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Warning: the following post contains a lot of sniggering bathroom references. I’m afraid that, despite my best efforts, I’ve been powerless to eradicate them all, because, well, they make me laugh. So here goes.
Regular readers *tee hee* will know that I’m not one for faddy diets. Or diets at all. Frankly, I’m too greedy. But I am interested in keeping the whole family healthy, so when Kelloggs invited me to talk about their new All Bran Challenge, I was raring to go *tee hee*. Of course, the fact that the meeting was at the blissful Sanctuary Spa in Covent Garden, and involved a lot of pampering, didn’t make that decision more difficult.
I didn’t mention to the lovely Kelloggs folk that I had a slight bias against All Bran, as a close family member used to call it All Brown. Quite offputting. But I had no idea how much All Bran had moved on since the grim bowls of my youth. All right, you can still get original All Bran if you want to go hardcore, but for wimps like me, there is All Bran Golden Crunch or All Bran Red Berry Crunch, not to mention flakes, yoghurty flakes ….oh, you get the picture. It’s not All Brown any more.
With the help of Kelloggs’ nutritionists, we really got to the bottom * tee hee * of the benefits of wheat bran, the fibre in All Bran. It is very efficient at carrying things out of your system, mainly as it is pretty indigestible itself and sweeps out lots of stuff which would otherwise be left behind in your 30ft maze of intestines. Bits and bobs can linger (yuck) for up to three days normally. All Bran aims to help get everything moving in a day and a half.
The medical profession made a strong link in the 1930s between constipation and depression, and it’s hard not to feel a bit downcast at the idea of one’s insides being cluttered, like a dirty forgotten cupboard, with lots of stuff that your body really doesn’t need. And, unlike a cupboard, your unhappy gut is prone to all kinds of rumblings and audible announcements of its discontent, not to mention puffing itself up and making you feel blobby and horrid. I’m not going to ramble on about the menopause again but suffice to say that all these things get Much Worse once you hit a certain age. So it was not long before I was merrily agreeing to start the All Bran 5 Day Challenge.
Basically, you eat a bowl of All Bran a day for five days. How hard is that? Well, as I discovered on the train home, not very hard at all. Despite being beautifully fed and watered (champagne and a gorgeous club sandwich) by the Sanctuary and the Covent Garden Hotel (delicious fruit platter), I was absolutely starving on the way back to Blended Towers. So I gnawed open my goody bag box of All Bran Golden Crunch and scooped out a cluster. And another. And another. By the time I got home, I was well and truly started on the challenge.
The rest of the family have now entered the fray. The Red Berry Crunch is scrummy and leaves the milk in the bowl a pale shade of pink – very popular. My only question now to Kelloggs is – can you actually overdose on wheat bran? I’m trying to increase everyone’s water intake, as Kelloggs advise. It’s probably not surprising that I’ve had to order two more boxes of cereal from the Ocado man. And that the downstairs loo has blocked. Ooops. Probably too much information there.
