Kaya Peters is a nutritionist, yoga teacher and holistic health expert from the Netherlands, who provides advice for people in Abu Dhabi and Dubai looking to live well. She reveals what pitfalls you should avoid when dining out at the city’s restaurants.
What is healthy eating?
Eating a diet rich in whole unrefined foods, known as whole foods. They are not processed by mankind and come straight from nature. When eating whole foods, you are getting all the benefits of its nutrients, vitamins and minerals without adding to your body unnatural substances that are part of almost every type of processed or manufactured food. Usually this means one-ingredient foods like: broccoli, brown rice, yoghurt, blueberries, chickpeas, almonds and chicken. Contrary to common belief, eating healthy does not mean eating rabbit food or salads all day. And with using whole foods as your staples, you can make the most delicious dishes which satisfy your taste buds in all possible ways. Nowadays we tend to live on foods and drinks which are stripped of all essential nutrients and make us gain weight, feel lethargic and deplete our energy reserves.
Is it OK to spurge occasionally?
Of course. But once you get used to eating healthy, nutrient dense foods, your body will not crave so much of the bad stuff anymore. My favourite splurge is a good quality dark chocolate, or my own homemade vegan banana-bread. I never feel like eating fast food or ice cream. I haven’t eaten it for years. And believe me, I used to eat it all. I just think we need to educate our bodies a little bit by putting the right kind of things into them. So yes, splurge, but not on 20 doughnuts.
When eating out, what should you eat in order to stay healthy?
Eating out is such a fun and social thing to do and should never be avoided. Thankfully it’s really easy to eat out healthily, except when you’re going Chinese, as their food is so full of MSG. When you go Italian, try having a nice risotto or simply ask for a grilled fish and some salad or vegetables. When going Thai, there’s a variety of vegetable dishes that can be ordered. When going local, pick a nice salad or fish. Basically, protein like fish or chicken, vegetables and salads are available everywhere. Just try to stay away from the white bread and heavy desserts.
What foods should you avoid?
Refined white sugar, white bread, refined grains like white rice and white pasta, commercial candy, pastries and cakes, fast food meals, fried food, bad quality oils, additives and e-numbers, packaged supermarket goods, artificial ingredients and heavily sprayed and genetically manipulated fruits and vegetables.
Do you recommend any specific restaurants or cafés that serve good, healthy food in Abu Dhabi?
I personally love Le Pain Quotidien, which has a couple of organic cafe’s in both Abu Dhabi and Dubai. They serve great salads and nice soups. Cafe Arabia also serves some quality dishes. Then of course there’s the Organic Foods and Café at Masdar City. And I personally always like to find small scaled cafés where they serve quality homemade food.
What should people eat at a brunch?
Try to choose fresh foods like salads, vegetable dishes, some clean animal protein like grilled fish or chicken and fruit-based deserts. I would not advise doing too many brunches, as being at a buffet will surely make you eat more than necessary. Another problem with eating out is that we don’t know where the meat, chicken and fish comes from and as it will most likely be a non-organic source it will probably be fed with hormones and steroid medication in order to make the animals grow bigger. In addition the fruits and vegetables are most likely genetically modified. Can you imagine what this does to you when you eat it on a regular basis?
Check out www.kayapeters.com/nutrition and www.privateyogaindubai.com.
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