hi henry how are you today yeah i'm good thanks hayley how are you you well yes good thank you
thank you for uh coming on to the podcast that we've started up this is very exciting
pleasure yeah we are going to be diving into lots of different topics and today's topic
is working from home so this is something that we see a lot of now um people coming into clinic
with all kinds of various problems such as back pain shoulder pain and knee pain and that and many
more problems associated with working from home and the idea of today is we're going to kind of
question what people are doing but also more interestingly what people can cook with your
skills, Henry, to make their lunches exciting. Fairly interesting. Yeah. So have you seen,
like, you say people coming into clinic because of working from home. Is that kind of, I guess,
since lockdown, has that been on the rise? And now we seem like a kind of delay of, you know,
people starting to get issues on the back of it. Yeah, you're absolutely right. People come in,
so through lockdown, people were quickly having to work from home. So they were...
Yeah, terrible time, wasn't it?
And people were kind of like sitting still on their bed and trying to balance the laptop on their knees.
And then they were trying to work in front of it on the sofa, like trying to watch a bit of telly probably on Netflix at the same time.
Because no one knew how long this was going to go on for, the pandemic.
And then people started to try and work more sensibly from a desk at home, which might be the kitchen table.
Again, sometimes it's not always designed for that.
And our bodies don't cope with that very well.
And so people started to come into clinics saying, I'm getting tension headaches, neck
pain, back pain, because they'd been sitting there for three to six hours and anything
up to eight hours in a day, trying to work from home and not always taking posture breaks
and things that they needed to do.
So we saw lots of problems all the time.
Gotcha.
So the whole kind of like working from home thing, because I mean, I have never worked
from home and then obviously lockdown happened and suddenly I found myself working from home
a lot more and um well possibly not doing a huge amount of work but but definitely the kind of like
the setup wasn't great like um you know sitting at the kitchen table um on a dodgy chair like there
was you know um i guess a lot more kind of like team schools and laptops working um whereas i
guess when you're in the office you get distracted you get up to go get a cup of coffee you're kind
of moving around a little bit more maybe a bit more um a bit more mobile whereas when you're just
on your own at home it's quite easy just to kind of get into not moving so do you then i guess you
you get knock-on effects for um you know if you do just sit still all day well people don't realize
the pressure that goes through their discs so if um so say for example uh let's take a typical
male who may weigh um sort of 70 kilograms if he is standing up 70 kilograms will go through his
spine as soon as that same weighted male sits down the pressure goes up and it's like the equivalent
of 150 kilograms going through your back just by sitting down on your bottom so that's the
difference of the load going through your back and same again with like leaning forward or if
you're sort of terrible with your posture and you sort of lean onto your elbows you're going to
increase the pressure through the discs and you're absolutely right people doing all of this now
I'm literally leaning forward on my elbows and I'm 70 kilos.
So what should I be doing?
Do I need to sit back?
How about they're not getting back in this podcast?
So we need to try and sit sort of really through our pelvis.
So if you imagine your hips like a bucket of water,
if your pelvis is level, the water will stay in the middle of the bucket.
But if you tip forward,
so some people sit with their pelvis slightly tipped forward,
that's like pouring water out the front of your bucket.
Okay.
And if you tip back, so most people are slumpers, so they'll slump back.
So it's called a posterior tilt of the pelvis.
And that's like water pouring out the back of your bucket.
And that's really bad for the lower back to put a strain through the lower back.
So we want to use the tummy muscles to sit up and upright through and onto our hips properly.
And that stabilizes us really nicely.
But there's things that you can do at home to kind of help your setup, because we all
probably just put your laptop on start working away and you don't actually think about things
like your screen height and how far away you are from your screen yeah do you do any of that henry
the work i've got like well at work i've got you know little risers and you know i've got a nice
chair that kind of is on wheels and bounces around a little bit and you can adjust it whereas
yeah at home it's just lapsed up on a table normally crap everywhere that you just kind of
push to one side like i don't have an office setup so to speak because it's it for me it's
more sporadic, like it's not like I'm not at home, you know, often, like it's once in
a while, but I guess, yeah, you just kind of perch wherever. Actually, recently I've
been doing it in the garden, which is quite pleasant, but sitting on a dodgy garden furniture.
Pretty hard for the bum.
Yeah, yeah, hard for the bum, exactly.
That's it. But we should, even if you think, so what you've described there, Henry, is
a little bit of hop-dusking. So some people probably go around and they might go into
the garden they might go into different rooms they might even pop into the office from time to time
and then work from home um however long you're sitting there so if you're sitting there for more
than 20 minutes to half an hour you should really be thinking about how you are set up so there's
been quite easy nice ways to do it so you should really when you first sit down at your desk you
should kind of sit down tuck your bottom completely underneath you so that you can kind of squash
yourself into the desk and then you have your arms just by your side and your forearms just
nice and flat onto the desk and at that point if your hands can kind of just comfortably sit and
rest onto the desk you shouldn't have your kind of shoulders lifted up towards your ears you should
be quite relaxed with it and then then you think from there onwards how everything else is set up
around you so you should have your keyboard just nice and comfortably just at your fingertip level
and then your screen height, you should actually be able to reach out your hands in front of you
and you should actually be able to touch your screen.
