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Small food steps: big world difference

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What steps will you take?

More than 1 million copies of the book Change the World for Ten Bucks have been sold internationally. It’s a book that urges people to do small things that make a big difference.

Since its launch, more than 2 million actions have been completed by readers in Australia and New Zealand alone. Sanitarium nutritionist Cathy McDonald takes a closer look.

Most of us want in make a positive difference to the world, but it’s easy to feel overwhelmed by thinking our contribution needs to be big or time-intensive in order to make a lasting difference. The movement We Are What We Do is behind the best-selling book Change the World for Ten Bucks — and they don’t necessarily agree that it takes so much effort. Their guiding principle is: small changes × many people = big difference.

Here are some of the small actions recommended to care for ourselves, others and our planet with regard to food:

Find out where your lunch has come from

The “food miles” in our meals can accumulate very quickly. Check the country of origin of all food items and try to buy fresh produce that’s grown locally.

Have more meals together

Research shows us that families who eat together are more likely to meet their recommended intake for fruits and vegetables than those that don’t. Even if you can’t have a meal together every single night, just try for a few nights each week to begin with.

Plant something

Start with something simple like a pot of basil and add a different herb to the collection each season. It will also help with food miles as you can’t get more local than your own backyard!

Avoid waste

Australians waste around $5 billion worth of food each year. Buying small quantities of food as you need it will help save money because it’s more likely to be used.

Bake something for a friend

Take some time to show the people that care for you how much you care for them. It can be as simple as baking them afternoon tea. With one small step at a time, small changes really can make a big difference.

For more information or recipe ideas contact one of our nutritionists at [email protected].

Your say: What steps will you take to try and make a difference? Share with us below…

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Julie joins The Weekly

MasterChef catapulted Julie Goodwin from a working mum to national celebrity. She tells Larry Writer about her new-found fame – and the family legacy that inspires her passion for good food.

MasterChef winner Julie Goodwin knew her life had changed forever when she visited the local supermarket to buy mementoes for the funeral book of her grandmother, Edna. “This lady behind the counter recognised me and said, ‘I’m going to announce on the PA that you’re in the store’, and I told her, ‘Don’t you dare!’ She did it anyway. ‘Attention all customers! Julie from MasterChef is here. Come say hello!’

“A crowd of shoppers rushed up. Everyone was lovely, but I’ve always treasured my privacy and I was so sad about Nan, who had just passed away, so I really didn’t feel like chatting, but I put on a smile and I did.”

Julie says it’s a blessing “that Nan lived long enough to see me win. Throughout the show, she was the star of the nursing home. She took a bad turn while I was in the MasterChef house and I was expecting a sad call every day, but she held on and we all got to say goodbye to her. It was beautiful. We couldn’t have scripted it any better. She slipped away peacefully, aged 90. She was so excited for me.”

Nan wasn/t the only one. MasterChef transformed Julie, 38, from a suburban working mum whose cooking was appreciated only by husband Mick, 38, and sons Paddy, 10, Tom, 12, and Joe, 13, into a beloved national celebrity whose rich and hearty fare is being replicated by hundreds of thousands of Australians. “None of us on the show had any idea the program would capture people’s imaginations like it has,” says Julie, who won $100,000, a cookbook contract, lessons with leading chefs and a guest column in The Weekly.

“Life has been a whirlwind and the dust hasn’t settled yet,” she says. “My victory didn’t really sink in until I was sitting in my lounge room [at home in Niagara Park, on the NSW Central Coast] with my boys, family and friends, watching the grand finale on TV, which was screened a fortnight after it was filmed and I couldn’t breathe a word, except to my husband and sons.

I knew the outcome, but still, I was sitting on the edge of my seat! When I won, Mick and I went mad all over again.”

Read more in the September issue of The Australian Women’s Weekly, out now with Therese Rein on the cover.

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Prime time: Thérèse Rein

Photography: Peter Brew-Bevan

Photography: Peter Brew-Bevan

Thérèse Rein is a different kind of PM’s spouse, with her own successful business and identity, but her roles as mother and supportive wife are what she treasures most, writes Michael Sheather.

