supporting the well-being and the and the the journey during cancer during illness during treatment whether that’s moving to end of life and palliative care or whether that’s you know just a shorter period of time

Robin Daly
it’s certainly, you know, from what I gather, it’s better in hospitals than it is in hospitals, the whole nutrition aspect. But in hospitals, there’s an outright war, basically, it hasn’t finished the battle. But nutritionists are still like, you know, don’t dare set foot across the threshold. Yes. And it’s nutrition versus medicine, basically. And, you know, they’ve never gained it. there isn’t currently any view of food as medicine, and they would like it to stay that way. But actually, it’s got to change. And we’re pushing hard for that change to happen, as are many, many people. Because yeah, well, it’s not even true. It’s just, it’s not based on science.

Hayley North
Yes, it’s really unfortunate because, as you say, when it’s integrative, it’s just so much more beneficial for everybody. In 2021 I broke my leg quite badly and I was in hospital for three weeks myself and so during that time I’m very lucky that a partner and a friend fed me and brought me food on a daily basis because there was no way I was eating anything that was coming round on that and again I was just so sad, frustrated, gobsmacked by what was coming in and being fed to people and, you know, knowing with all my experience and background of working in the catering industry in many different environments how easy it could be to provide something else. It doesn’t have to take a huge operation or be super expensive or be difficult to do. You know, it can be simple and it can be nourishing and it can work out on budget and I know all of this stuff from my experience so sitting there in the bed just watching all of this happening was just breaking my heart.

Robin Daly
Yeah, so some of the absolute basics for human recovery, which is good nutrition, rest and peace. These things are just not really there in hospitals. It’s just like crazy stuff. It’s amazing. People do recover despite all that.

Hayley North
Oh, it’s incredible, isn’t it?

Robin Daly
the first thing that’s really obvious about your approach to cookery is the aspect that you won’t hear about in the mainstream cook show or book. You’re very mindful of your relationship with the food you’re preparing and how you’re preparing and cooking the food. So, wouldn’t you like to tell us a little about this and why it’s important to you?

Hayley North
Yeah, absolutely. Well, over the years, with my passion of kind of researching the food industry, watching what’s going on in the world in terms of what people are eating, how people are eating, just my lack of being able to really understand why we’re so disconnected from our kitchen and the food that we’re eating. Like, how has that happened? I wonder about this a lot and deeply. I travel a lot with the work that I do. So it’s not just in like, in one location, I’m seeing this, I’m seeing this around the world, you know, because I travel to different countries. So it’s not just in the UK or in one town in the UK, one area, this is across the board, the huge disconnection with food and home cooking. And I wonder, because I said deeply, why is this happening? How has this happened? How have we come to this? And what’s the cost of this? So, so yeah, so the cooking I find is such a profound way of reconnecting to the earth, to the soil, to life, rekindling our relationship with life itself through the ingredients that we then ingest as food into our bodies that I say become who we are. It’s an incredible, our chemical relationship when we really look at it deeply, that we have with food. And that, yeah, like I said, the beings of the land that then come in to nourish us. And that when we stop and pay attention to that, you know, food and cooking and what we’re eating becomes something else completely. It becomes very creative, very exciting, very, dare I say, kind of sacred. for me, it’s an absolute spiritual practice cooking, it’s become a spiritual practice with when we understand it on this level of connection and relationship with the land and with the earth from which we seem to be becoming more and more and more disconnected from. But it’s a way of regaining that and remembering that and bringing that back into our lives. it has, I’ve watched it time and time again, not just for myself, but with the many people that I feed and nourish and work with one to one, the transformative difference that that makes to our life when we start to engage with it on that level.

Robin Daly
very interesting. Yeah, so the disconnection you speak of is something that more and more people are becoming aware of and its effect on us as people. Not a great thing. I mean, you know, people are disappearing into the world as a virtual more and more these days, they’re becoming completely fragmented in their lifestyle. They don’t have consistency, they move about all the time, they change jobs all the time, they change partners all the time, you know, less and less things become sort of grounding and stable. And it’s a tough one really, doesn’t do us terribly well. this disconnection from what be to having no idea where it came from, how it’s made, even, you know, down to what it is, you know, it’s just like extraordinary. So I’m very struck by something you said twice, I wrote it down, because I’ve heard you say it before. But it is absolutely obvious on one level, but actually, we don’t think like that, which is that this food is going to make up our body. Yeah, we don’t look like it’s tough. It goes into company. Yes, exactly. You know, that’s how we look at it. So it’s like fuel, isn’t it? Yeah. We might be enjoyable fuel. But that’s, that’s how it goes. We don’t actually think of us being made up from the chemicals and the substances in the food and getting our life force from the life of the food, it suddenly becomes a bit esoteric, but when you think about that, and it’s like, it’s a bit of a mystery. But it’s a great way to confront people with just taking a fresh look at food. What are they doing here? Are they taking it as it really is as important as it really is? So yeah, I love you talking about that.

