Episode 7: Restaurant Standards

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Welcome to Episode 7: Restaurant Standards; Soil & Organics

In today’s episode, Nav and I discuss restaurant standards, how soil quality affects nutrient profile and organic foods.
We cover ideas of:

• Having restaurant standards is NOT the same as being fussy
• What ‘fussy’ can be
• How soil quality affects nutrient profile
• Organic food – marketing term or legitimate health implications?


• ‘Nav Approved’ hierarchy of healthy food choices

Restaurant Standards

Having standards in terms of restaurant quality is NOT the same as being fussy.
When it comes to your health and food choices you should take charge and be prepared to draw a line in the sand.  Convenience is not always in your best interests and going a little further for quality makes a small difference at the time, but a big difference over time.

Can it go too far?

Many in the ‘healthy eating community’ may have heard the term ‘orthorexia’. This is where the quest for health through food and exercise reaches unhealthy levels. It can have profound mental and social implications. A good write up about orthorexia and it’s consequences can be found on the conversation.

So where do you draw the line?

Just like with healthy food choices themselves, behaviours around food are not binary. It’s a sliding scale. If you find that your choices are affecting your relationships with friends and family, or you spend a fair portion of the day thinking about the composition of your next meal, there could be a problem.

Restaurant choice criteria:

• Ingredients chosen based on quality
• Preferably organic
• Something on the menu I can choose that fits with how I eat
• Would travel across town to support places that are doing the right thing
• Can adjust whatever on the menu to suit

Change from “Where is the nearest place to eat?” to “Where is the nearest high quality place to eat?”

Honourable mentions:

Nav approved order of importance:

1. Organic (often lower toxic load of pesticides, herbicides and fungicides)
2. Fresh (higher nutrient content)
3. Local (supporting local farmers)
4. Wildcaught fish / free range meat (usually better)


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Yours in good health,


Tim & Nav

Tim Brown

Strength Coach & Ninja at FunFit: Functional Fitness & Self Defence Centre

Tim is passionate about fitness and health. Combining his love of Martial Arts and Fitness, Tim founded FunFit: Functional Fitness & Self Defence Centre in 2008 and from 2012 has been a student of Nutrition. Eat Real Food is Tim's vision (with help!) to better inform people about healthy food choices. With so many messages out there (often conflicting), Tim thought "wouldn't it be great if there was a site that people could go to that cut through jargon and marketing-speak and just made it easier to make healthy choices?" Enter Eat Real Food. Be warned: Tim is (in)famous for good information and bad jokes. He may also overuse parentheses.

Navin Arden-Wood

Mover & Shaker at MovePlayFlow

I've been interested in human health for a long time now. I once heard Dr James Chestnut say in relation to health "It's not bad genes, bad germs or bad luck. It's how you Eat, Move and Think". I couldn't agree more. The search for fuelling myself for optimal performance started with high school sports and has never really stopped. Books were read, seminars and workshops were attended, naturopaths were consulted. I don't even want to calculate how much I've spent in time and money on this topic. The thing about nutrition is that there are an awful lot of different opinions and almost everyone claims "scientifically validated".

In 2002 some friends and I opened a health food shop. 10 years later we have 8 shops scattered around Sydney. It was a great learning ground for finding out what's good and what's just good marketing. After a decade being in the health food industry with 100's of naturopathic discussions, 1000's of customer conversations and 1000's more formulation reviews with suppliers, I'd like to share the best of what I've learnt so far.