From Lawyer to Food Nutritionist...

Interview for Law and More with Geeta Sidhu Robb...

You are, by profession, a corporate lawyer. How hard is it to balance running a household, your own business and practice law. Surely time is not on your side?

No, you never quite stop feeling guilty that there is something not quite done.  I tend to divide my day up like an army general like most of the working mothers I know.  I tend to divide my days up into segments eg. school run, work, house, work pick up, .....homework and screaming........bed and more work!  I have a very good ability to focus, and when I pick up something, anything, I always, but always finish it before I put it down.  I also tend to work very quickly since time is short.  I have learnt over the years, and making myself ill, not to sweat the small stuff.  (working out what is defined as small stuff was a little  challenging...)

 You set up Nosh in light of your son’s food allergies, do you think you would have undertaken the venture if it weren’t for his strict food regime?

No never, I didn’t even know how to cook when I had him.  I also only learnt about food in one particular way at a time.  It sounds weird I know, but first I learnt how to cook food he could eat; then I learnt how to make it nutritionally as complete as I could; then I worked out it had to taste good too, or he wouldn’t eat it!! I describe myself as a food technician, not as a nutritionist as I learnt how food ‘works’ on the body and mind.

Although you are not a qualified food nutritionist, you have extensive experience in this field of work. How did you first become involved in food nutrition and what prompted you to study law instead of becoming a qualified nutritionist?

I studied law straight out of school and finished law school in Guildford when I was 21.  The issue of food only came up when I had my son when I was 29.  I did look at becoming a nutritionist but the studies never had the same angle I was interested in.  They tended to spend most of the time looking at the food, and its physical effects. I wanted to know also how it affected brain function, absorbency in the intestine, its vibration, its healing properties, its effect on the metabolic rate.  Possibly I was looking for a more ‘alternative’ education.

Geeta and family...

You’ve worked with children with ADD, ADHD and other ailments and have fed children in schools within the London region. This field of work is, obviously, very different to the world of corporate law. Do you still do both and is there one that you enjoy more?

I stopped working with kids over 2 years ago when I decided to set up Nosh.  I couldn’t really do all of it, much as I wanted to.    I have to say I totally totally loved it.  To work with kids is like having an instant response box sitting in front of you.  Everything has an immediate feedback.  And being someone who has spent eons in a classroom, as is the case with most other lawyers, it was a blessed relief.

I do still work in the field of corporate law, I enjoy it tremendously and it gives me great satisfaction to use the huge amount of experience I have under my belt in this area.  I act as a negotiator and trouble shooter for businesses around the world with a specialisation in emerging markets, particularly Africa and Russia.  It is enormous fun and still lets me spend time with my children as my contracts are by their nature short term.5.    As a lawyer yourself, juggling a demanding and time-consuming job with a healthy lifestyle is difficult for legal professionals.

What are the principal alterations to diet and nutrition that can be easily adopted by time-pressed individuals?

•    Buy the best quality ingredients you can possibly afford, especially with fruit and veg.  ie. Buy organic.  If that is not possible buy ‘sourced’ food, ie know where it comes from. In the UK today, you almost always do get the quality you pay for with food. 

•  Eat in season, so your body gets the best nutritional uptake from the food you eat. Ie.  Don’t eat strawberries in December.  Buying organic helps with this to some extent.

•   Snack on RAW ingredients only.  Have raw almonds, cashew, etc to hand.  Raw seeds can be mixed in with them, and fruit is easy to carry. Raw broccoli, carrots, cucumber work spectacularly too. (Invest in some tupperware)  Choose them over crisps etc.  It takes a while for your taste buds to adapt, to so don’t despair, just give yourself a timeline where you will enforce it eg. one week, and then you will have picked up certain habits by the end of the week which will keep you in a better place then you were before, at the very least!

•  Eat less.  Drink more water.  We all eat way, way too much.  Several times during the day the cravings you mistake for hunger are actually thirst.  Stress depletes the bodys store of water in many ways eg. sweating, so then the body hangs onto what water it does have and we end up bloating.

•  Only buy food that is made in front of you, whatever it is.  Please.  The stuff that is cleverly marketed by so many people as ‘fresh’,  still has been sitting around for ages and has a low nutritional content.  I swear your average sandwich has less vitamin content than the packaging it comes in.

•  Order from us.

