TOPIC: SWEET POTATO

Hey guys, we had a request to do a post about sweet potato and its uses and benefits. This family favourite root vegetable is known for its orange appearance and delicious flavour. It is sweeter than regular white potato with a fluffier, lighter and less dense texture. It is classified as a staple food in some cultures and has an impressive nutrient content. Sweet potato is rich in vitamin A, beta carotene and other traces of essential vitamins and minerals. It is a great food to add into your regular diet if you feel you are lacking in some antioxidants or variety.

It is commonly used in dinner meals to accompany meats or other vegetables. It is such a versatile ingredient though, that it can be used in almost anything. Some people have used it to make cocoa-based brownies richer and denser, and it can make a great batch of home-made oven baked fries. It can be boiled, steamed, roasted, and fried to create different textures to suit any meal. A common favourite is steaming it in thin layers and using it on salad wraps for lunch or dinner, or as layers in a vegetable lasagne. If you’re looking to change up your meals and get some colour on your plate, why not try some sweet potato.

Half a medium sized sweet potato or approximately 75g is classified as one serve of vegetables. Add this serve into your diet to count towards your daily goal of five serves per day! While both sweet potato and white potato are classified as high GI and GL foods, they should not be excluded from the diet as they contain great nutrients when eaten close to their natural state as possible (when cooked).

For those who are athletes, or interested in sports and exercise, sweet potato can be used as a great carbohydrate source pre- or post-training. Some athletes eat it steamed or boiled to accompany their meals during training. If you haven’t already tried sweet potato, give it a go! Let us know what other blog posts you want to see on our page and remember to recommend us to your friends.

 

Mission Nutrition 🙂

TOPIC: PROTEIN ON A BUDGET!

Hey guys and gals! Are you paying ridiculous amounts of money for protein supplements? Try using skim milk powder as your protein shake after a workout! Its cheap and easy to mix. Add extra cacao or vanilla essence for flavour. You can find skim milk powder in your local Coles or Woolworths Supermarket!

Credits go to: Rorry Walton and class of Nutrition and Dietetics

Mission Nutrition 🙂

TOPIC: PROTEIN WEEK DAY 7

Hey everyone! It’s the last day of Protein Week and we hope you have enjoyed it. Tomorrow we will be having a poll on our page for some feedback. Your participation will help us improve our page, information and your areas of interest.

The last thing we will be talking about in this week is nitrogen balance. It is defined as all the protein that enters and exits a person’s body. To stimulate muscle tissue growth, the body must be in a positive nitrogen balanced state. This means more protein is ingested compared to the amount that is lost. Protein can be lost due to homeostatic (maintenance) mechanisms around the body; such as maintaining hair, finger nails and collagen cells. These maintenance mechanisms combined with a low intake of protein will cause our body to be in a negative nitrogen balance. So remember to have adequate amounts of protein daily to put your body into positive nitrogen balance!

We hope you have enjoyed protein week here at Mission Nutrition. Be sure to ask us if you have any nutrition queries and we will do our best to help!

Mission Nutrition 🙂

TOPIC: PROTEIN WEEK DAY 6

Hey guys and gals, we are coming close to the end of protein week! It’s sad, we know, but we have a treat for those who are interested in how to build muscle. Protein timing is an extremely important nutrition concept and is considered the most crucial aspect in muscle tissue growth. Most resistance exercise enthusiasts often overlook or are unclear about this part of recovery after exercise. The most recent research in sports dietetics has suggested one can increase their lean tissue growth BY A FURTHER 15% from consuming protein pre and post workout compared to consuming protein post workout and before bed. Each serving of pre and post workout solution should consist of 50g of carbohydrates and 30g of high quality protein (rich in essential amino acids + BCAA’s). Please be sure to have your post-workout protein within the first 20 minutes after your final exercise. We hope you enjoyed this short post and if you would like to know more about this topic, please comment below to generate discussion!

Mission Nutrition 🙂

TOPIC: Q&A DRUG ENHANCING ABUSE

Regarding the latest drug controversies with Australian AFL, Jamie has asked us a question regarding the consequences of drug abuse using anabolic steroids or other enhancing agents.

As most of you already know, anabolic steroids are mainly used for the purposes of enhancing physical physique, strength and self-esteem. This may sound like the perfect drug but it has many detrimental health consequences, especially for those who abuse it. Recent studies have found more people who use anabolic steroids are suffering from long term cardiovascular effects, such as hypertension and myocardio infarction (heart attacks). Other health consequences included disturbances in fat metabolism, decrease in good cholesterol (HDL’s) and raised bad cholesterol (LDL’s), raised cortisol and decreased testosterone.

This raises interesting questions in regards to the recent ALF drug abuse. What is considered to be drug abuse? Should there be tighter regulation in the threshold of ingesting substances? Should performance enhancing be banned from sports all together?

Let us know what you think.

