My latest health challenge

As research is always developing and me being a person who loves science and food, I am always learning new information about food/nutrition and applying this as best I can to my life.

Now this isn’t always easy and sometimes when I find out something unpleasant about a food that I adore, it makes me want to bang my head off a wall. . . . but I resist and do my best to minimise whatever it is so that I can still enjoy my food without being extremely restricted (as I feel this creates a bad relationship with food) but also to maximise my health.

The latest challenge was finding out about the high temperatures that most nut/seed butter manufacturers use. This concerned me as the high heat can cause the good fats in the nuts and seeds to be destroyed but can also create bad ones. However, I do understand that some manufacturers do this as a safety measure regarding microbial contamination as nuts from certain areas are cause for more concern than others.

While mulling over this issue (and trying desperately not to cry as I adore nut butter so much that I buy it by the kilogram!) I came up with the following compromises that I feel will work for me without resulting in the head banging + wall situation.

1-Try to source a reasonably priced nut butter that uses lower temps but sources its nuts from low risk regions/tests for contamination
2-Source my own raw, low risk nuts/seeds then roast at a suitable temperature and grind my own butters (which has the benefit of allowing me to choose and create flavours)
3-Be mindful of what temperatures I cook at e.g if a recipe calls for it to be baked at 180C+ for 20mins then ill lower the temp and cook for longer e.g 40mins if I have the time. Therefore by doing this I am reducing the nutrition loss (especially regarding omega 3 fats) whilst still being able to cook with some of my favourite ingredients, thus keeping those high temp batches for the odd occasion.

If there are any suggestions or tips to offer on this subject, I’m all ears.
Please keep them pleasant, remember, we’re all just trying to do right by our bodies xX