Tag: nutrition

Growing our own

An Update from David

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It hardly seems possible that this time last year we were planning out another year. A natural cycle of winter pruning, hoping for a successful pollination in March leading through to a new harvest in July.

A year on, and we are still thinking about that natural cycle, but life has changed. The natural cycle remains, but every customer now is a personal customer. We sell a very specialised fruit and every personal order values sea buckthorn so we need to nurture and ensure that quality is king.

The original concept of growing sea buckthorn was underpinned by its nutritional value. The historical context of it being valued as a traditional remedy for centuries added to its credibility. This tradition inspired plant breeders across the world to tame wild varieties. Wild or tame, the berries have the potential to be so much more than being a “little orange berry”.

As a grower we are committed to a natural cycle that provides a little more knowledge with every year that passes. We started with German and Finnish varieties back in 2009. These plants are now mature. The Finnish plants have been a challenge, but it was rewarding in 2020 when we could pick the variety Terhi for the first time. Like our Siberian plants, the Finnish ones did not enjoy our mild, wet weather. But success is sweet when it happens.

In 2012, with the help of the InCrops team at the University of East Anglia we imported our first Siberian plants. This was very exciting as these promised so much. Thornless, high yielding, better tasting, easier harvesting – the panacea of sea buckthorn growing.

In ten years we have seen only one crop of Siberian berries. Reality mellows initial enthusiasm, but not the determination to grow Siberian sea buckthorn. The consideration that moving plants across continents required them to adapt to a new climate and soil had not been factored into the original plan. 10 years on our learning curve has been steep and frustrating. Now in 2021 we are planting a new Siberian orchard with a new planting design to solve the barriers that have prevented Siberian success.

As we move forward in the orchard, we have been so fortunate to team up with Dr Lucy Williamson -who as a nutritionist is deciphering what sea buckthorn is.

Our fascination for sea buckthorn was driven by its nutritional potential. The 190 phytochemicals found in the berry drive the potential benefits, recognised over the centuries. We analyse our berries and the laboratory gives sheets of facts. Understanding what they mean is key to knowing what we are doing, why and how we can change our methods to improve berry quality.

Lucy’s speciality is gut health. This is not an area normally associated with sea buckthorn. We tend to think of health as a reaction to a disease or ailment. We should think more proactively of maintaining good health and this comes back to the ancient concept that food is health.

For food to be the driver of health it has to have the right qualities. Understanding what those are and why they are important is essential so as growers we focus on improving berry quality. Lucy is our key to developing the understanding of why sea buckthorn has the potential we believe it has. The gut is the place where our food is transformed into the vital nutritional building blocks the body needs. Understanding how it works is a new and complex science and with Lucy being specialist in this field will guide our focus as to how we grow to produce berry quality that relates to health.

nutrition

British Seabuckthorn – a small berry with a big story to tell for Millennials!

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To explain all about the benefits of our sea buckthorn, we’ve teamed up with Registered Nutritionist Dr Lucy Williamson –

Busy, active lifestyles require nutrient-rich foods especially when combined with the stress of professional careers and demands of family life. There may be little spare time in the day to discover new natural, sustainable & functional food, planetary-health values which are becoming key in making great food choices. As a registered Nutritionist, I’m happy to be on this journey working with the British Seabuckthorn Company to share the good news on this nutrient-rich crop with all its potential health benefits, responsibly farmed in Essex!

Add these bright orange berries of happiness into your breakfast bowl, as dried berries into your nutty mix, drizzle rays of golden sea buckthorn oil over winter salads or with yoghurt as a warm porridge topper and enjoy a cup of seabuckthorn tea too!oxygen

Nutrient-rich and protecting biodiversity too…

The best food choices not only nurture human health but support the biodiversity of our ecosystems, from healthy soils to thriving flora and fauna with essential roles to play in maintaining nature as it should be. The British Seabuckthorn company nurture these principles and over the next few months we’ll be sharing with you all the need-to knows about this fabulous novel food.

The berries of sea buckthorn are a powerhouse of more than 190 nutrients, packed with antioxidants, vitamins & minerals, Omega oils, plant sterols and there’s plenty of fibre too. These nutrients all work in synergy with each other ensuring we get the maximum benefit to our health from this functional, natural food. And there’s potential for little waste in farming sea buckthorn – these nutrients are found in the berry, peel, pulp and seed – take a look here to search the different products available from different parts of the plant.