If it's too far away, then you're going to obviously reach a bit more hunched over.
And if it's too close, obviously you're going to hit it before you've stretched your arms out.
And your eyeline needs to be in line with the top of the screen as well.
Gotcha. Because when I'm at work, so I have my laptop that I plug in
and I've got a separate keyboard and then a separate screen.
So it's like a nice setup and I've got a nice mouse.
Whereas I find when I'm at home, I kind of end up doing this, like I'm typing really close
up and everything just kind of eases up.
And so I actually don't particularly like working from home because though it's nice
of seekers, you can do things at your own pace or whatever and change things up a little
bit.
But actually, yeah, I find myself that kind of laptop working.
I really dislike it.
And so, and I guess I see people, you know, my business, we sell lots of bread to cafes.
And so, you know, that whole kind of cafe culture and people on their laptops all day.
And I just, I don't look at them with envy.
It's like, oh, so nice to sit in a cafe, I'll do long, drinking, you know, oatmeal lattes
or whatever.
Actually, it looks like you're just going to get a bad back and that kind of, you know,
tight and close together.
Whereas I like to be a bit more kind of, you know, kind of, own my space.
Yeah, and being able to move around. So that's really important because otherwise, like you say, discs can actually dry out a little bit if you stay stuck in one position for too long.
And people might think a little bit more about their back pain, shoulder pain, neck pain when they're working.
But as physios, we always say, like, don't forget about your eye muscles.
So the eye strain that you're having when you're looking at a screen.
So, you know, like you talk about 20-20 vision.
there's a nice little trick that you can remember as 20-20 for your eye, which is you should look
20 feet away for 20 seconds. And that's a nice way to allow those muscles to relax around your eye.
Is that like training them or is that just to let things refocus a little bit?
It's because the lens is controlled by eye muscles and they need time to relax because
otherwise they're being held on a contraction because obviously the lens shape's shortened to
to actually look at what you're looking at on the screen.
So you need time to just let those eye muscles relax and focus.
And if you've looked in the distance and everything's slightly blurry
for even a few seconds, that shows your eyes are already tired.
So you should be doing it regularly, but we don't all do it enough.
So it's a good thing to try and remember.
Because I had it with my phone a few, I think maybe like six months ago,
there was an update and if it was getting too close, it would then kind
of be putting in, it was like kind of, you know, hold the phone further away.
Which is probably a good thing, but what I had to do was enlarge the text because it was so far away.
I was then like straining my eyes to try and see it properly.
So I'm now like a kind of, like my mum's phone, everything's like kind of extra large.
I know what you mean.
Maybe it's just starting to get an old, I don't know.
I did exactly the same though.
I put that on my phone and the amount of times it was telling me it was too close was quite scary, isn't it?
So it's good to have those reminders.
And I say to patients, have like little post-it notes.
I'm a bit old school and I like bits of paper.
And I say, look, just put posture on a piece of, on a post-it, stick it up.
And every time you look at it, you should move of some sort.
So that could just be standing up and sitting back down again.
So people who are answering phone calls throughout their working day, I say to them, if it's not obviously too often,
if the phone, every time the phone rings, stand up to answer it and then sit back down to take the call.
If you can't, if you're not doing like a long call and you can walk around doing these meetings
where you're talking on a hands-free kit or something like that.
But that difference of standing up can just help replump up the discs in our back,
helps the oxygenation and also can significantly help metabolic processes in the body
so it can reduce your risk of diabetes.
Tell me, what does metabolic mean?
I've heard that word.
I said metabolic systems, kind of all how the body's functioning sort of internally.
So all the kind of what's going on with our blood sugar control, cortisol control, all
the cardiac systems, brain systems, everything working together with the gut, everything.
So metabolic wise, what we're looking to try and do is to kind of not kind of feed into
that too severely with kind of overstimulating it too much in the wrong way.
So like if we're very stressed and we're eating too much sugar at our desks and then we're not moving, that's a very stressful environment for the body.
And that can lead, we know, can lead to longer term conditions.
And we know things like osteoporosis is even a metabolic disorder now and sort of diabetes as well.
And if you can stand up just periodically through the day, there have been studies that have shown that if you can stand up periodically through the day, it's the equivalent of like walking or running a marathon by the end of the year.
So it's completely insane how good it is for you and how easy it really is to build into
your day.
But people tend to just go, oh, the physios told me to stand up and they go, I can't really
see why that would have that much impact.
But if you tell it to the patient or whoever in that way, they'll go, oh, actually, maybe
I will do that.
And then I can claim I've done a marathon by the end of the year.
Yeah, no, that's good.
Well my watch every I think every hour I think I probably set it to half an hour at the moment it now it buzzes saying like time to stand up And I do you know as a very compliant fitter I stand up But you can get in meetings
because quite often you're in a meeting that's gone for a couple of hours or so. It's a bit
rude to just get up and wander around. But if you watch tells you to get up, you're like,
well, I better stand up for a minute. And actually it's quite good to, you know, kind
of stretch things out, you know, and sometimes you can even, you know, move the meeting on
a little bit or kind of, you know, just change the dynamic slightly.
Yeah, yeah.
I think just, you know, sitting still for too long, it's like being in the car for ages,
isn't it?