Hayley North
yeah because otherwise food could be seen as you said it you know it’s just fuel it’s it’s just you know i need to put something in to kind of fuel the vehicle but when we stopped i remember when i burst really that really first landed in me and i was like wow that is really incredible that’s something else that i want to know more about that and it was through like the ayurvedic path the yoga path the daoist path you know the chinese medicine where that is really a huge part that’s the lens that they look at food through um so that started to make more sense and then like you said at first it sounds very kind of cosmic and esoteric and and whoa kind of far out there but actually what those two approaches are brilliant at is this is it explaining it in a very kind of simple way that you know it’s it’s a way of looking at the cycles of nature and how things relate and interact in the natural world and food you know and plants are part of that so they’re part of the same elemental kind of picture and actually it’s very kind of simple to understand once we start to look at it and what my passion was and has been in studying these two approaches is how you know if these are principles that are fundamentally rooted in nature then they apply to food across the board not just to indian cuisine or to chinese cuisine or japanese cuisine it’s food in general and then we when we start to look at traditional food practices and different you know traditional cultures and and food in culture it’s all there you know it’s a particularly for instance like i’ve spent a lot of time in italy and when you look at traditional italian cooking all of those elemental principles are there in in the cuisine and they used to be there in british cooking and british cuisine too it’s just you know and and more western cuisines that have become a little bit more kind of i say processed and refined foods and more convenience foods but traditionally this understanding and this wisdom was there

Robin Daly
I think it’s interesting that the way you talk about cooking, it spilled it over into an area that is discussed on this program quite often, which is our relationship to nature. Yeah. They’re not talking about cooking usually, it’s more like getting out of nature and enjoying it and reconnecting with it. But you’re talking about the same stuff here, but with the nature that we actually put inside ourselves.

Hayley North
Absolutely. It’s right there in our kitchen. It’s in our homes and that is every mealtime that we step into the kitchen to relate with these ingredients and connect with them. This is our opportunity to connect with nature and to give thanks to the land, to give thanks to everything, to the sun, to the rain, to the wind, to everything that’s played a part, all the nutrients in the soil, to the microbiome and to the fungi and the bacteria of the soil, everything that’s played a part in bringing those ingredients to our kitchen, to our chopping boards, to our plates. What an incredible gift, what an incredible opportunity to have that every day.

Robin Daly
when you use lots of great ways of describing your excitement about this, you talk about the dance and the flow and the alchemy of cooking, the creativity and the synergy of cooking. Yeah. But you do talk about cooking as therapeutic though. So do you want to just say a bit more about why you see it as therapeutic?

Hayley North
Yes well I think fundamentally that this reconnection with nature and with the land through the ingredients is therapeutic in itself you know that is deeply deeply nourishing and then of course the well first of all I understand that that cooking can be incredibly stressful for people that’s a lot what I work with people they say it’s stressful I don’t like it I don’t have time all the factors that we think are against us when we get in the kitchen, you know, that this is a hassle, it’s, I’ve got to get it done as quickly as possible for cooking to become therapeutic. Something needs to change in that mindset. This is a gift to ourselves that this is, if I make time for this in my life, the benefits of it are going to be so huge, you know, then I can approach it in a different way because we’ve got to slow down for it to become therapeutic. We can’t go into the kitchen space, be like, ah, you know, rushing a hundred miles an hour, doing 20 different things at once, wishing we were not there and wishing we were doing something else. So first of all, you know, even if we only have 30 minutes to prepare a meal, you know, it doesn’t mean to say we’ve suddenly got half hours and hours and hours of time in the kitchen, but it’s the way we approach that time and the mindset that we come to it with. So I think for it to become therapeutic and a nourishing act, something has to change in the mindset. If we see cooking as stressful, time consuming, inconvenient, et cetera, et cetera, then once like I say, once that drops away, then is like, ah, actually, this is a nourishing place to be. This gives me joy. It gives me life. It gives me energy being here and doing this and doing it for myself, not just here, cooking everybody else’s meals, the family meal, cooking for somebody else. First of all, doing this for myself, that this is the greatest gift that I could give myself today. And then, yeah, so I think there’s a lot of mindset shifts that have to happen.

