Peter Dingle's Cookbook
Reporter: Graeme Butler
Peter Dingle is best known as Dr Dirt... - but this scientist has turned sou chef. Together with his naturopath wife Martine he's published a healthy eating planner - its' a six week guide of what to eat and when, "there are all these recipe books out there and all these diet books but they don't show people how to eat"
Martine says "this is not about the recipes it's actually about the formula it's about learning how to mix and match your favourite foods to create a complete meal to give your family a nutrient dense meal" The Dingle's have tackled the often difficult task of getting kids to eat their daily dose of fresh fruit and vegetables. If fruit seems too boring - try a smoothy ... quick and bound to get the thumbs up.
Peter says "starting off with a mango banana smoothy its a bit exotic but its' introducing that raw food and it gets the digestive enzymes going and it preps the body and of course none of the nutrients have been lost in the heating process"
A simple Shepherd's Pie is a wolf in sheep's clothing - the mashed potato hides nutritious and high protein beans - kids normally wouldn't have a bar of them. "The shepherds pie is again it has a little bit of meat in there because traditionally shepherds pie has the meat and the potato the way we've improved it is basically putting the beans in their to give you a little bit of the vegetable protein and the fibere in the potato side of it but its has lots of veggies in the actual filling"
The book covers all the basics of good eating - and gettting the most out of your food... menu plans with a few key points we can all try. Peter says "have your veggies and have your meat but don't make the meat the main part another really important part of this formula is we also encourage people to have a salad before their meal so there's always a bit of raw"
With kids in mind the dingles have been careful to make the meal ideas as appealing as possible as well as maintaining their healty message.."it also has to be a meal that most people would want for example pizza maybe no tthe best most nutritious meal we've got in tehre but we show you how to make a healthy pizza so it's no tsaying you can't have the pizza it's jsut sayin ghave the pizza and make it healthy the shepherds pie the smoothies stuff that people are going to want"
According to Peter and Martine there are definate health benefits of following the six week guide - and the key underpinning it all was it had to be simple and quick. "When Martine and i sat down to do it essentially it had to be do-able it had to be something that every family could do we're able to put togetehr two or three or four course meal literally in under 45 minutes, half an hour in most cases..it would take you as long to make these meals as it would to go out to a take away place and order it and wait for it to be ready"
For Further details visit
The book "The six week healthy eating plan" can also be purchased at most Dymocks or Healthfood shops.