Winter is coming

The season of the sneeze is almost upon us.

Alongside the things we love about winter (snow, mulled wine, afternoon naps on Boxing Day), it does happen to bring a few unwanted guests. Viruses, bacteria, and their unpleasant effects on the body are a curse we all have to live with.

Stuffy noses, coughs, sore throats, aches & pains. Unless you seal yourself away in an airtight room, they can seem unavoidable. Especially when the little ones are running around the house with their joyful disregard for pathogen management.

These winter ailments can stop you enjoying food, put the brakes on your social life, and prevent you living life to the fullest. Not to mention increasing your chances of needing 'duvet days’, which, across the population, damage the UK economy to the tune of £900 million per year.

Thankfully, there are a few simple things you can do to help ward off the sniffles.

Your immune system is your body’s illness defence mechanism, sending heroic white blood cells hurtling around your body to valiantly battle against the nasty incoming germs.

This army needs reinforcing if you want to win the war against winter misery. A few simple ways to strengthen their ranks are to:

• Exercise lightly - get those white blood cells moving around your body
• Sleep well - aim for at least eight hours of uninterrupted sleep
• Keep your stress levels down - can be easier said than done
• Take daily cold showers - rather you than us!

Thankfully, you’re not cursed to bending over a bowl of steaming menthol water while running on a treadmill. There are tastier ways to boost your immune system.

Ginger zingers

We know that the unchecked spread of bugs causes all sorts of nasties in the winter months.

Here at Loving Foods, we cultivate bacterial growth too, but in a friendlier way. Helpful bacteria. The kind of bacteria you’d happily introduce to your mum. We mix them with enzymes, vitamins and minerals to be the most helpful and heroic bacteria you’ll ever meet.

They help us take organic green tea and organic cane sugar, and combine them using a 'symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast' (SCOBY) to drive the fermentation process. Out of this comes our drinks, to which we add some natural organic fruits and herbs for flavour, and bottle up, ready for you to enjoy.

Meet winter’s favourite drink - Lemon & Ginger Organic Kombucha. Not only does kombucha sound like it comes from Middle Earth, it’s a potion with near-mythical effects too. Being a fermented, slightly fizzy green tea drink, it’s naturally delicious and beneficial on its own. But we add more magic.

Ginger, with its wonderful scientific name of Zingiber officinale, is a flowering plant, the root of which has been widely consumed by humans for thousands of years. As well as adding a fragrant spice to countless recipes, it’s also believed to have substantial health benefits, including boosting the strength of our immune systems.

Lemon is a fruit packed with vitamin C, which you don’t need us to tell you is crucial for a well-functioning immune system (and for warding off scurvy, in case you’re planning a trip to Treasure Island any time soon).

The two together, combined to form part of our living health drink, Kombucha, create a satisfying mix of zing and oomph.

Kombucha is known as the tea of immortality. We can’t promise you’ll live forever, but it might increase your chances.

Go for a Jun

How about a glass of Champagne instead? Cuvee? Extra Dry? Brut?

For a sufferer of the sniffles, a doctor probably wouldn’t prescribe a bottle of bubbly. As fun as they are, alcoholic drinks have been shown to depress the immune system - not what you want in the run-up to the decadent festive season.

We’d like to offer a tasty alternative.

Jun is often referred to as the Champagne of kombucha. It’s a sparkling green tea with honey, thought to originate in Tibet.

It is in fact similar to kombucha, but instead of using organic cane sugar during the fermentation process, organic honey takes its place. This is combined with organic green tea, which is rich in the antioxidants and vitamins that a healthy body needs.

We don’t serve Jun in a Jeroboam, or even a Magnum, but a 330ml bottle. We add lemon and ginger to this elixir to make a lightly sparkling and refreshing complement to kombucha, ready to boost gut health and immune function for the winter months.

So it might be a good opportunity to make time for that stress reduction we mentioned. Maybe take a moment to enjoy a refreshing sip of lemon and ginger Jun - the easiest way to boost your body’s defences.

Reinforce those white blood cells. There are stories of legendary samurai warriors riding through the Himalayan mountains with supplies of Jun ready to boost their energy and spirit. How about giving your immune system a fighting chance too?

Put your feet and your shields up. Ferment the resistance.