You just feel all kind of stiff and not great.
So are you seeing more people coming into the clinic with kind of these symptoms that
are kind of, and you're saying that linked to working from home and having a poor set
up and posture, et cetera?
Yes.
So I would say pretty much at least three or four times a day in clinics, I'm talking to people about how to be setting up their home set up and just actually looking at how they're sitting.
I say to them, take a picture and bring it in and I'll have a little look.
And going through some of the tips that we've talked about already, just to make such a difference to their day and showing them what exercises they can do.
And actually, sometimes people are on meetings and they feel too scared or too like, they feel like, oh, I'll be a bit strange if I start moving around on a meeting.
and everyone's looking at me and I'm like well that's what physios do all the time we don't
really care um but you can embrace the weirdness embrace the weirdness we're being deaf right
oh he's the they're the one who keeps moving yeah I just keep shooting off screen yeah
that's it yeah so when you see people doing that they look like they're on a wheelie or on a
skateboard but it's it doesn't have to even require movement so people say what can I do
where I'm not going to feel embarrassed and I'm like well if you can't do anything at all
just squeeze your bottom cheeks together and relax because the the gluteal muscles will kind
of help boost the blood circulation um and actually that's really good you're going to
strengthen up your buttock muscles and that's also good for your hips and your lower back
so that's it doing it now henry you're doing it now yeah then you just squeeze and relax you can
even do pelvic floor exercises at the desk so you can pull up your pelvic floor and it's not just
for women to do it's vitally important for men that's like that bucket of water you were talking
about tilting your back the bucket water is the hip and pelvic position that you need to sit through
but the pelvic floor is um where we pull up our pelvic floor muscles to help support all our
internal organs and to help things with like stress incontinence so if you were to laugh
sneeze cough you might have a little bit of leakage um ladies have that more regularly because
obviously having had babies um but actually men do have this problem later on in life and they
it usually presents for men like going to the toilet a lot in the nighttime and people go oh
i'm getting old i'm getting up in the nighttime but actually pelvic floor exercises for men are
just as important as it is for females so trying to do those at the desk um can really make a huge
difference to how things are controlled my dad used to have this like um it was like a round
bit of wood and then it had like a ball on the bottom and he used to like wiggle his feet like
around and back and forth. Is that kind of, so he would, when he was sat at his desk, he always had
it and I guess maybe a physio at some point had given it to him and I think it was to get his
kind of legs moving, I don't know. Is that? Yeah. It sounds like. It was like a reminder because he
just had his feet on it all the time so then he was always slightly kind of moving his legs around.
Yeah, it sounds like the wobble board so almost like, do you remember as a kid,
you used to have a little ball and you had like a outside and you used to jump on them. I think
I think those people like jump jumpers or something.
But they look like, they can also be like a wobble board.
So yeah, the rotation through the foot,
so you're getting movement through the ankle,
which can be quite good as well.
Just to boost the circulation,
because sitting and having our feet flat onto the floor,
we can get quite stiff through our ankles.
So actually just going forward and backwards with our ankles,
almost as if you're on an aeroplane.
So sort of kicking forward with your toes
and then pulling them back up quite hard.
And even doing heel raises.
So if you've got your feet flat on the floor and you just lift your heels up by doing that, that has also been shown to be really good to work through the back of your legs.
So a muscle called your soleus muscle, especially if you kind of push down through your knees and you can push up and down.
And that, again, has been linked with not only reducing stiffness in your ankles, but can actually help control your blood sugar.
And that's for hours afterwards. So it's got such good benefits from just doing movements like that.
So you can squeeze your bottom, squeeze your pelvic floor muscles, pump your ankles and
lift up your heels.
And you've already improved your quality of life and your health just by sitting and working
at your laptop.
So when you say improves your, you mentioned about the sugars.
So I would always think of like the foods you eat would, you know, raise your sugar levels
or not, but also through simple exercises, you can lower the sugar level.
So is that your saying?
So basically if you can work your muscles, if you've got good muscle strength, we know
that the more muscle we have is the better it is so you've probably heard people say if they've got
good grip strength that it's a sign of you know healthy and you're strong and your kind of general
fitness is overall much better than someone with a lower grip strength so the more um we have lots
of things going on with our muscles and if we can keep as strong as possible um it can help kind of
it's almost see everything in your body is like mopping things up all the time so it can kind of
clear out excess sugar oxidative stress things like that so what we want to do is just really
make the most of our muscles to support the structures that we have but also thinking about
our organs as well and as long as we're eating the right things then obviously that's going to
have a big impact too which is going to be interesting now probably to talk about what
we can eat because I know that obviously eating healthy is really important to facilitate what
you're doing when you're like working from home or exercising. But sometimes it's having
those extra quick, easy ways to prepare food, isn't it, at home? So Henry, what do you think
for yourself?
Well, I guess what I think about myself working from home is that when I'm at work, I have
a fairly good routine. And so whether that's what I have for breakfast or whether I don't
have breakfast, I'm extending that kind of fasting period, which I started doing recently.
actually it was tricky in the first couple of weeks, but actually has been, it's been
fine kind of holding off until lunch. But then what I find is if I'm working for my
home, obviously you've got access to all sorts of nice snacks and tasty things in your fridge
and whatnot.