 Obviously clients come for you for help with nutrition, is there a specific demographic of individuals that use your services?

Yes, busy professionals, new mothers, from about 27 to mid-fifties.  Generally not so much people needing to lose weight but people wanting to raise their energy.  A surprising number of men are our clients, as they become more and more health conscious.  Mainly non-British.

It should be noted that all our food is dairy and gluten free as a basic premise.  I do not believe anyone should, in this day and age eat those ingredients as a basic part of their diets.  This also means that we have many coeliacs, anaphylactics, vegans and people with allergies or specific diets signing on, as fast food is not a reality for this growing segment of our populace yet.  But give me time.........

Nosh is a great, yet simple idea. What are the main benefits of having healthy food delivered to your door, apart from it just being healthy and quick?

1.    You don’t have to shop for anything other than water/other drinks – so saves time.
2.    Takes the thinking out of it so you can trust what you are eating and get on with other things.
3.    Inevitable and inexorable results, as the food is on your doorstep, so there is very little inherent backsliding on our plans.
4.    A process of education takes place subliminally on what and how  and how much you should be eating as you get used to our portions and tastes on a daily basis.
5.    As we don’t deliver on weekends you don’t feel hemmed in or constrained by our diets.
6.    Its a bit of a ‘no-brainer’ – open your fridge door and voila!

What ailments do you clients mostly suffer from and what are the most common diet pitfalls.

They tend to primarily lack energy, and have eventually come round to the realisation that their diet is responsible for this.  The next thing is overweight and the third is a lack of time.

Generally people lapse from diets because no one likes to suffer.  So usually they are eating this awful food, and counting down time to when they are ‘finished’.  And then they slowly but inevitably go back to their usual diet because that’s why they did it in the first place – it was the easiest option.

That is why I insist all our food tastes good.  I can’t stand the concept of eating anything because you have too. Yuk!  It is also why we are instantly responsive to feedback.  I have a motto “ Change is inevitable, suffering is optional.”  We follow it diligently.

I do lapse, I have a very very strong emotional and intimate relationship with chocolate.  Intense.
And when I lapse, as we all do, I start to feel the effects and correct myself fairly quickly.  But I have also learnt that its ok to have off days – there are days, whole entire days, where I simply don’t want to eat anything healthy at all, and I just don’t worry about it, and stick with.............well, you guessed it, anything with chocolate.  It never lasts long though and I think that is the point.  Why beat yourself up?  The body is a self-correcting mechanism and it will tell you what it needs and when if you only learn to listen to it.

   You are a great inspiration for working women with busy families! Do you think the fact you’ve obviously practiced a very healthy lifestyle has empowered you to undertake all of the challenges you have managed to successfully achieve?

I think all working mothers everywhere should have a national holiday – with medals - dedicated to them and them alone, as we are truly the unsung heroines of the 21st Century.  My biggest incentive to live healthily is that I have found that |I cannot sustain my level of output mentally or physically if I am not doing so.  And this is speaking as a ex-smoker of  some 17 years.  I simply cannot do what I am doing if I don’t live the way I do.  

Obviously you can’t do all of the cooking and delivering of food yourself. How do you manage to juggle orders, preparation and delivery and how do you determine which menu will best suit the individual?

I don’t actually do any of it these days other than the menu preparation and speaking to our clients.  I have a wonderful team of people and we made many mistakes before we learnt to streamline our systems.  (and if truth be told, we are still learning.)  We divide the business up into three parts: catering, admin and delivery and separate them totally with different people in charge of each, and with ultimate responsibility for each.

With regard to choosing a specific menu for an individual, much is made of the information provided by them about their lifestyles, work, habits in order for us to understand clearly how to best help them.  We then go to our nutritionists for some input and then produce a menu for them.  We try, on the whole, to produce as balanced a menu as we can for each person, including buying the water for them if need be, in order to encourage them to drink sufficient amounts.

You’ve written a book ‘Food for All’ How does it differ from other nutrition books and where is it available.

Food For All is actually a cookbook, providing basic recipes incorporating gluten, dairy, egg and nut free food.  The principle behind it is that for somene who wants or needs to eat this way, its a great starting point for altering your everyday diet, including Sunday lunches, without feeling any pain.

Its available from Amazon and directly from us if you email us at info@noshdetoxdelivery.com requesting a copy.