First ladies of the world

Thérèse Rein is clearly a very different prime ministerial wife. Never before has the country’s leader been partnered by a woman as independent, energetic or determined as Thérèse Rein. She is a devoted mum who climbs mountains, a self-made multi-millionaire with a moral compass and a PM’s spouse with a purpose. It’s a role that she comes to with a vast array of experience as a mother, a daughter and a wife, and achievements as the founder of a successful business empire that today straddles the globe.

While Thérèse says she is only now beginning to find her feet as Australia’s First Lady, she believes that she can bring her own life experience to bear on a vaguely defined role and navigate a path that will ultimately make a difference to thousands of Australians, particularly the young, the disabled and the disadvantaged.

“There are no rules on how to conduct this job,” says Thérèse, who has three children, Jessica, now 25, married and living in China, Nicholas, 22 and studying law in Brisbane, and Marcus, 16, who is still at school and living at The Lodge in Canberra with his parents. “There’s no instruction manual. All I can do is bring the interests and concerns I’ve developed during a lifetime and those — the ones that are true to me — are the natural interests and concerns that come from being a mother. A lot of my interests are about families and supporting young mums, about inclusion and helping people back on their feet. That is true to me and who I am.”

Thérèse talks about Kevin

…”He was studying Chinese and that was unusual. He explained how he thought the next century would be the China century and that we needed people who understood her culture, history and language. I said, ‘You should go into politics, we need people like you.'”

That chat preceded almost two years of intellectual jousting between the pair, reminiscent of the literary sparks that flew between Elizabeth Bennet and Mr Darcy.

“We disagreed on everything,” recalls Thérèse. “It was on the best traditions of Jane Austen. Actually, it was very Pride and Prejudice. We would get into these heated debates about politics, philosophy, films, the meaning of life. And, eventually, he asked me out. We came from very different backgrounds and yet we were so similar.

Read more in the September issue of The Australian Women’s Weekly, out now with Thérèse Rein on the cover.

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The shape we’re in

Thirty years ago, Susie Orbach identified fat as a feminist issue and went on to become the world’s most famous psychotherapist when she treated Diana, Princess of Wales. Today, as she tells Janice Turner, “body distress” is no longer an illness suffered by the few, but a Western epidemic.

Such was the revolutionary vigour of Fat Is A Feminist Issue when it was first published in 1978 that, for a moment, the screwed-up relationship between women and food looked like it could be resolved. In Susie Orbach’s urgent, crusading prose, all was illuminated: diets don’t work because they lead only to bingeing; we eat compulsively to try to soothe inner hurts; or we get fat as a subconscious rebellion, to opt out of how society insists we look and behave.

It became an instant classic, a student bookshelf staple, and Susie’s theories entered the mainstream in a thousand self-help bibles. Yet today, women and food are more embattled than ever.

Obesity and food disorders – which stem, Susie believes, from one root cause, the perversion of our natural appetites – are epidemic, while female body-loathing now begins in primary school, extending even into the retirement home. “I did not expect to be still writing about this three decades on,” Susie, 62, says.

Your Say: How do you feel about what Susie Orbach says? Do you agree or disagree with her?Tell us below…

Read an extract from Bodies by Susie Orbach’s on page 159 of the September issue of The Australian Women’s Weekly, out now with Therese Rein on the cover.

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Congratulations to our winners

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Congratulations to the 1500 people who entered the contest and poured so much effort and passion into their stories.

We appreciate the time and skill of the judging panel, which comprised the former Editor-In-Chief of The Weekly, Robyn Foyster, Ali Watts, Associate Publisher, Adult Books, of Penguin and literary agent, Selwa Anthony.

Big thanks must go to the Penguin Group (Publisher of the Year), whose generous sponsorship makes the whole contest possible and represents an outstanding investment in new Australian writing.