And it's easy just to start. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's easy just to like, you know, I probably
drink more coffee when I'm at home because you know, I better get up and, you know, move
around a little bit. And, but then also, you know, when you're getting a coffee, you're
there's the biscuits, there's the chocolate, there's that bit of cake left over from the
weekend. It's very easy to just like start off badly. And for me, I think once I kind
of fall off the bandwagon, you can spiral pretty quickly, can't you? So if you've smashed
out a cake before 10am, you're probably in for a bad day.
Bad day.
Yeah, bad day. And then you're like, wow, that's a bad day. So I might as well just lean into
it and tomorrow will be better. So yeah, so I guess, you know, if you, if you're, you
know, if I was to be working at home more often, it'd probably be having to make a little
plan about what I was going to eat and just try to be a little bit more disciplined. And
the things that have made a difference for me is that I used to, you know, would eat
porridge for breakfast or granola or bread for a half. I worked for a bakery, so you
know, a lot of bread. Yeah, I'd love your bread.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, which is lovely and it's very easy and it kind of like, you know, things that people would have around the house.
But I just found that, you know, if I had that at seven o'clock in the morning by 10 o'clock, I'm hungry again.
So I need another piece of bread or, you know, looking for another snack.
And then you're just on that kind of constant roller coaster.
So for me, the last maybe couple of years, I've been, if I do have breakfast, I try and have a more kind of higher protein breakfast.
So whether that's scrambled eggs or yogurt, not with the granola, but maybe with some nuts
and seeds, you know, just something that's going to kind of fill you up a bit longer.
And I definitely find that that helps.
It just doesn't give you those kind of hunger pangs or that kind of sugar crash.
Yeah.
And then you've kind of, I don't know, if you like start off, you know, with either
not having breakfast or having a kind of like a high protein breakfast, I don't know, you
You then feel like you've already, you're on the good route and then it's easy to kind
of continue because you haven't fallen off the bandwagon.
That's it.
You kind of set yourself up only for the day.
I love a bit of porridge.
Porridge is really good for your cholesterol as well.
Is it?
Okay.
Yeah, it's really good.
It's a whole package thing, isn't it?
It's the whole grain, I guess, isn't it?
Yes.
Yeah.
So porridge is really good for your cholesterol and I like to eat a pear sometimes at breakfast
time because um that's also supposed to be good really good like fiber as well for you
and for you um and yeah i just porridge with the nuts and seeds is a great breakfast starter and
that's something you can prepare the night before too can't you if you're into these
yes um overnight oats but i actually like the hot porridge i think it feels to me like it's more of a
meal yeah yeah i guess maybe yeah i mean i probably more in the the kind of the autumn
and winter times you know it kind of feels like the time for a porridge but um the yeah
I guess because you're getting the whole grain whereas the um so you've got all the fiber
and you know everything in it and uh but yeah and also maybe the the soaking overnight you
kind of um starting to kind of break down some of those kind of um you know complex sugars
or proteins etc in the in the the oat which maybe makes it slightly easier to digest I
don't know but i have i have read about that and there's probably some sense in it um yeah especially
with things like when you people rinse their beans um if they're eating beans and they suffer
with like ibs or a lot of gas like if you double rinse the beans and things like that that can
really help but washing off the kind of the the um the kind of the kind of the tin juice stuff that
looks like it's kind of amalgamated in the tin so you kind of double rinse them sometimes it can
And it can just lower your chances if you get a bit bloated and a bit of wind if you're new to eating beans.
And obviously you should start slowly and build up your tolerance, things like that.
But lunches, and I know that my patient and some of the patients in clinic that I see will struggle with making things that are healthy from scratch.
And I, over the last several years, well, few years with a daughter who's got a nut allergy, I love making things from scratch.
and so making things like a simple, like a wrap or something that's not processed,
I hate processed breads and obviously bread man here.
How can you make a, so I sometimes make pizza bases that's got like
yogurt and flour mixed together and that makes quite a quick pizza base
but can you make wraps quite quick?
That's almost like a chapati kind of Indian style flatbread.
Yeah.
Sorry, what was your question?
Does that work the same if I was to use the flour and the yogurt?
Does that, if I just make it flat, does that literally make a flatbread or do you have to add that?
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, you're probably as simple as flatbread.
Yeah, it's just literally, I mean, just flour and water would probably be more simple.
But with the yogurt, you add in a little bit of fat and a bit more richness to it.
So it's going to color up a bit nicer.
I mean for me when it comes to you know things like pizzas or flatbreads the thing that can really change it is if you ferment it for longer Because obviously if you just kind of mixing it straight away and then processing it the flour is fairly like not like raw that maybe the wrong word
but it's as it's most kind of complex.
Whereas if you allow it to either ferment, so you either do it the day before
and just allow it just to sit in the fridge, it starts to,
when you mix flour and water together, it kicks off loads of like enzymic reactions
And there's loads of magic and science happening, but basically the wheat will start to break
down and the longer you can let it break down, the more digestible it is for you.
So we see a lot of people have issues with like gluten intolerant and then they move
to either like a whole meal or a spout, which is slightly kind of softer or like a sourdough,
which has got this kind of longer fermentation time.