Top 5 Nutrients to talk about…

We want to share the good news on 5 sea buckthorn nutrients not only essential for every-day health and wellbeing & busy lifestyles but great for sports and longer-term health too. Stay tuned to this blog series over the coming months for further details on each.

Antioxidants

A brief bit of science! Our body is detoxifying all the time; our every-day metabolism involves each body system using Oxygen to function. This constantly produces a by-product called Reactive Oxygen Species, or ROS – toxic, unstable chemicals which have the potential to cause cell damage if not removed or detoxified. Cleverly we make our own antioxidants to do this but stress, lack of sleep, exercising muscles, pollutants, medications and many more factors often increase our demand for antioxidants. Cell damage is the start of the ageing process and the forerunner to many types of chronic disease so making sure we have plenty of antioxidants in our food is a priority! Sea buckthorn is packed with a wide range of antioxidants including flavanoids and beta carotene, a type of Vitamin A. On top of this, its exceptionally high levels of Vitamin E and C ensure we can make enough of our own antioxidants, like superoxide dismutase, great for healthy skin and hair but vital in protecting us from longer term health risks like heart disease. Sea buckthorn contains high levels of this antioxidant too – one of the reasons why it’s not only fabulous for our own health but is widely used for racehorses to counter the negative effects of strenuous racing. They develop a fabulous shiny coat too; the Greeks noticing this effect in horses grazing ancient sea buckthorn, named it Hippophae Rhamnoides, or ‘shiny horse’.

Vitamin C

When life is busy & active (with the added sleepless nights of parenting perhaps!) we use a lot of Vitamin C in our food to make antioxidants which can mean there’s less available for a strong immune system. Going into winter especially, we need a Vitamin C boost – 100g of sea buckthorn berries have 10 times the Vitamin C of an orange! Plenty of Vitamin C in our diet also ensures Iron in plants is bioavailable for us – without Vitamin C we can’t absorb plant-based Iron; unlike ‘haem’ iron from animals which is readily absorbed. A great, natural way to help protect against iron deficiency in teenage years, and beyond into pregnancy.

Omega 3

Sea buckthorn is a fabulous source of several Omegas; finding a good source of plant Omega 3, ALA, is always a winner as it’s generally low in our UK diet and we need a lot of it from plants to begin to get near the health benefits that come from the types of Omega 3 in fish, DHA and EPA. More on this in 2020…

What about Gut Health?

Don’t forget being a source of fibre, sea buckthorn helps nurture our microbiome to optimise Gut Health. These beneficial bacteria have many other longer-term benefits for our health too!

British Seabuckthorn is an exciting story of a nutrient-rich, sustainable food, and the British Seabuckthorn team are more than a little excited to share this with you! Follow us to find out more over the next few months, try our recipes and products and please fire feedback, ideas and questions our way!

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Sea Buckthorn – a rich source of antioxidants

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Thoughts from our registered nutritionist, Lucy Williamson DVM BVM&S MSc

It’s almost a year since I began working with British Seabuckthorn – as a Registered Nutritionist with a particular interest in sustainable foods, healthy for people and planet, this journey is an exciting one… British Seabuckthorn (BSB), responsibly farmed in Essex, contains an abundance of nutrients vital for long-term health and wellbeing. Packed with antioxidants, natural prebiotics, vitamins, minerals, unsaturated oils and many other beneficial phytonutrients, it’s a berry with fabulous potential.

The best food choices not only nurture human health but support the biodiversity of our ecosystems too, from healthy soils to thriving flora and fauna with essential roles to play in maintaining nature as it should be. So, as the British Sea Buckthorn Company nurture these principles in continuing to work hard to develop a crop adapted to our rather unpredictable British climate, here are a few ‘need-to-knows’ about British Sea Buckthorn!

A rich source of antioxidants 

Our everyday metabolism uses oxygen. By-products of this process are known as free radicals, which can cause damage to cells in a process known as Oxidative Stress – a key factor in ageing and chronic illness such as heart disease, stroke and cancer. We produce antioxidants all the time in our body cells which, by removing these radicals, keep our cells healthy. Many of the antioxidants we make require Vitamins C and E and British Sea Buckthorn is an excellent source of both. Our recommended daily intake of Vitamin C is 45mg; British Sea Buckthorn often contains more than 400mg/ 100g so it’s a very rich source! (current regulations concerning nutrient claims state a food must contain more than 24mg/ 100g to be ‘high in’ Vitamin C, EU Regulation No 1047/2012) Oxidative stress is higher in Obesity and Type 2 Diabetes so antioxidant need increases here too as it does after endurance or high intensity sport. BSB also contains other, powerful antioxidants including Superoxide Dismutase and Flavanoid polyphenols which have an important role in nurturing our all-important gut bacteria too.