Names of the winner and runner-up were announced in the September issue of The Weekly. For those who may have missed them, they are:

First Prize of $10,000 was awarded to Catherine Lyons of Epping, NSW, for her story Ghosts Of The Willows. Catherine, a busy mother of three, travelled to the Byron Bay Writers Festival, with the compliments of the Northern Rivers Writers’ Centre, organisers of the festival, to accept the award and read an excerpt from her winning story. Ghosts Of The Willows will be published in an upcoming issue of The Weekly.

A cheque for $5000 went to runner-up, Terri Green of Wyong Creek, NSW, whose story, Ambush, will also appear in an upcoming issue of the magazine.

The other finalists (in no particular order) were:

  • Reading Between The Lines by Carolyn Alfonzetti of NSW

  • Mrs Mellor’s Last Will And Testament by Sonja Viduka of Victoria

  • Storm And A Teacup by Rose Gill of NSW

  • Cut The Mustard by Francesca Sciacca of Victoria

  • Miss Ann Thrope by Rachel Tara of Queensland

  • Precious Little by Joseph Reich of Victoria

  • Fly On The Wall by Lucy Bignall of Queensland

Now, sharpen your pencils and start dreaming up new plots in readiness for our next short story contest, to be announced in coming months in The Australian Women’s Weekly.

Carol George

Books Editor Your Say: Have you read this book? Share your thoughts below…

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*Bad Behaviour* by Liz Byrski

Bad Behaviour by Liz Byrski

Bad Behaviour by Liz Byrski

Download your exclusive first chapter from Bad Behaviour by Liz Byrski here.

About the author:

Even today, Liz Byrski can hardly believe it. There she was in London in 1968, a very exciting place to be in a year of monumental change and upheaval, and what was she doing? “I was pregnant with my first child and I spent a lot of 1968 lying on a chaise longue, watching The Forsyte Saga [on TV] and eating chocolates,” she says, laughing.

If you know Liz, who has called Perth home for several decades and whose novels are as popular in Europe as they are here, it’s hard to imagine her so blinkered, so self-absorbed. “Imagine living through history and not noticing it? says Liz.

“I regret that. I guess, sometimes, what happens to you seems bigger than anything else. At that age, I was more interested in what was happening to me than what was happening in the wider world.”

Read more about Liz in the September issue ofThe Australian Women’s Weeklyon page 269.

About the book:

Can we escape the past or do our mistakes come back to haunt us anyway? These are some of the questions asked in this rich, satisfying novel, in which the lives of a naive young Australian and an English journalist intersect in London during a tumultuous 1968 and are never the same again.

HOT DEAL!

Receive $5 off the marked price of this month’s Great Read when you present your AWW coupon at any Dymocks store. See page 270 of the August issue of The AWW.

Bad Behaviourby Liz Byrski, Pan Macmillan, $32.99.

Your Say: Have you read this book? Share your thoughts below…

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Rob Pattinson: Why I love Kristen

Pattinson, pictured here with co-star and girlfriend Kristen Stewart at a Kings Of Leon concert in Vancouver last week, has finally opened up about their relationship.

“Kristen really is the only person I can talk to openly about everything,” Rob, 23, tells The Lowdown exclusively. “Whatever happens between us, nothing will ever change the fact that we have been through something amazing together and continue to do so.

“The truth is, Kristen is actually the only person I can talk to about this whole thing … this whole phenomenon that has happened to us both during the process of making Twilight.”

While he’s been linked to a string of women, including actresses Camilla Belle, Emilie de Ravin, Nikki Reed and Brazilian model Anne Schoenberger — Kristen, 19, is the only woman to remain a constant in his life, even though their schedules often separate them for months on end.

“I’ve not even heard of half the women I’m supposed to be dating, let alone met them — like that Brazilian model. And then those Megan Fox rumours … I don’t know where that came from.

“I kept getting texts on my phone saying, ‘You’re going out with Megan Fox?!’ And I never even met her. Well, I met her once, I mean, but for, like, two seconds.”

Giving further insight into why he is dating his co-star, Robert says that he’s become terrified of women only liking him because of his fame, and now rarely goes out.

“If a girl can’t look at me as anything other than Edward, then I probably don’t want to go out with her,” he says.

