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Our thoughts, musings and the latest innocent news.
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Wombat poo is cube shaped.
Something to do with them not rolling off logs apparently.
(The droppings that is. Not the wombats.)
This week's question comes from Chloe who is worried about the amount of chocolate she eats and the risk of getting diabetes. I think Chloe's concern is more about the sugar in chocolate and it's a common misconception that eating too much sugar makes you get diabetes.
If you don't already have diabetes, eating sugar will not give you the disease. The most important thing to stop yourself from getting diabetes type 2 is not to be overweight. If you eat more calories than you burn off (whether that's in the form of fat, sugar, starch or protein) then you'll put on weight.
So why does being overweight make you more at risk of getting diabetes type 2? You may have heard of a hormone called insulin whose job is to deliver sugar (glucose) to the cells of the body. When a person is overweight, the cells in the body become less sensitive to insulin.This means that there is more circulating blood glucose instead of being taken in to the cells to be used as energy which isn't good for your body.
The other important factor in preventing diabetes type 2 is keeping active. The more active you are the more energy and fat you will burn. And the more exercise you do, the more muscle cells you will have and these cells are more sensitive to insulin than fat.
So coming back to chocolate. It won't give you diabetes per se. If you're eating tonnes of the stuff and don't burn it off, then yes you'll put on weight which could in turn lead to diabetes but that's the same with any food.
Personally, I'm a big fan of dark chocolate which has more cocoa solids in it than milk chocolate.The cocoa bean is high in a natural chemical called flavanols. Research has shown that flavanols can lower insulin resistance so it looks like dark chocolate in small amounts could can actually help prevent daibetes (which is good news for me).
As ever, if you have any questions please don't hesistate to ask.
Bye for now
Dr. Shilps
This weeks question comes from Ad who wants to know why bad food tastes so good.
Now firstly, I don't think that there is such a thing as "bad" food but there is such a thing as a bad diet. If you feast purely on pizzas, burgers and chips everyday, then that would classify as a bad diet in my eyes. However, if you have things like burgers and chips once a week and eat healthily the rest of the time, than that's still a healthy diet overall.
I think Ad is referring more to the cravings we get for all things fatty, salty and sugary. Even as a nutritionist, I still have cravings for a certain pickled onion fried snack from time to time (and nothing else will satisfy).
Research has shown that we are born with innate likes for 3 different tastes - sweet, salty and umami (which is the taste found in meat). We are also wired up to like high fat food because they are the most calorific.
This all goes back to hunter-gatherer times when we needed to focus on high-calorie foods when we could get hold of them to lay down fat and stay alive. Now food is available us all the time, this innate programming can be a problem.
So what's the solution? Well, we can change our pre-programmed likes by trying lots of different types of foods over and over again. That means eating more the 3 tastes that we innately dislike: bitter, sour and foods that burn. Sounds weird (and slightly unpleasant) but through eating these types of food you can grow to love them (think coffee, limes and curry).
My best piece of advice to curb the crisp cravings is to give yourself lots of healthy and tasty alternatives to chow down on. A handful of dried fruit and nuts for example are great.
Basically, the more healthy food you eat, the less you eat the less you'll crave the "bad" stuff.
Time to reprogramme those wires.
If you have any thoughts, questions or stuff you'd like to see on my blog posts, then as ever, just drop me a line.
Bye for now
Dr Shilps
You might have noticed the caps on our big cartons have changed. A small detail maybe but it's the small things that make the big difference.
Our old caps used to have this ring pull thingy which you had to pull off to pour your smoothie out. Since our smoothies need a good shake first, that sometimes resulted in stuff getting splashed when you pulled the seal off. Shoes, kitchens, the occasional household pet.
We’ve been working hard to sort it out and after 9 months of cap fiddling, we’ve finally pulled it off. No more splash back, expensive dry cleaning bills or trips to the dog groomers. Our new caps mean you can now unscrew and pour straight away. They’ve been specially designed to make sure your smoothie stays just as fresh as always. And to cap it all off, by switching to these new caps, we’ll also be saving 20 tonnes of plastic a year. Top marks indeed.
You may have seen in the papers or on the telly that Coca-Cola have taken a minority stake in innocent. There’s a letter from the founders explaining the nature of the deal on our blog and on the homepage of our UK website.
The background to this deal is that we’re ten years into a thirty year journey towards what we want innocent to become. Our vision is for innocent to grow into a global, natural, healthy food and drinks company – one that makes stuff which is good for people, uses ‘lighter footprint’ ingredients, packaging and production techniques, and which supports charities in the countries where our fruit comes from. In terms of our international expansion, it’s a big goal, and to get there we're going to need a bit of help.
That's where the deal with Coke comes in. They've invested £30M for a stake of between 10% and 20%. We spoke to plenty of potential investors before we made a decision (over fifteen), and you'd be surprised how many wanted to tell us what to do and to run innocent themselves, rather than allowing us to carry on doing what we do.
And that's why we chose Coke – because of all the people we spoke to, they were the ones who guaranteed a hands-off approach; an approach that means that we continue to run innocent our way. We will continue to make the decisions, just as we always have done. Adam, Jon and Richard, the three founders, will continue to lead the business. Coke have placed no restrictions on what we can and cannot do. But we can ask for their advice and help from time to time, which we think will be useful. They may even at some point be able to help distribute our products, but it’s early days so we’ll have to see.
The investment means we now have the funds to do what we’re here to do; get more healthy stuff to more people and places across Europe and beyond. And, let’s face it, times are pretty hard economically speaking, and this investment gives us the added stability to weather the tough headwinds most businesses are facing.
