Last year while switching into a healthier gear I discovered Nourish health food shop in East Sheen. Now I use every other trip to Waitrose, across the road, to pop over to the independent and stock up on tasty holistic staples.
Owner Sally Isdale and her staff have helped me discover natural and effective remedies for a range of ailments including, rosacea, low-mood and low energy.
More importantly, it became my local stop for food items I once had to go further afield to buy.
Sally, 50, told me: “Anybody can start doing three simple things to improve their health: take a multivitamin plus fish oil, eat a broad healthy diet of foods with lots of different colours, and cut out sugar as much as possible. Sugar is very addictive, it lowers immunity, causes energy crashes, affects skin complexion and puts on weight more than anything else. Next stop, diabetes.
"It's amazing how easy it is to start missing out nutrients when you cut things from your diet, even if you've cut them for a good reason. For instance, we get a lot of people who are zinc deficient because they've stopped eating red meat - a lot of our zinc comes from red meat, but you can replace it by eating shellfish, pumpkin seeds and pecans.
"A good rule to follow is don't eat anything every day, and try not to cut anything out completely."
Nourish opened three and a half years ago after Sally was made redundant from Unilever. A couple of years before that she had moved to East Sheen from Putney and was surprised there wasn't a health food shop here.
"I really wanted to do something I was passionate about and I was already very interested in nutrition therapy.
"I started Nourish from scratch, then the recession hit, but we've been fine. I think a lot of it has to do with how knowledgeable and health conscious people are in this area. And a big focus for us is service; we get our kicks from helping people."
I love Nourish.
Now, a lovely basket of Nourish items I buy regularly: quinoa, which is also sold at Waitrose but Nourish's is fluffier; Biocare EPA fish oil pills; Vita Coco coconut water (coconut water contains more electrolytes than a sports drink and more potassium than a banana); Udo’s Choice Oil, an excellent formula of omega fatty acids that is great for salads and dipping; Xylo Sweet, an all natural sweetener with a low glycemic index and it contains the same ingredient as mouthwash so is actively *good* for teeth (even recommended by dentists). And my most recent discovery, Whole Earth Wake Up, a guarana-based alternative to coffee. It gives you the energy boost without the highs and crashes that go along with coffee.
Nourish is located at 397 Upper Richmond Road WestLondon SW14 7NX | T020 8878 5725.
This post is an extended version of that in the current edition of Living In magazine for Barnes & East Sheen.
Recent Comments