Caribbean Fit

Hello Everyone and welcome to the next edition of Caribbean Fit! Hope everyone has been great. Over the past couple weeks, I've been thinking about how we as Human beings can become creatures of habit. This is often translated into our daily diets as we may consume the same food every day, whether we cook it ourselves at home or our eat it from favourite restaurants. However, it is important to mix it up a little and that's what were going to discuss in this edition. In the Caribbean, we have specific dishes that are most likely to be on our weekly menus such as pelau, rice and peas, stew chicken or bread and cheese. I am certain that this does not only occur in the Caribbean but every country will have their dishes that are part of their weekly routine. However, as delicious and comfortable these dishes may be, it is important to mix it up. This is because we get most of our vitamins and minerals from what we eat and having a diet that is monotonous can restrict t...

Hey, Guy's and welcome to another edition of Caribbean Fit! Hope all is well with everyone. I've been really thinking for a while of how much people are obsessed with weight loss and size and not actually focussing on health. It is for this reason I want to discuss physical appearance vs health. All across the world there has been and continues to be an obsession with weight loss and physical appearance and the Carribean is definitely not exempt from this obsession. In the Caribbean, it is customary to be greeted with a comment about your weight as opposed to a "hi how are you". What you get instead is a, "hey did you lose/gain weight?" (of course in our Caribbean dialect). This is very annoying to most people and can also have adverse effects on an individual's self-perception. However, what we should all think about is that everyone will never be the same shape or size and the emphasis should be shifted on overall health. Image courtesy Google W...

Hey everyone and welcome to another edition of Caribbean Fit. I know it's been a while since my last post and I hope that you all have been really enjoying the previous posts and trying to incorporate at least one thing into your daily lives. This post is going to be about making wise decisions when it comes to food, so let us jump right in! When it comes to food we all have decisions to make. "Should I eat out today", or "should I cook", and "what should I even eat". Let's face it, sometimes making a choice about what to eat is really difficult, but this should not be, so my job today is to make your life easier, where food choices are concerned. In the Caribbean our food choices have differed from what it used to be with more fast food outlets and street food popping up on every corner, the culture of eating a home cooked meal almost every day is becoming a thing of the past. This is not necessarily a bad thing, once you have the right informat...

Hey Guys! Sorry I've been MIA for a while, been working on some stuff. As you can see from the title we gonna talk alcohol today! Are you all excited?  I know I am. In the Caribbean, alcohol is consumed widely among the islands. It is a part of most if not all of our social events such as weddings, birthdays, christening parties, chilling on the beach, wakes or funeral receptions (repast). Almost all, if not every Caribbean island has an alcohol that is associated with that particular territory, an example is in Trinidad and Tobago there is the Angostura Rum brand, in Jamaica, there is Appleton Rum and in St.Vincent and the Grenadines, there is the very strong Sunset Rum, just to name a few. With all that said, the real question is, does alcohol add any nutritional value or benefit? Jamaica's Appleton Rum  SVG's Sunset Rum Trinidad and Tobago's Angostura Rum Alcohol is basically a liquid created by sugar that has been put through the process of fermen...

Hey Guys, hope everyone has been doing great. This week we are going to discuss one of my favourite things which are snacks. In the world over, most if not all people have a snack or 2 daily and each region may have  a different interpretation of what a snack is for them. In the Caribbean, when we hear snack we automatically think of something in a rustling pack like corn curls, cheese sticks, chips, biscuits or a candy bar. However, snacks are more than just manufactured products in a pack, they are an important means of adding more nutritional value to our diets and therefore we should choose them wisely. Common Caribbean Snacks Snacks are small food amounts eaten between your 3 square meals (breakfast, lunch and dinner) that prolong the filling effect of your main meals. Let's face it your three square meals don't cut it (well at least not for me 🤣) and you need something in between them to hold you over until it is time for your next meal, or just something to ...

Hey Guys! Welcome to another edition of Caribbean Fit and this week we will be discussing dieting. Over recent years within the Caribbean and the world over new diet trends have been emerging rapidly. I am sure this has been very confusing for persons all over the world not knowing which diet is right for them. So, with all that in mind we will discuss different diets that are trending and how to choose the right one for your needs. Firstly, we need to define what a diet really is. A diet is what a person eats or consumes on a daily basis, in other words it is the eating habits of an individual. Therefore, we can say that everyone who eats is on a diet. However, when we talk about the different diets that are emerging such as the gluten free or paleo diet, they are referred to as specialized diets. Persons often adopt a specialized diet to gain some kind of benefit like weight management or to combat a particular health issue. We will discuss the Paleo, Macrobiotic, Gluten Free and K...

Hey guys! Welcome to another edition of Caribbean Fit. I was recently asked by one of my followers to do a post on peppers and the nutritional value that they possess within our diets. So today we're going to bring that spice of the Caribbean, because its all about peppers!!!!! 🔥 In most Caribbean islands many kinds of peppers are incorporated into our dishes. From the mild flavour of the sweet pepper to the intense heat of the Moruga Scorpion Pepper, we love the spice that peppers bring into our stews, sauces and cook ups, but do peppers bring any value besides heat and flavour? Pepper Sauce Moruga Scorpion Pepper Guyana Pepper Pot *Photos courtesy google images Peppers are fruits which bear from the Capsicum species of plants and contain a oily chemical called Capsaicin embedded in its veins and seeds that causes that sensation of heat which you either love or love to hate. By the way, in case you were wondering, I'm in the love category 😊😊. Peppers are lo...