Rediscover the value of dairy on a tight food budget

How can you get healthful nutrition that strengthens your family’s immune systems on a tighter budget?

Dairy is unique in its offering of high quality protein, as well as an array of essential vitamins and minerals, such as calcium. Dairy, on its own or as a vital ingredient, is also a fond family comfort food.

Dairy’s role in a healthy diet

While there’s unfortunately no food or food supplement that can help us to prevent Covid-19 infection or cure it, there’s a lot we can do with our diet to optimise our family’s health.

South Africa’s Food-Based Dietary Guidelines (FBDG) provides a country-specific blueprint, and there are specific guidelines we can focus on during this time.

The following FBDG are particularly useful at present:

• Enjoy a variety of foods, eat plenty of vegetables and fruit every day and have milk, maas or yoghurt every day.
• Dairy is not just a vital source of high quality protein, it’s also packed with vitamins, such as A, and B12 , as well as calcium, potassium and zinc. It’s this range of essential micro-nutrients that ensures nutritional value for money that can help low-income South African households overcome mild forms of malnutrition that make us more vulnerable to diseases.
• Fermented dairy products, such as maas, yoghurt and many cheeses are rich in probiotics that improve the health of our digestive systems, which play a pivotal role in immune response.

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If you are planning to cut down on your food budget in the coming months, make sure you prioritise the nutrient-dense foods such as vegetables and fruit, dairy and whole-grains so that your family’s diet is focused on health and wellness. Look for opportunities to rather swap out nutrient-poor foods for the better options.

Tips to improve comfort eating

Lockdown takes its toll on our emotional well-being and overall mental health, and it’s not surprising that many South Africans are “comfort eating”. Financial worry, boredom, frustration with confinement, depression and sleep disturbances are just some of the common ways that the extreme stress of the pandemic is playing out in our daily lives.

Lockdown tends to be associated with more eating occasions and a higher intake of refined carbohydrates, especially sugar. These foods are known to increase the “feel-good” hormone serotonin, but at the same time they provide a lot of energy without the necessary nutrients and can lead to unwanted weight gain.

A better option is to boost serotonin levels by including foods with an amino acid called tryptophan in your diet. Milk and dairy products are rich sources of tryptophan, which the body uses to produce serotonin.

Tryptophan also produces melatonin, another biochemical that helps to promote sleep and relaxation. A glass of warm milk at night can contribute to your serotonin and melatonin levels and help you to feel less depressed and stressed. You will also sleep more peacefully.

Milk is also known to help you keep fuller for longer and can help limit unnecessary eating. We have to ensure that our “lockdown nibbling” doesn’t feed obesity, which promotes Covid-19 co-morbidities such as type 2 diabetes, heart disease and respiratory problems.

Instead of nutrient-poor snacks try frozen yoghurts, dairy and fruit smoothies and whole-grain crackers with cottage cheese.

For the love of dairy

From cheese toasties and bowls of gogo’s amasi to buttermilk rusks, fresh pancakes and heart-warming umphokoqo, dairy really is the ultimate comfort food, not only nurturing our bodies but invoking treasured childhood memories.

Former Masterchef finalist chef Siphokazi Mdlankomo said: “My childhood memories of amasi are great memories. As a child growing up in the rural villages of Eastern Cape, amasi was the best meal anyone could eat. Luckily my family did not buy amasi because my grandmother had lots of livestock so she would make incredible amasi with our own fresh milk.”

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