And actually they find it's much easier for them to digest.
And it's because a lot of the processing has happened before you come to eat it.
Whereas if you eat flour, kind of straight from the back, you're going to get really
bad indigestion.
So cooking it, you know, helps make it more edible, but if you can also give it a fermentation,
that definitely helps.
And also, well, I find if I, you know, if I, if I start with white bread and, you know,
like a kind of classic kind of tin loaf and have that with butter and jam, I'm going to
be hungry in like two hours time.
if you have like a rice sourdough or just any sourdough, something that's had like a
long fermentation and you have it with scrambled eggs, it's probably going to keep me going
for a few hours longer before I'm hungry again.
So, and I think a lot of that is one, it's obviously the sugars, but also that kind of
slow fermentation just, I think it makes it easier for your body to digest and kind of
absorb the kind of nutrients from the flour.
But yeah, I mean, mixing, you know, I guess for me, kind of the starting point is the shopping.
So, you know, you've got a house full of crisp Kit Kats.
You're going to reach for that one.
You know, pre-made stuff, you know, you know, it might look like good stuff,
but actually it's all processed food essentially.
It's been designed to be addictive.
It's been designed to be tasty and make you want to eat more.
Like there's a reason when you, you know, once you pop, you can't stop.
You know, you eat one Pringle, you're probably going to eat the whole tub.
But that's not an accident.
They've done that because they want you to eat more Pringles.
If you made your own Pringles, like, obviously don't make Pringles,
but say you, I don't know, roasted up some potatoes or you, you know,
like chickpeas, for example, you can dry them off, drain them off,
and then roast them with some, you know, some spices, a bit of satar
or some paprika, a bit of some seeds and that and stuff in there.
You can almost make your own little kind of crunchy little snack.
You're going to eat way less of them because they're just not as warrish.
like they'll be tasting they'll fill you up and they got a good bit of protein but you're not going
to eat like a whole pringle and um and so so for me i think it's about just trying to be a bit
conscious of not having too many kind of processed foods in the house it's really difficult with when
you've got kids you want lunch boxes and peer pressure and it's just easy and go from the shops
they make it really hard to kind of find the the um find the natural products you know because we're
just kind of constantly bombarded. But I think, you know, I know that if I'm a fairly conscious
shopper, my wife does quite a lot of shopping as well, and she's also fairly aligned. We
both kind of take this quite seriously. The temptation there isn't there, you know, if
you haven't got loads of biscuits and cakes and crisps, well, you can't eat them. So you're just
going to have to find something else. And then whether that's reaching for some whole nuts,
obviously not for you um but something or even like um i actually find like parmesan like kind of
you you can't eat a whole thing of parmesan because it's fast you're definitely gonna get
but actually like it's it's for me it's like it's salty it's like high protein it's unpasteurized
the milk so it's got you know it's not had all of the kind of the goodness bored out of it so it's
And it's delicious.
So I often, if I'm at home and I'm just feeling a bit peckish,
I just have a little bit of parmesan and actually...
You're great.
Cut it in a chunk.
No, I just chop it.
No, yeah, I wouldn't be like, chew off it.
Yeah, I just chop a few slices.
Like a carrot.
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah, a bit of carrot, a bit of cucumber.
I grow quite a lot of my own veg at the moment.
I've got cucumbers coming out.
Literally, it's like 10 a day.
And yeah, I just, you know, bit of them with a bit of olive oil and salt and pepper and a bit of vinegar.
Delicious. You know, that's a good snack.
Yeah, that's always a good snack, isn't it?
Having lots of choice, like having a few nuts, like you say, a little bit of cheese, having a little flatbread or something like that.
But in terms of lunches, what would you normally eat, Henry?
If you had to make yourself something tasty, what would you cook yourself up for lunchtime?
So my wife works at home quite often, quite often, you know, lunch.
You don't want to spend hours doing it because you might have meetings, you know, so you need, it needs to be kind of fairly quick.
So if we, if we're going to be at home for a few of us in and out throughout the week, it's quite good to make one big thing that's ending and last and give you a few, a few days.
For me, obviously soup is a, is a, is a great option.
um you can do kind of green soup or red soup you know and just get stuff from the fridge and then
you can add in uh you know always always sweat it you know onions and garlic with lots of either
lots of butter and some olive oil and then add in you know if you've got veg that needs using up
you can just kind of chuck it all in and um tin of chickpeas or a tin of butter beans um you can
add some spices if you want to go or some lentils um uh depending on how you're feeling and then
just blend it up. Now you've got a tasty soup and you know, you can just top it with some
yoghurt or some seeds, you know, slice of bread. You know, you can make a big batch and
that's going to last you for a couple of days. That's a super easy one, but sometimes the
soup gets a bit boring. I'd make a big batch for my wife, have it once and she'd have it
for the rest of the time. Yeah. And you can freeze that too, can't you, Henry? You can
freeze that nicely. And yoghurt pots, you know, we, we, we, we seem to absolutely nail
yogurt and actually they're really good for you know if you make a soup just pour them into there
chuck them in the freezer and you know you've got something tasty that you can defrost fairly quickly
and have a nutritious you know it's going to have lots of veggies in it that you can put
you know like if okay say i've made a nice soup and then there was also some leftover
from the night before i'd probably shred in a bit of chicken or a bit of shrizo because i like that
my wife she might not do that because she'd probably be not sticky on it but um but you can
of add some nice accessories to it or a little bit of structure and some, you know, a bit of
kimchi if you've got it, you know, some kind of tasty things just to kind of boost it up.