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Paris’s pooch palace

With the credit crunch still biting hard, most people would be ashamed to admit owning a $400,000 dog house — but not Paris Hilton, who happily provided us with these eyebrow-raising pictures.

The heiress says the 30 square-metre, hot pink home — which she had built for her dogs Tinkerbell, Prince Baby Bear, Harajuku, Marilyn Monroe, Dolce and Prada — is just what her pets deserve.

“It’s a miniature version of my house,” says Paris, 28, who took the interior photos herself. “I designed it with the help of my decorator, Faye Resnick.”

Los Angeles real estate agent Timo Ketola estimates the two-storey home, which sits in the backyard of Paris’s $7.5million mansion, is worth more than the average Aussie apartment.

No expense has been spared on the dog house, which has a clay-tile roof with copper gutters, intricate ceiling mouldings and central air conditioning.

The pampered pets can have a nap in the upstairs bedroom, lounge about in the downstairs living room on miniature Philippe Starck furniture, or chase each other up and down the staircase under the glass chandelier.

“They love lying on the balcony, playing in their backyard and hanging out on their living room furniture,” Paris says. “They appreciate the house that Mommy built for them.”

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Brad’s up in smoke

A candid confession from Quentin Tarantino has thrown doubt on Brad Pitt’s suggestion that he has put his drug-taking days behind him since he’s become a father — and Angelina isn’t happy.

The director says Brad produced a “brick of hash” and gave him a piece of it when the pair met to discuss the star taking a role in Quentin’s film.

“He takes this brick of hash and whips out a knife like Jesse James and cuts this big sliver,” Quentin revealed on The Howard Stern Show.

Tarantino’s claims suggest that Brad’s wild days are not entirely in the past and could put paid to the clean-cut reputation he’s been building since becoming a parent with Angelina Jolie.

In the four years the couple have been together, Brad has gone from being childless to caring for six children, and Quentin’s comments fuel fears he could be returning to his old habits as a reaction to his extreme lifestyle change.

Brad initially admitted the crazy night with Quentin played a part in his decision to take the role in Nazi film Inglourious Basterds.

“Quentin came to visit with the script,” he said. “We talked ’til the wee hours and I got up next morning and saw five empty wine bottles on the floor and something that resembled a smoking apparatus … and apparently I agreed to do the movie.”

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Miracle MS recovery…I’m out of my wheelchair!

Shauna McLean tells Glen Williams how a ‘wonder pill’ gave her back her life.

The scene is almost Biblical. Shauna McLean, known until recently as “the nice lady in the wheelchair”, leaps from her seat, performs a perfect pirouette, then breaks into a high-spirited jog.

Shauna can’t contain her joy, for she knows she is experiencing what she and her doting husband, Neil, can only describe as a miracle.

Stricken with multiple sclerosis (MS) and a life-threatening brain tumour, this once lithe ballerina, who has performed with the likes of Rudolf Nureyev, spent the better part of 20 years dependent on walking sticks before ending up in a wheelchair.

The medical profession says there is no cure for MS and as it hit her, Shauna’s eyesight shut down and she lost her sense of taste, a great deal of speech and her sense of balance..

A phone call this year from the director of the Adult Stem Cell Foundation was to change Shauna’s life. He encouraged her to try some stem-cell enhancing products from New Zealand. “At first I was very cautious,” Shauna says. “But I soon found that it was a food enhancer, not a drug. It’s just like taking Vitamin C, but it promotes the production of stem cells within your own body ? 4000 per tablet!

“Within 20 minutes of taking my first pill I could feel something good was going on. In four days my double vision was gone. It was a miracle. These amazing tablets, with the totally natural product colostrum, stimulate the growth of your own stem cells.”

Four months later, Shauna, 51, jogs in her local park and has given her wheelchair away. “I’m one very happy lady,” she says. “MS robbed me of everything, but now, I’m getting my life back.”

For the full story see this week’s Woman’s Day, on sale August 24, 2009.

What are your opinions on the ‘wonder pill’? Do you think stem cell based medicines should be used in the treatment of incurable diseases? Leave your comments below.

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