Robin Daly
I see that. So basically anybody who’s already got over the idea that it’s maybe worth allocating a little bit of time for a meditation or for going out for a walk or for doing a little bit of yoga, this is just one of those. In fact, it should be exactly the same way.

Hayley North
Absolutely. people often say to me, what do you prefer, Hayley? Do you prefer doing and teaching yoga or do you prefer doing cooking? And I’m like, well, it’s the same. You know, it’s the same practice. It’s it’s meditation in action. It’s yoga in action. It’s, you know, you’re if you’re at one with what you are doing, I fully present and fully engaged in what we’re doing fully there, then that is yoga in action. Absolutely. That is then cooking can become a meditative act. And then you get into the dance, you get into the flow, you get into the synergy. And it becomes a life giving thing. You feel boosted by it. You feel energized by it. You feel powerful. Don’t we say that you feel because the disconnection from food, the power that the food industry can have over us by making food convenient, disempowers us. We might think it empowers us by freeing up time and making it convenient. But it’s not it’s a backward kind of thought process. It’s disempowering. But when we get back in and we start to see the, you know, the act of cooking as a gift to ourselves, then it becomes empowering. And we feel like superheroes.

Robin Daly
All right, so I want to dwell for a moment on the topic of real food. Yeah. There’s always a lot of froth about the subject of food and what’s the right or the best diet and nowhere more so than in cancer, of course. So in what way, that’s absolutely fair enough, given the emerging evidence for, say, reducing your carbohydrate intake drastically as a strategy for undermining some cancers. You know, it really can do stuff, but all too often, in my mind, the attention is not on the quality of the food. It’s freshness, it’s wholesomeness, how close to nature it is. And this, to my mind, can be the elephant in the room. The sort of classic example that comes to my mind all too readily is that of someone who chooses veganism for health and philosophical reasons, but then eats what amounts to absolute junk food just because it’s got a vegan logo on it. So can you talk to us about food choices and what you’re looking for in the food you buy or indeed grow?

Hayley North
Yeah, I mean, for me, this is great because the food, the choices in general, our choices is where our power is. And, you know, we all think we’ll say that we want to change. And this is where the change starts. It’s not going to change from the top and come down and say, but everything’s been changed for you. We have to change and we have the power to change with every penny that we spend, with every choice that we make. That, for me, is, you know, the revolutionary political, like, aspect of food and eating, of anything really, but relating to food and eating. We have so much power. We don’t even realise in the choices that we’re making. So what am I looking for? I’m looking to support, to support people who are doing good things. Yeah, so I really choose wisely where my money goes when it comes to what I’m buying. I want to support people who care about what they’re doing. You know, even if I eat out, which is not very often because of that reason, but I will look hard and search hard for places to go to give my money to people who actually care about what they’re doing and care about what they’re giving to people. The same with when I’m buying ingredients and projects by people who are growing it or shops that are sourcing from people who care about what they’re growing and then they care about what they’re selling. And I care about what I’m buying. And then there’s this beautiful chain, you know, and you can feel that in the ingredients and in the food itself. It has a different vitality to it. So. Yeah, first of all, our choices are incredibly powerful. Yeah, and what I’m looking for in the food that I buy alongside what I just spoke about there is, yeah, seasonality, of course, because when we. Stick as much as possible to what’s available seasonally, we naturally become more aligned and more connected to the cycles of nature. That just happens, you know, it just happens naturally by by honoring what’s available seasonally, and that can take some reeducating because we’re so used to now having what we want when we want it available all the time, all throughout the year, so that plays a huge part with what’s available locally or nationally. So, you know, what’s available within our area and then what, you know, for instance, in England, what’s British grown and then kind of minimizing as much as possible what’s coming from afar. So, again, the choices that we make have that impact on the wider picture of sustainability and globalization, et cetera, et cetera, we can play our part in that by the choices that we’re making. Stay more local, stay national as much as possible or rein that chain in a little bit. And yeah, I’m looking for. I’m looking for ingredients that sing to me when I’m out shopping.

Robin Daly
What’s that mean?

Hayley North
They just speak to you, they’re just bursting with vitality, they’re, it’s, again, that can sound quite woo-woo and kind of woo, that’s a bit far out and a bit cosmic, but when we start to engage with the vitality of ingredients, looking at their colour, at their freshness, picking them up, smelling them, just taking a moment to look and appreciate, then this comes alive a little bit more. I understand it can sound maybe untangible at first to start with, but when we start engaging with it, it comes, it becomes tangible and becomes real very quickly. There’s a certain, the vitality you can feel, ingredients that feel very dull and lacking, and those that are just bursting with freshness, with goodness, with, with that energy.

Robin Daly
Right. And just to go back on the thing you said about local, obviously there are sustainability benefits from buying locally and you’re not contributing to a load of pollution moving this up around. I don’t have any basis for this, but I have a sort of thing which makes me think that when I get some of my next door neighbour’s honey, which is made by the bees that fly around my house, that’s good. when I drink some water that’s actually come in the spring just over the road from me. That’s also good. What do you think about that stuff?

Hayley North
absolutely wonderful. What could be better than that? I mean, that’s the ultimate, isn’t it? When it’s just either pick freshly from the tree, you know, go freshly from the from the garden, or from our neighbours across the road, or yeah, from down at the local allotment, or yeah, the local honey. I mean, that’s the absolutely the ultimate really, I think, what we’re looking for. And that’s where the goodness is and the vitality and the vibrancy. And that’s where our kind of inner biome, our inner environment is then more more in sync with our local and immediate environment. Yeah.

Robin Daly
Yeah, no, I sort of feel that intuitively. I haven’t got real basis for it in those signs though, but I just feel like somehow energetically at least, it’s the opposite of disconnection is to be connected to the stuff that’s around the body in that work.

Hayley North
Yeah, it makes it makes sense, you know, doesn’t it? It just makes absolute sense.

Robin Daly
Okay, and now one of the things we often speak about in this show is the role of intuition as a guide in your choices as an essential way to find a way forward through the jungle of options that people face with. So would you like to say something about intuition in relation to both food choices and cooking?

Hayley North
people often say to me, do you have the recipe for this? Do you have the recipe for that? You know, give me your recipes. I don’t have too many recipes. I have to say, I’m not that good. I have done quite a lot of recipe development. I even have a recipe ebook. But I find it very difficult to pin things down to a set amount of things. I find that following a recipe to the to the letter to the T in the kitchen takes me out of this flow, this dance, this synergy in the kitchen, it feels more rigid and clunky. And then you can get fixated on the recipe and like, oh, but I don’t have this and I don’t have that. then I feel like that’s also a bit disempowering because it’s not enabling me to make well, what could I use instead of that? And what about if I did this? And actually, I don’t want them that much of that much sugar in my cake. So I’m actually going to take that down. And I know that, you know, and I feel confident enough within myself to be able to do that. I’m not just, you know, like, well, the recipe doesn’t say that I could do that. So I shouldn’t do that. Right. So, you know, being more intuitive in able enables us to get into that therapeutic space in the kitchen to to be more in the flow to be more fluid with things and to feel more empowered that like, actually, I can listen to what feels right in me here. not just what’s written down in this magazine or this book or this piece of paper that that actually right now, I want to do this. And that feels right. And then that’s what I’m going to do.

Robin Daly
Right. It’s a very much a way of bringing creativity into

Hayley North
Oh, cooking is so creative, so creative. I mean, it’s artistry, you know, really, and the more and more that I do it for myself and for work, I feel more and more like an artist, and an alchemist, because it’s just so creative.

Robin Daly
Okay, well look, in contrast, let’s go to the other end of the spectrum now, and we’ll talk the science of the nutritional content of food and the way that particular ingredients can impact your health and wellbeing. Well, obviously, you know this stuff, and it is an ingredient of your work and aspect of it. So, how important do you think it is for people generally to appreciate the nutritional content of food?

Hayley North
nutrition is a massive part of what I do, and what I’m interested in. However, I connect much more to the energetic way of looking at food. I appreciate the Western understanding of nutrition, and I have my wonderful guide and mentor Kirsten in that who is just an awesome nutritionist and understands the science of it incredibly, and he’s able to translate that to people in a very understandable way. Whereas my brain doesn’t work so much like that, and I find that when we eat seasonally, pick fresh, you know, vital ingredients that are bursting with vitality, that we are listening to our bodies, that’s a huge one, instead of looking outside of ourselves and following the latest trends, or that this says now that I need to eat more of this, or now I shouldn’t be eating this, and now this is the food to be eating. Instead, more learning how to listen to ourselves, noticing how we eat, how we’re shopping, the whole environment, how we’re cooking, so it’s not just the ingredients themselves, but all those factors around it, looking at colour, looking at the different textures, you know, having that whole variety, then the nutrition, see, it’s there, you know, without us having to know too much about all that incredible science, and all, you know, all that detail, that it kind of, it then just happens, it’s there on the plate, it’s there in the kitchen.

Robin Daly
But like you’re saying, there’s some ground rules that can follow about the way we choose our food that will actually ensure that we get good nutrition.

Hayley North
I love to look at a whole, I think Rudolf Steiner did some wonderful work around this, which was looking at the different aspects of, say, plants, for instance, you know, from the roots, to the stems, to the leaves, to the fruits, to the seeds, to the nuts, and just when we, that’s a big part of how I look at food too, and to ensure that all of those aspects are included, not necessarily in every meal, but in my diet as a whole, and in how I cook meals for people, that I look okay at all those parts of the plants present.

Hayley North
You know and then and so that because we can get fixed on just you know When we’ve if you look at that I’ve never looked at that before but actually I ate a lot of roots But I hardly any leaves You know or I eat Tons of seeds, but I never actually eat any root vegetable, you know anything that’s roots So things that are grown underneath the earth underneath the soil things that grow closer to the Sun the things that crawl along the surface of the ground things that climb You know plants that Are very tight and compact like cabbages for instance, and then those that have much more Their leaves are much more spread and how the hell the plants grow was incredible What Rudolph Steiner did around all of that? It’s just very fascinating. how the things grow. so I find that then as well, when you have that whole variety, that’s also then the nutrition becomes, you know, present in terms of the different aspects of nutrition. But yes, looking at, okay, that I’ve got enough fiber in my diet, that the proteins there, that the, you know, the macronutrients and the micronutrients that you’re getting enough. they’re all there and all represented in the meals

Robin Daly
We mustn’t end without mentioning that, as you said, in the beginning, you’re running some well-being workshops for Yes to Life. It’s these nutritional and mindful cooking. Would you tell our listeners what they can expect of these?

Hayley North
I’m just absolutely very honoured to be invited to come and offer these workshops for you. So we did one in the spring, we have another one, the summer workshop coming up on July 11th.

Hayley North
I cook about four dishes, four different recipes live on the Zoom call and the listeners are able to either cook along with me or to obviously have the recording, watch the video and do that at a later date. I just get into my flow in the kitchen and and just try to demonstrate really the, not just the recipe themselves and the nutritional aspects of the recipe and why they’re good for us and that healthy eating, et cetera, et cetera, but this aspect of being present, getting into the flow into the synergy, the mindfulness of cooking and how cooking can become an empowering, therapeutic, nourishing act as a, yeah, and let’s take the stress out. Let’s make it enjoyable and joyful and to really appreciate it as one of the greatest gifts that we can give ourselves right now.

Robin Daly
you’ve sold it very well. all you listeners who are hungry to find out more go to the Yes To Life website. Click the I’m New Here menu and choose Wellbeing Sessions and you’ll find Hayley there.

Robin Daly
thanks so much for opening your window to completely different relationship to food and food prep, really inspirational, Hayley. I’m sure you will have affected the way that many people listening think about their food choices and the way they approach cooking. So big thanks.

Hayley North
Thank you, Robin. It’s an absolute joy to talk to you.

Robin Daly
Well, I did warn you that Hayley’s enthusiasm was infectious, but remember that if you’d like to watch her at work in the kitchen, she’s taking part in our Yes To Life Wellbeing sessions which you can find out about by visiting the Yes To Life website. Hayley’s sessions are titled Nutrition and Mindful Cooking. Thanks for listening today, I’ll be back again next week with another expert guest and if you’d like further listening before then, if you visit the show page on our website, and there you can sample more than 450 back editions of the show and search through the archive by guest name, topic or keyword to find the material that interests you. Please do join me again next week for another Yes To Life show.