So it doesn't have to be like, I'm just eating boring green soup, like it, you know, it's all
about pimping it up so it feels kind of exciting and you can do different toppings.
That's it, I think most of us probably get to the soup part and then it's your kind of like chef hat
that's like, let's throw a bit of this in. And it's like, if I do that, I'm like, why is it
suddenly turn brown whereas you throw it in and it looks delicious and you drizzle it with all
kinds of things but like you say shredding up the chicken um and adding in those other little bits
can just make it really exciting and like so if you take the effort to do that you you do actually
stay fuller for longer don't you and you can think better and you feel better about yourself
and we all know now don't we a little bit more about all the onions and garlic and how that's
really good for our gut bacteria as well so like you're always on a win-win if you can start the
the dish with that and then throwing things in vegetables as much fiber as you possibly can.
To make it really tasty because my wife is a very good cook and she does make very nice soup,
I make slightly nicer soup and she's always like how do you make your soup taste so nice? Now
there's a few things that you can do just to like elevate it. One is that you need to use
more fat than you think so none of that kind of like one spray olive oil cow, don't use that,
you either need to use like a good knob of butter or a decent you know a good spoon of coconut oil
that's a good one if you're making a more kind of indiany style one um or olive oil you know um
but but you need probably more fat because the fat will make it it like vegetables without a good
bit of fat can be a bit boring so actually it just makes it more kind of luxurious and also you don't
need to eat as much because it'll be a bit more um more filling and more tasty and also you want
to enjoy like if you make two liters of really boring soup you're not going to eat it so just
going to sit in the fridge then you're going to chuck it away so actually you might as well make
it delicious. So more fat than you think. Then it's really important that you sweat those onions
for at least eight minutes, not two minutes, because they're going to be kind of raw and
crunchy. They need to have plenty of time in the pan on their own with a good bit of fat,
just to kind of really break down the cells. And then they go slightly sweet and they're
going to add a real nice depth of flavor. It's at this point that you could add a slug of,
you know if you've got a bottle of wine that's not been drunk you know you could just add a bit
that it's going to add some nice nice bit of acidity acidity is really important so um when
you're um when you think of like an olive or caper in your mouth quite often just a thought of it can
make you salivate and actually uh acidity helps kind of like heighten your taste buds and it makes
things more delicious acidity is super important so you need lots of fat you need to heat it properly
and then some acidity and then of course make sure you season it. Now obviously if you're
feeding it for your kids you might maybe season less because they don't want so much salt but I
like quite salty food so I would always season it quite heavy but that's probably the chef and me
but you can always do that you know if you like it less salty and your partner likes it more salty
you can just do that in your bulk can't you but making sure it's well seasoned is important.
And what can you add if you don't want to use wine?
What could you add instead to give it that kind of acidity?
Like vinegar is great or lemon, like just any kind of acid.
Yeah, like Liam Perrins, is it the Liam Perrins-y type ones or is there something?
Yeah, well Liam Perrins is, you know, it's like an umami bomb.
So you've got, that's like the sixth flavour, I think they call it.
It's like some scientists came up with it.
But it's the flavor you get on like anchovies or like an aged parmesan or like dry aged beef
or like mushrooms or seaweed.
So it's this kind of like this savory flavor that gives them, it just makes things really
moreish.
And actually lots of really like Pringles or Knit Nacks or whatever, Doritos are absolutely
covered in MSG, which is like a kind of synthetic monosteutium glutamate, which essentially is
the umami.
It's like a synthetic umami flavor.
and it makes things really worse.
So the kind of the classic is the Chinese takeaway, they shake it all over it.
They take a bit on.
I'm actually allergic to that.
And then you go, oh, that was awesome.
So tasty.
Well, there you go.
So I know if it's in food, because I will throw up.
I really, okay, fine.
Okay.
But you can find it naturally occurring in lots of fermented foods.
So things like liam pairings, which has, it's like tamarind and then fermented fish.
And it's that fermented fish that gives it that kind of umami flavor.
So you know, if you've made something and it's tasting a little bit thin and a bit kind
of a bit lacking, something like either a bit of acidity, so some lemon juice or vinegar
or something like liam perrings will just kind of boost those flavors and make it taste
nice.
The other thing is also not too...
I've eaten far too many or been given far too many watery soups.
So it's been stretched too far and I think...
It needs to thicken up, doesn't it, with something?
It just thickened out a little bit, yeah, yeah.
And there's only so much lean pairings you can put into a watery soup before.
It still won't taste very nice.
So I think...
Because I love I really love Henry I love a really good thick tomato soup And when I first ever made tomato soup I think I made the mistake that probably a lot of people make and that making it with the onions and the tomato
And I roasted the tomatoes and I did a stock cube.
I was like, why is it so thin?
And then I added in the creme fraiche and all of that.
And I was like, oh, that's a bit better.