If you've ever started your own business, you'll be able to appreciate that innocent is much more to us than the place where we work. And we know people will believe us when we say that we thought more about this decision than any other in our history. We know some people will always disagree and we will respect that, but we know this deal is a great opportunity for innocent and will allow us to do what we’re here to do – get more healthy products to more people.
We know you have thoughts and comments so feel free to post them either on this blog our or UK blog where there is a good debate underway. But please keep all comments clean and free of abuse – this is a family show i.e. kids read this blog too.
Hello
Over the next few days you may read in the press about Coca-Cola making a minority investment in innocent, and we wanted to tell our drinkers and veg-potters about the deal and why it’s a great opportunity for innocent.
Basically, we’re dead excited about the investment. The funds raised allow us to do more of what innocent is here to do – get natural, healthy stuff out to as many people as possible. And the money raised is going into the business to fund our European expansion, so we can get innocent out to more places (none of the cash is being paid out to the shareholders; that desert island will just have to wait).
The three of us who set up the business will continue to run and manage innocent. We will be the same people making the same products in the same way. Everything that innocent stands for, remains in place – to only produce natural, healthy stuff; to push hard for better quality, more socially and environmentally conscious ingredients; to find more efficient and environmentally friendly ways of producing and packaging our drinks; to support charities in the countries where our fruit comes from; to have a point of view on the world, and to not take ourselves too seriously in the process. In fact, this deal will simply allow us to do more of these things.
We chose Coca-Cola as our minority investor because as well as providing the funds, they can help us get our products out to more people in more places. Plus, they have been in business for over 120 years, so there will be things we can learn from them. And in some small ways we may be able to influence their thinking too.
innocent is ten years old this year. We sold 24 smoothies on our first day, back on 28th April 1999. This week, we will sell approximately 2 million. It’s taken a lot of hard work and not a small degree of luck to get us this far, but fundamentally the thing that has made it all possible has been the support of our retailers, suppliers, the media, and most importantly, you – our consumers. So, as the next chapter for innocent unfolds, and as we step up our mission of getting natural, tasty healthy things to eat and drink to more people, we want to say a sincere thank you to everyone who has ever bought a innocent. Without you, we’d just have an expensive fruit crushing hobby.
Thanks and bye for now.
Adam, Jon and Richard
Co-founders
innocent
PS As always, we’d love to hear what you think, so email richardr@innocentdrinks.co.uk with any thoughts or questions.
Lots of you wrote in and asked us to bring back our apples & blackcurrants recipe.
Letters, cards, poems. Someone even made us a very nice cake in an attempt to convince us. Well, you asked (nicely), we listened and we're pleased to announce this recipe is back to stay. We love hearing what you think so please keep sending us your letters, cards and cakes. Especially the cakes.
Hitting the shelves in grocery stores nationwide very soon.
Last month a few of us here at Fruit Towers set ourselves some Lenten challenges, we thought it might be a good idea to let you know how we are getting on 29 days in.
As you probably remember Brian and Ali challenged each other to stop biting their own nails. Whilst Ali is a little bit behind on the challenge (the nails just keeping falling off into her mouth, she says), Brian has racked up a least a mm of nail on at least three fingers. Ali wanted to point out that she would also have a least a mm of nail on at least three fingers if she also had gone to the Maldives for 2 weeks and lazed around in the sun.
Although we have evidence that Juliet wore runners to the Paddy's day festival in Clane, apparently this was one of her high heel days off.
Finally, the person who seems to be winning our Lenten challenge is little baby Max, his dad Brendan set him the challenge of sleeping through the night by Easter Sunday. Baby Max has beaten this deadline by sleeping through the night last Tuesday. Well done Max.
There has been some confusion in the media today about smoothies and their nutrition. While we can't talk for other smoothies, we thought it might be helpful to tell you more about the nutrition of our smoothies.
One innocent smoothie = 2 portions of fruit
Did you know that less than 21% of us are hitting our 5-a-day? Which is a bit scary. innocent smoothies are made from 100% pure crushed fruit, providing an easy and convenient way to get more fruit in your diet. As each smoothie is made with at least 80g of crushed fruit and 150ml of juice and as 80g of crushed fruit equates to 1 portion and so does 150ml of juice, you get 2 portions of fruit in each smoothie.
5 types of fruit in every bottle
Nutritionists recommend eating a wide variety of different fruit to ensure that you get the full range of vitamins, minerals, fibre and other phytonutrients, which are essential to stay healthy. Innocent smoothies are made from at least 5 different types of fruit so are an excellent way to get that all important variety into your diet.
Only 146 calories
As innocent smoothies contain nothing but two portions of fruit, they contain the same number of calories as two portions of fruit. On average, a smoothie gives you 146 kcals which is only 7% of the guideline daily amount for calories, whereas eating a banana and an 80g portion of mango provides 159 calories. In addition the calories from fruit are ‘good calories’ as they don’t just give you energy, but provide you with fibre, anti-oxidants and vitamin C.
106% of your recommended daily allowance of vitamin C
Innocent smoothies contain an average of 64mg of vitamin C per bottle which is 106% of your recommended daily allowance. This compares to eating a banana and a portion of blueberries (80g) which provides you with 59mg. Vitamin C is probably the best known of all the vitamin family and is a powerful anti-oxidant which means it can prevent cell damage from free radicals.
A good source of fibre
Because our smoothies contain whole crushed fruit as well as juice, this means you get more of the goodness from the fruit, like the vitamins, nutrients and of course, fibre. Each bottle contains on average 3.7g of fibre which equates to 15% of the guideline daily amount (GDA) of fibre. That’s the same amount of fibre as two and a half medium slices of wholemeal bread.
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