As well as eating a more plant-based diet, we’re encouraged to eat fish at least twice weekly in order to benefit from its Omega 3 unsaturated oils. Many years of firm evidence now show the links between a good intake of Omega 3 and protection against heart disease and stroke in particular due to its anti-inflammatory role. Fish contains particularly beneficial types of Omega 3, DHA and EPA. These aren’t present in plants but a good intake of plant

Omega 3 (ALA)

Omega 3 can be used by the body to make EPA and DHA. Too much Omega 6 in the diet can restrict this process but as sea buckthorn contains far more Omega 3 than Omega 6, it has real potential here too.

Seabuckthorn as a natural Prebiotic: Fibre

FIBRE is a type of carbohydrate that can’t be digested in the small intestine. Instead, it passes to the colon (large intestine) where it’s fermented by billions of gut bacteria to produce many compounds essential for our metabolism. Collectively, the genetic make-up of these bacteria is known as our ‘Microbiome’. With 150x our own genetic makeup, our microbiome is to be nurtured; in fact, our ratio of human cells to bacterial cells is 1:1 so we’re just as much bacteria as we are human! We now know these gut bacteria have key roles in our long-term health, from optimising our immune system to protection against certain types of cancer and weight control. In addition, fibre maintains our ‘digestive health’, helping food to pass more quickly through the gut. In 2016, Public Health England, advised increasing the recommended intake of fibre for children (18g/day) and adults (30g/day), as a result of firm evidence for its health benefits, collected over several years. Sea buckthorn, along with other fruit and veg (diversity is the key to good microbes!) is a great source of fibre and also flavanoid antioxidants mentioned earlier, both of which are an important energy source for our microbiome and our gut health.

With an abundance of nutrients, too many to mention here, I’m excited to be involved with the British Sea Buckthorn story as we work together towards a sustainable food choice with so many potential benefits to our longer-term health.

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The importance of standards and nutrition

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UK farming and the rural economy has seen many changes over the past 35 years. The global market, the growth of the retail food giants and technological improvement has driven agriculture forward. Farms have grown in size and scale – developing businesses where enterprise seizes every opportunity to grow. Alongside this, smaller farms have changed through innovative diversification, driven by passion and belief in great product. Behind this though is the stark fact that all these farms – whether large or small are responding to the need to remain viable.

At Devereux farm we started to grow sea buckthorn as a means of looking for future viability. In 2002 our dairy herd was sold in a falling milk price market. It is sad to see this trend has increased with numbers of UK herds dropping by half to less than 10,000. The loss of our milking herd left a vacuum that we needed to fill and as farmers the desire to fill it with a natural, wholesome food product was desirable.

2005 saw the introduction of exotic fruits such as noni, gogi, and acai into the US consumer market. These fruits had by analysis high levels of nutrients and traditional medicinal use associated with health benefit.  Sea buckthorn at that time was a northern hemisphere version of these exotic fruits.

The subject of high nutrient content is difficult. Nutrient content is variable based on climate and the environment where the food is grown. The sea buckthorn that we grow is not grown in the extreme climate of its native Siberia. It is however of a genetic ecotype that has a capacity to produce a fruit with higher than normal levels of nutrients.

Harnessing genetic ecotype and providing growing conditions to provide a healthy plant is the basis for the success of our 2018 harvest.

Sea buckthorn has been widely studied and many research papers are published through a great series of books edited by Prof. Virendra Singh. Volume 2 of this series, on biochemistry and pharmacology exposes the nutrient diversity within sea buckthorn from around the globe. High levels of vitamins A, B, C, E; omega fatty acids; flavonoids; sterols, polyphenols alongside minerals are all present, but what we need to find is what is typical in our fruit.

All fruit has a capacity to add to a healthy diet. None provide an all-encompassing health silver bullet, but it is helpful to understand nutritional strengths, and to the grower these can be used to create credible standards of quality for consumers to judge on their merits.

With this in mind, this year we are developing crop trials alongside a highly respected UK horticultural institute to analyse our methods and fruit to start to move towards being able to create those credible standards.