Mission Nutrition 🙂

TOPIC: Q&A SUPPLEMENTS WHICH AID WEIGHT LOSS

Hey guys and girls, we have a question from Dan and he asks, “Hey guys, just wondering if there are any supplements that can aid/speed up weight loss when coupled with good diet and exercise?” The answer is yes there is! There has been significant scientific evidence on caffeine when coupled with exercise to aid weight loss. The effect of caffeine causes fat to be utilized as the main source of substrate oxidation. That means, when we exercise with caffeine in our system we burn fat as the main source of energy. Caffeine is commonly found within sports drinks, energy drinks, pre-workout supplements and indeed coffee. Green tea is also an effective aid in weight loss as it acts very similar to caffeine. It also promotes fat oxidation during exercise allowing for fat to be used as the main energy source. For any effect to take place, you need to consume between 6-9 cups per day. We urge that you only acquire caffeine and green tea naturally, since we do not encourage supplementation. We hope this helps and if you have any further questions, please don’t hesitate to ask!

Mission Nutrition 🙂

TOPIC: PERFORM AT YOUR BEST, NATURALLY!

Hey guys and girls, this post will be mainly directed at fans who participate in endurance-exercise sports. In the last few years there has been extensive research upon the benefits of beetroot juice in improving exercise performance (especially high and moderate-endurance). A study showed ingesting 500mL of beetroot juice before you workout could improve your time to exhaustion by 15 to 25%. That means if you usually fatigue during a run at 100 seconds, you may fatigue at 115 to 125 seconds by consuming beetroot juice before you run. Sounds pretty good right? We urge everyone to give this a go as beetroot juice provides more than just exercise performance but contains essential vitamins and minerals to promote optimal health. Beetroot juice can be found at your local supermarket in the fresh produce section or health food store. If anyone has any questions about the science behind beetroot juice and exercise please let us know and we will gladly explain in our next post!

Mission Nutrition 🙂

PICK OF THE WEEK: QUINOA

Quinoa is a great tasting food and should be consumed more often! According to the new Australian Dietary Guidelines 2013, just 1/2 cup of cooked quinoa is equivalent to 1 serve of grain (cereal) products! Both women and men need 6 serves from this food group daily. So if you need to switch up your foods to include more healthy grains, or to ensure you meet these requirements why not try quinoa!

It can be added to:
– Salads and mixed through with roasted veggies
– Stir fry dishes or home-made sushi rolls in place of white rice
– Meat and veggie dishes as a side serving.

It is also a tasty alternative to white breads or refined pastas with it’s nutty flavour. Bursting with vitamins and minerals and sold both at Coles and Woolworths (in the health food aisle), you can’t go wrong!

Mission Nutrition 🙂

TOPIC: CAFFEINE SUPPLEMENTATION DURING EXERCISE/SPORT

Hey guys and girls, we’re back with another post that relates to one we recently uploaded. Have you been following along and piecing things together? In regards to our recent post on the Australian Institute of Sport’s categories for evidence-based supplementation in sports performance, we thought we would share the benefits of ingesting caffeine before exercise and how to do it safely. In the last decade, there have been credible findings in the consumption of caffeine in regards to increased sports performance. Caffeine is mainly found in coffee, energy drinks (Mother, V, Red Bull), caffeinated soft drinks (Cola) and pre-workout supplements. Caffeine has been seen to directly increase sporting performance by increasing heart rate, rate of fat-oxidation, mood, time to exhaustion during exercise, and alertness. Caffeine also has the benefits of decreasing fatigue and sensation of pain. A 3mg dose per kg of body weight (eg. a 60kg person will need a dose of ~180mg) has been proven to be the optimal dosage to increase sporting performance. Any larger (6mg & 9mg) doses were proven to have no further or increased benefits. An average cup of coffee will contain 130 – 160mg of caffeine, with energy drinks consisting of ~80mg per 250mL can, and Coca Cola having 48.75mg per 375mL can. Whenever using caffeine as a sports supplement, it is suggested to ingest it directly from coffee sources rather than energy drinks which also contain high amounts of sugar and preservatives that may be detrimental to health in the long run. The Australian Dietary Guidelines suggest energy drinks and cola to be a discretionary choice that should be consumed sometimes and only in small amounts.

Mission Nutrition 🙂

TOPIC: SCIENTIFICALLY PROVEN PERFORMANCE ENHANCING SUBSTANCES

Hey everyone, regarding the recent drug scandals we thought it would be our duty to release some information regarding sports performance supplements which will enhance performance in a legal manner. The Australian Institute of Sport (AIS) has devised a system where performance enhancing products are categorised into 4 groups based on their scientific effectiveness and legality. For those who have sporting goals and seek an effective performance enhancing substance (pre-workout, during exercise, post-workout), “category A” should be most looked into. This can be viewed below:

http://www.ausport.gov.au/ais/nutrition/supplements/classification_test

Please like and share this status if it was beneficial to you!

Mission Nutrition 🙂