But have you got any extra tips for thicker, tastier,
chef standard tomato soup?
Well, I think, yeah, I mean, I guess,
you know if you at the moment i've also got loads of courgettes and so you know kind of onions
all of our garlic and courgettes split stuff it's it's gonna be a bit boring and they're gonna be a
bit wet so you know kind of roasting them or cooking them first you know we'll have to get
a bit more flavor and get some of that moisture out but actually you know a tin of butter beans or
chickpeas or you know haricot beans are gonna they're gonna add some good like a good bit of
fiber a good bit of thickness to it but actually they're quite tasty you know you can you can get
some really good beans i'm actually quite um actually quite like cooking my own beans
my wife she yeah i i come down and she's like pre-soaking them and it's much cheaper so you
can buy like you know organic um organic beans you just soak them overnight and the the thing
that's made it much easier is getting a pressure cooker i don't be able to use pressure but they're
like the you think your dad might get out um at christmas for the christmas pudding and that you
know it fizzes and hisses but actually they are a great bit of kick because you they cook the beans
in let's say 30 minutes they come out perfect and um the the the liquid that is left um at the bottom
uh you can use that in your you know it's basically like a stock so you can use that to go into your
soup as well and um and it's much cheaper and they're so much tastier than um the tipped ones
They're probably not as tasty as those really posh ones you get in the Spanish ones in the
jar, but they're about a five or a pop.
Five pounds, aren't they?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
You know, you've got to really be into soup to put five pounds worth of chickpeas.
And if you don't have a pressure cooker, can it work just as well?
Well, you can just cook them in a pan, but I guess they just take a little bit longer.
And what I've done a lot sometimes in the past is they're just simmering and then you
wander off because they take maybe two hours like a buttercream might take two or three hours and
then it goes dry and then you burn and you end up with like an inch of blackened butterbeats on
the bottom of your pan which no one's a fan but yeah you don't have to buy it if you've got one
to come from scratch it sounds like a good thing to invest if you do eat a lot of soup though
yeah yeah but if you're working home and you're looking to
just don't get numbered with the washing up and then if i was to have another another dish i think
really good is something like a frittata. I think eggs are a great, you know, they're,
you know, in terms of like a food, you know, they've got everything.
Great protein.
Protein, they've got the fats, they've got all of the, all of the lovely numbers that
are probably really good for you. And they're fairly accessible. A lot of people have eggs
in their kitchen and it's quite easy just to, you know, with, I don't know, some eggs,
a bit of cream, some cheese that you've got knocking around, you know, we've always got
got like half a packet of feta or a bit of parmesan or something that needs using up so you
can um and then just sweat down some onions you can have some sliced potatoes in you can put some
pepper capers whatever you've got really just like it doesn't matter what order you're doing
this in you're just kind of throwing it in just chuck it in and then in with the if your pan isn't
non-stick or you haven't got a decent pan quite often a good tip is to cook all your veg and get
it ready take it out of the pan and then line it with some greased with paper and then put the
heads back in, pour your eggs and cream that have been seasoned, and then you can just gently
cook it on top of the stove and then pop it in the oven under the grill or just, you know,
like 180 for about 10 minutes or so, depending how long, until it's done. And then it will tip out
nicely. And, you know, it takes the same amount of time to make one portion as it does to make
Yeah. And that sounds like that's quite a thick, like, omelette type style.
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. It's like a cheese without the pastry.
So you're not getting that kind of...
So healthier for your heart, yeah, and you're getting the protein from the egg and the vegetables
are always going to add extra fiber and extra extra sources of vitamins and minerals.
And what happens if you're the only person working from home?
So there'll be a lot of people who just the husband or the wife works from home.
Can you, obviously once you've cooked that, you've got to try and eat quite a lot of that.
Does it last in the fridge for very long, Henry?
Well, I mean, I guess...
Yeah, like four days. I mean, it depends how good your fridge is really, isn't it? But
I wouldn't, I wouldn't make frittata and freeze it. I don't think like you could, but it's
not going to be, it's not going to be as nice. Whereas something like soup, you could happily
freeze. I think, I think other things is like, you know, like dressing, like, um, you know,
having some, like with your frittata, having some green salad, you know, you could grate
up some carrot you could put some seeds you know some other tasting but having a really nice grass
dressing to go with it and and obviously lots of the kind of pre-made dressings are from the sugar
or they're full of emulsifiers so they don't split you know and so they kind of come out the
jar nicely and um and they're not good you know like don't even buy don't ever buy a dressing you
could just make it yourself and you just you know just like a little bit of mustard a bit of um you
put a bit of honey or don't need any honey, some lemon or vinegar, some olive oil and
just shake it. And it will split because, but that's fine. You just shake it up again, pour
a bit over your salad and you can make a big batch and just keep it in your fridge for,
I mean, it lasts for weeks. Yeah. Yeah. I love making that. Do you use different
types of vinegars or do you just use the like apple cider vinegar, which is supposed to be
really good for you if you've seen that before you went. Yeah, that's probably the go-to,
the apple cider vinegar just because i think it's got it's got your mother in it which always sounds
a bit weird you know kind of drinking your mum with the apples mum but yeah i mean whatever you
want really i mean i guess just that acidity so you can buy some really fancy um uh as a chef you
can buy some beautiful kind of like sherry vinegars or cabernet sauvignon vinegars etc
you don't need to go to that just yeah just the good apple cider vinegar i wouldn't use like
sarsen's distilled white vinegar, for example, that might be a bit abrasive.
