Healthy Way To Drink Wine With Eve Kalinik

Last Updated: June 1st, 2021

We had a great pleasure to talk with Eve Kalinik about natural wines and healthy eating.  Eve’s passion for nutrition comes from a true love and appreciation of food.

Eve Kalinik is an advocate of conscious eating, a leading nutritional therapist, and one of the tutors for THE GUARDIAN masterclasses. She is the author of Happy Gut, Happy Mind: How To Feel Good from Within and Be Good To Your Gut guide.

We are delighted to share her thoughts with you.

What prompted you to go down the nutritional therapy route?

It sounds like such a cliché but it was really personal health issues that lead me to find a different way of addressing symptoms that ultimately helped me to regain my health and wellbeing.

Nutritional therapy and functional medicine which is a major part of my practice is ultimately naturopathic in its philosophy that is to treat the individual and not the disease.

For me that makes perfect sense as we are all so unique and often the same conditions can have very different underlying and causative factors.

What is your favourite organic produce?

Do you have any tips for those wanting to incorporate more organic food and organic drink into their diet?

I do get a bit frustrated in that organic produce can be really expensive and potentially not that great for the planet when its flown from the other side of the world so rather than fixating on organic I rather try to steer clients towards the source as often the smaller producers practise in a way that is organic but not necessarily certified. That’s why farmers markets are so great and you are also generally buying more local and seasonal that has its benefits too. More generally my tip is if you are not buying organic and you are not peeling then just try washing your veggies and fruit well with filtered water if you can’t buy organic. And diversify the intake as a variety of fibre in the diet (that also includes nuts, seeds and whole grains) has a positive impact on your gut health. That being said the foods I would say non-negotiable should be organic is meat/poultry, dairy and eggs for myriad reasons including the nutritional profile as well as ethics.

I also believe in a less is more with meat, even organic, and to encourage buying local and eating all cuts and organs as that makes it much more sustainable to enjoy meat as part of a healthy and balanced diet. The same is with buying natural wine.

health

Is there a heathy way to drink wine? 

I tend to buy low intervention and sustainable wines if I can. When I started learning more about the process of winemaking it was very difficult to revert back, now I only choose natural wines.

Certainly, wine brings people together and sparks conversation about the very act of drinking and enjoying it.

With the natural winemaking and minimal intervention approach, it generally means that there are none to very few of the legal (and sometimes rather nasty) ingredients that can often be added to wine, so one may question is that heinous hangover totally due to too many glasses or could it also be the burden of these chemicals (which is the reason you should buy low histamine wine if you can). Some health issues can occur as a result of sugar in wine as well. I have to say that personally I don’t feel the same sickness after drinking these wines and most importantly I reckon it tastes better too. I believe that wine can be a very healthy part of our life if we use it in a positive way, just like any other food really. There are also great wines which are low alcohol wines that one can enjoy.

Furthermore, the antioxidant or polyphenol content in wine may positively enhance the gut microbiome (aka the trillions of microbes in the gut) so one might say you are giving a toast to your gut microbes when you enjoy a glass (or two!).

Do you have a go-to wine of choice? 

Well since I have discovered orange wines, these have featured quite a lot in my life. I really love the Kamara Estate pure nimbus Retinitis (below) that you stock here at Pull The Cork. More generally though it really depends on the season, as in winter I do like a rich bold red, something like a Malbec and then in the summer, there is something so delicious about a crisp white wine.

health

Who would you most like to share a bottle with? Over a plate of…..?

Ooh, this is a hard one. I think it would be Dan Barber. And I’d have to let him cook one of his incredible dishes!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *