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A mystery public vegetable garden has just appeared in our local park, Edinburgh Gardens.

The timber planter boxes seem to be made from recycled pallets. What a great idea!

Inside the veggie box are a mixture of tomatoes, spinach, beetroot, corn, lettuce and even strawberries. They’re all looking mighty healthy. It’s a great example of how a vegetable patch can still flourish in an asphalt and dirt environment.

Sadly, it’s only a matter of time before the City of Yarra removes the guerilla planter boxes. The council requires that such projects go through the usual administrative channels to determine a suitable location in the public space.

Well, as a City of Yarra ratepayer, I’m more than happy to have this left for the community to enjoy.   North Fitzroy is littered with Victorian worker’s cottages, and most have very limited space to create a working veggie garden.

Perhaps this might inspire council to create a community space for projects just like these – and then they could be enjoyed by all the local residents.

Such public gardens have already been successful at CERES environmental park and  the Collingwood Children’s farm – but we could always do with more.

And, by the way, if you’re looking to create your own veggie garden at home, Sustainable Gardening Australia have a great handbook.

Written by Andrew Talati

One of the biggest keys to weight loss is managing your portion size. While a lot of people are careful to monitor the type of food they consume and maintain a regular exercise regime, the often forgotten element is the physical quantity of food you consume at anyone siting.

As children we are often told to eat everything on our plate and this behavior often translates into the adulthood. We fill the plate with food and not finish until we have consumed its entire contents. Similarly the size of the plates has grown over the past century, and particularly in the past 20 years, increasing from 23 cm to 28 cm.

Add to this the growing package size of processed foods over the years. With the sales pitch of getting better value for money, food manufacturers are selling the notion that we can receive an extra 10% to 20% more for the same price. This leads to the consumer’s perception that the larger packaged quantity of food is a normal portion size.

Everything is becoming gargantuan, from your average humble muffin through to even your coffee (a takeaway small coffee now is the size of a can of soft drink). This gradual increase has lead to people recalibrating what they think is the normal size of a snack or meal.

While you may be eating a well-balanced healthy diet, consuming excessive calories translates to an unused energy surplus. This storage of excessive energy ends up around the usual parts of the body being the tummy, butt, thighs and arms.

Adam who has been with Fitstyler for two years is extremely active, as well as going to the gym Tuesday and Thursday nights and playing hockey he attends our boot camps twice a week. He has seen fantastic improvements in his fitness level, including now having a resting heart rate of 45 bpm. As a funny side story, when Adam was recently having his blood pressure taken the nurse was concerned that his resting heart rate was so low.

Despite this Adam noticed that the extra padding around his waistline would not disappear, no matter how much exercise he did. So Adam introduced some minor changes to his portion size, without any dietary changes, that showed amazing results. It made a massive difference to his weight loss and he lost 2cm from around lower stomach.

What is An acceptable portion size.
Harking back to the old measurements you can use your hand as a rough guide to finding the right food proportions.

Rice, pasta, fruit & vegetables: 2 x cupped hands
Meat, fish & poultry: The flat section of your hand (excluding fingers
Carbohydrates: A clenched fist
Nuts: A cupped hand

When is enough?
Try restricting your portion size to a smaller plate and resist the temptation to get second or third helpings.
The biggest trick is to learn when you have had sufficient food as opposed to eating to the point where your stomach feels uncomfortable.

Another way to successfully downsize from the current consumption levels is to slow down when you are eating. This will give your digestive system time to process the food and to send the signal to your brain that you are full.
If you do feel hungry top up with another serve of vegetables rather than more meat or carbohydrates such as pasta or rice.
Written by Andrew Talati

The traditional process of picking olives burns a huge amount of calories. This is a great form of exercise compared to the current methods of harvesting.

Olive tree ripe for picking

The traditional method of picking olives from the trees is by using a stick to beat the branches. The olives are still harvested this way at Laharum Grove from early June to mid July. Unlike the neighbors of this Victorian Olive Grove at the foothills of the Grampians, they still use traditional methods of harvesting.

As the trees are very established it’s difficult to get a shaker machine around the trunk and this can damage the trees. The traditional method is harder work but just as effective according to the owner Dierdre Baum.

These trees form part of the original grove planted in 1943 by Jacob Friedman. They were part of an investment project which unfortunately left many investors high and dry. The demand didn’t align with the sales projections. Other stories speak of an Italian immigrant who hand planted the grove with the help of ex POW’s and convicts.

Harvesting olives using stick

This is very physical work with a olive picker filling 2 x 500kg bins per day. The process begins with covering the ground with a meshed sheet that collects all the fallen olives.

Placing nets on ground before harvesting olives

Great care is taken not to accidentally step on the olives and crush them as they are then worthless for oil extraction.