Yeah, don't use more vinegar, maybe not so nice.
Like balsamic vinegar, for me, is too sweet.
Yeah.
Like you can use that as like drizzling or dipping your bread in, but actually
it's probably a bit of a waste to go into a dressing.
So just a good, and actually the, like most apple cider vinegars you see in the
supermarkets, they always tend to be organic, which I don't know whether
there's just one big organic farm that makes all of it and then they just repackage it
to everyone else. But they're pretty cheap and it lasts. Yeah. Some of them say they only last
for seven days and then others don't have a sell-by date or an open-by date on them. So I'm like,
I'll do the sniff test and just make sure it's okay. Yeah. I can't imagine vinegar ever goes off,
Does it?
I don't know.
I've had some.
I've bought some organic ones that say use within seven days.
And then I feel really bad because then I'm like, if I haven't got through it all, I'm like, it says throw out.
But yeah, I never know if that's quite right or not.
No, no, I don't know.
I don't know.
I normally go by the smell and the taste.
And if it feels like, oh, maybe, maybe not.
But yeah, that's a great way just to make up some nice salads and salad dressings to go with those meal choices.
So there, there's some quite easy, nutritious, but delicious.
recipes to do for lunch there, Henry, isn't there? And then how do people package their
lunch to go into the office? There's nothing worse, a soggy sandwich, is there?
Yeah, yeah. Well, I guess I'm spoiled because I work at the bakery, so, you know, we just,
we've always got bread on tap and so you can just make your own sandwich. But yes, I can,
a sandwich is always better made fresh, you know, so, but if I, if I take food into work,
something that I try and do, and I have been in a bit of a bad habit recently, though I'm
going to remind myself tonight to do this.
When you're cooking your dinner the night before, just rather than having seconds or
thirds, you know, and finishing it up, actually, when you're plating up, just plate up into
a pot ready, something that you can either microwave or actually, you know, you can just
eat it straight out, and then just put it in the fridge ready to go.
And then you'll eat less that night because you're kind of economising because I definitely can eat three plates of dinner if it's tasty in front of me.
So you've kind of like banked one.
And then you've got something delicious and tasty for the next day.
And obviously certain things aren't going to, you know, be as nice the next day.
But mostly, you know, if you've had a good tasty dinner, having it the next day for lunch, I don't think it's a bad thing.
Particularly if you've cooked it from scratch.
Yeah, and some things taste even better the next day, don't they?
They do, they sort of like, they had that chance in the fridge and you're like, oh, actually, it's quite tasty day two.
Well, it's like a party, you know, like when you first arrive at a house party and you don't know everyone, everyone's being a bit kind of embarrassed.
And then, you know, fast forward a few hours, everyone's like, they're all best mates and they're all hugging and dancing.
And, you know, and it's the same for food.
Like, you know, they need time to just like get to know each other.
You know, they're all a bit awkward at the beginning.
And actually, you know, so it's something like a, like a, any kind of stewed thing or anything
that when there's things mixed together, whether it's like a curry or a stew or a casserole
or something, they always taste nicer, reheated, day two, day three, day full.
And it's just because, I don't know, I guess it's like things are breaking down and they're
kind of mixing together and there's all sorts of chemical corrections going on that I've
got no idea, but they taste nicer.
Like the flavours kind of mellow and they kind of harmonise.
Exactly. So I think we all need to give that a go now, don't we? So I think we're just wrapping up to the end of the episode, Henry.
So what would you say, top tip from you and a top tip for me for people working from home?
So what would you, one thing that everyone could hopefully try and do, what would you tell them food-wise?
Either an item they need in their fridge or whatever you'd suggest.
Well, yeah, I think being a bit more intentional with your shopping and just trying, you know,
buying less of the kind of pre-made snacks and the things that you know you're going to regret.
Like you might have bought them for the weekend when you can be a bit naughty and you're living
your life a little bit, but actually on a Wednesday, you're going to regret eating.
So just don't buy it.
Like buy things that make you have to cook from scratch because then, you know, it's a good
exercise and get out of your chair and do a bit of cooking.
it doesn't have you know you're not cooking a mission style meal you're just making some soup
but it's only going to take you 20 minutes like it's not a massive trouble but just be a little
bit more intentional and i think once yeah once you've got to get into those good habits it'll
it'll make it easier now and hopefully visit the fitter or less exactly exactly it's gonna
fuel you from the inside out and in terms of a last top tip for me would be take that extra time
before you sit down at your desk to actually set it up correctly even if you think you're not
going to be there for very long because most of the time, let's be honest, we're probably
all at the laptops and phones and things far too long. So just value your back and your
spinal discs and your eyesight to just take that extra time to sit up straight. I saw
you sit up straight there, Henry. That's good.
Yeah, I remembered.
So it's been a pleasure to chat and we look forward to chatting on the next podcast. We'll
see you soon.
Yeah, brilliant. Thanks, Hayley.
Bye.