Nutrition, Ahipara, and 90-Mile Beach

Some of you have asked about the way we eat. We usually have a big meal late-morning and then something lighter later in the afternoon, broadly following the nutritional approach of Iowa physician Terry Wahls, MD, which means eating nine cups of vegetables and a little fruit every day.

Dr Wahls reversed her debilitating MS not with the latest drugs from the Cleveland Clinic, though she tried those first, but by identifying 31 micronutrients needed by mitochondria, the energy producers in our cells, to function optimally. I pulled this list from this website, but you can read further or listen online to Dr Wahls' remarkable story.

• 3 cups of leafy green vegetables, such as kale, collards, chard, spinach or lettuce, which provide vitamins A, B, C and K.
• 3 cups of sulfur-rich vegetables, such as cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, onions, garlic, mushrooms and asparagus, because they support the removal of toxins from the body.
• 3 cups of colorful vegetables and fruits (ideally three different colors each day), because they're full of antioxidants. They have to be colored all the way through, so apples and bananas don't count as colored, but berries, peaches, citrus, beets and carrots do.

You also eat well-sourced protein and seaweed and avoid grains. There's no question that when you're focused on eating nine cups of vegetables every day (18 for both of us) there's not much room for naughtiness (sugar, bread, and all the other nutrient-free stuff). Do we occasionally eat off the path? Of course. And we buy a lot of produce.

We're in a lovely campground in Ahipara, tucked into the shelter of the trees. It's been blustery today.

Doesn't this flower look like a face?

Entry road to the camp.

90-mile beach, which is actually 55 miles long. Talk about windy. This is another surfers' paradise, with waves for miles and bordering sand dunes. After battling the wind on a short walk decided instead to hike into town for a flat white.

Wind-blown but happy.