Traditional technique picking olives with stick

Next comes the fun part, by using a stick that may be made from bamboo, the picker faces the branch with the fruit side on. They then use a follow through action to skim the edge of the branches to ensure maximum extraction.

Collection of sticks to collect olives

Different sized sticks can be used to either reach the higher fruit or the branches drooping close to the ground.
It’s a good idea to ensure that you give your arms an even workout and change sides regularly unless you want to have a dominant arm.

Fallen Olives after harvesting

Collecting olives

The next stage is to collect the fallen olives and deposit them into the smaller baskets that hold up to 25-30kgs. These are carried over to the larger bins.

Sifting leaves from olives

The smaller branches amongst the olives need to be sifted prior to being deposited into the larger bins.

Bins full of picked olives

Well we managed to fill 2 bins in 2.5 hours, the first bin at 625kg and the second at 645kg, not a bad effort considering that this takes a whole day for a single picker.

The olive tree before harvesting by hand

The olive tree after harvesting with stick

This process is extremely efficient as the fruit is stripped bare from the tree.

Enjoying the harvested olives

Now the best part, enjoying some el fresco dining with olive oil and bread, olive oil paste and olives.

For those looking to experience the pick and press themselves, Fitstyler will be running our own event with competitions to add some more excitement. You can also contact Laharum Grove.

The last part of the process is getting the olives pressed within 12 hours, preferable 6 hours to stop deterioration and the fermentation process commencing. This is just one of the 9 prerequisites for the oil to be qualified as extra virgin olive oil.
So with a yield of 10%, that’s a lot of olive oil to be processed.
Fortunately for us, Lanarum Grove has access to the pressing facility at Toscana Olives which forms part of the original plantation dating back to the 1940′s.

If you’re looking for a challenge, then try and beat the record set last week when one of the older pickers from Toscana picked 1400kgs in a day, pretty amazing when 25 of us picked 1300kgs.
Now that’s some exercise, starting at 8.30-9.00am and finishing by 5pm as the olives must be at the press to process. Even more impressive is Diedre’s mum and dad who will pick a ton a day.

The roller coaster style diet where you totally deprive yourself of all enjoyable foods is not sustainable over the long-term and will ultimately lead to failure.

Like anything in life, from spending money on little luxuries to indulging in yummy food including the usual suspects such as ice cream or chocolate, it’s okay to treat yourself every now and again. However, once you’ve crossed that line from occasional treating to consuming these sugary/fatty foods on a more frequent basis, then you start going into energy surplus.

If you’re trying to lose weight by removing all the indulgent food and beverages from your diet you will tend to consume this type of food excessively once you reach your goal, if you haven’t already given up your diet because it’s just too hard.

It’s all about balance and control, that is having lots of fruit and vegetables, lean meat and cereals with the occasional treat.

I like the traffic light labeling system as it provides a good summary of what we should be aiming for in regards to moderation. ‘Green’ foods are the healthiest choices with and should be a big part of our diet. ‘Amber’ foods are a less healthy choice that we need to consume in moderation, while ‘red’ foods are, not surprisingly, the most unhealthy food choices and we really need to minimise or reduce consumption of these.

When eating, and especially when you’re on a diet, choose foods that have moderate levels of calories, sugar, fat, saturated fat and salt but make sure you give yourself treats along the way, and enjoy!

With two thirds of the Australian population overweight or obese, there really needs to be some regulations regarding food packaging and advertising. KFC latest product, the Double Down Burger users the Man time copy line, with a massive 1939 kJ.

While a person’s daily energy intake will vary depending on your age, sex, body size and the level of activity that you engage in, a 31-year-old to 50-year-old male weighing 71 kg requires 8300kj per day based on no physical activities, just to sustain life.

So in just one sitting without the added chips or soft drink nearly a quarter of the days energy requirements are up represented by this fat laden burger (22.3gms).

This advertisement appeared on Facebook under a clients profile who is in their mid-20s. This type of advertising is extremely clever as it targets teenage boys who see the high levels of fat as a gastronomic challenge while men may find this targeting their masculinity.

This is a classic case where food labeling is required that identifies this as a high health risk product given the high percentage of energy and fat.

A tax on energy dense foods would make such products extremely expensive and would remove their attractiveness as a product to be consumed on a regular basis.

This is a classic example where one would need to really evaluate KFC’s motivation in bringing out such a highly energy dense product when they’re recommending that the clients climb the stairs to burn 930 kJ which is just under half the energy contained with this one burger.

Without singling out KFC, the other fast food companies are hardly squeaky clean with hungry Jack’s ultimate double whopper burger packing our humongous 5085 kJ and McDonald’s the Mac having 2060 kJ. I guess the most disturbing thing about the KFC double down burger is the fact that there is no bread and vegetables whatsoever, just meat or rather processed meat and preservatives.

Hopefully this product stimulates a lot of debate about advertising standards, food packaging and perhaps even a energy tax.