This weekend (Sunday 13th April) Good4U were delighted to get on board with Acquired Brain Injury Ireland to support a charity cycle taking in a scenic 40km route around Lough Gill, Co. Sligo.

115 cyclists from all around the local region descended on Sligo to raise funds for the Acquired Brain Injury facility in Sligo. We'd like to extend our congratulations to each and every person who took on the challenge. Well done all! Below is a snippet of activities from before and after the cycle with many enjoying a well deserved cup of tea.

Our superstar dietitan Michelle has featured Obstacle Race, the No.1 magazine for obstacle course racing. In the edition, Michelle offers advice on how to clean up your diet., spread over 3 pages!

To see Michelle's advice, just keep reading, we've attached it straight from the magazine.

With the recent announcement of Good4U securing investment and set to create 25 new jobs over the following 2 years, we have received some very worth national press. The latest to be added to the portfolio is an outstanding article in the Sunday Business Post.

As well as the above coverage from the Sunday Business Post, artlices were also published in the Irish Independent, on Business and Leadership, Business and Finance and Business World.

Throughout the month of March, Good4U's in house dietitian is offering readers and fans alike of Good4U key nutrition tips. Some may seem obvious to you but are often a major downfall for many when trying to follow a healthy lifestyle while others may require some self determination and motivation.

• BRAIN FOOD: Aim to eat 2 portions of oily fish every week such as salmon, mackerel, trout, herring and fresh tuna.
• Try EGGS for breakfast, research has shown that those who consumed protein for breakfast were less hungry later in the day.
• Did you know that exceeding your daily requirements by 500kcal for one week will lead to weight gain of one pound.
• Go out and enjoy yourself but why not split your meal with a friend and save on the calories.
• Eat your favourite foods but know when to stop.
• Don’t shop on an empty stomach.
• When eating out check out their menu online before.
• Aim for half of your plate at lunch and dinner to include veggies or salad.
• Veggie broth is a great healthy choice.
• Did you know that 1 serving of strawberries has even more vitamin C than an orange?  Strawberries pack a powerful nutrition punch… and for only 43 calories per serving.

• Edamame beans are a nutritious superfood rich in fibre, antioxidants, omega-3s and plant-based protein.
• The key to weight loss is to bulk up on foods with fewer calories such as fruit and veggies. These foods have a high water and fibre content and will help you feel fuller quicker and longer.
• Keep a pack of Good4U sprouts at your desk and munch away for the day guilt free.
• Avoid the dreaded afternoon slump by starting the day with a high fibre breakfast, have a snack mid-morning, include a protein at lunch and reduce portion of carbs.
• Start your day with a healthy breakfast such as oats, oat bran, mixed seeds and a handful of berries. This nutrient-rich breakfast will give you the energy to kick start your day.
• Aim to eat healthily 80% of the time, choosing wholegrain carbs, lean proteins, essential fats and fruit and veggies, and the other 20%..... Well that’s up to you.
• Boost your diet with whole foods such as seeds, berries and nuts.
• Be mindful of portions. Often people are choosing the right foods, just too much.

• Monitor what is actually in your food. Keep check on the ingredient list, the less ingredients, the better.
• When it comes to fruit and vegetables, aim to include a variety of colours as this is what determines their individual disease fighting properties.
• Be prepared for the week ahead, have your cupboards stocked with healthy foods and make a big batch of healthy soup.
• Monitor your diet and exercise using a smart phone app such as My Fitness PAL  
• Use the food swap method for weight loss – feeling deprived generally only results in a binge. Cut down on processed high fat, high sugar snacks and replace with natural fruit and veg.

• When trying to lose weight a simple method is to ban carbs after 6pm Monday – Friday. So evening meals should consist of lean proteins, veggies and salad.

Closer Magazine featured Good4U shoots as 'Taste Bites' in this weeks edition.

Good4U have teamed up with Tesco UK to offer customers 20p off Good4U Lentil, Pea & Bean Shoots and Super Shoots.

Running for 4 weeks throughout March, customers who purchase a Tesco Crunchy Salad from the ‘eat fresh’ range will notice a “20p Off” coupon on the salad bowl, as in the image below. To redeem this offer, just purchase the eligible items and the cashier will do the rest! 

We hope you enjoy our shoots as much as we do.

Today, February 27th, Anne Shooter, a food writer with the Daily Mail and Mail Online included Good4U products in her latest write up which appear online. We're chuffed to hear of another Good4U Super Shoots fan. To view the full article online from Anne, see here!

You may have seen that over the past month, we at Good4U have being going a bit fruity for juicing and we have being inviting you to join in.

If you didn’t get a chance to follow the Juice Movement the premise was to set ourselves a little challenge in that we would only consume juice for 1 day a week which we chose to be Tuesday. For a full recap on the Good4U Juice Movement, information can be seen here.

Seeing as the Juice Movement has come to an end, we feel it’s necessary to update you all on how it has been. But rest assured we will continue to juice and hope you will too. We feel the difference; even after 4 weeks.

Everyone at Good4U HQ got on board and we’ve had super fun times juicing, debating what ingredients to put in and of course, drinking the end result. We’ve received many images of juices sent in to us from fans who have decided to follow the movement. 

Below are just some of the photos sent in to us from fans who joined us with the Juice Movement.

To see more great photos of juicing in action at Good4U HQ or pictures Good4U fans have submitted, view them here.

If you didn’t happen to join in with us on the Juice Movement, it’s better late than never. You can always start juicing on your own and reap the benefits! Including veggie juices in your daily lives can have numerous health benefits;

• One piece of fruit a day is enough to lower heart disease risk by 20%.
• 5 weekly servings of red fruit and vegetables - such as tomatoes and watermelon – has been shown to reduce lung cancer by up to 25%.
• Juicing will help you get even more of these essential vitamins because the fruit and vegetables are eaten raw.
• Your body will also benefit from the high water content in fruit and vegetables as water helps the body to eliminate waste more efficiently.

If you do wish to start juicing but just don’t know where or how to start, don’t worry. We’ve got a very handy E-Book that you can download for free to help you get started.

And, if or when you do start juicing, don’t forget to share it with us online at either Facebook or Twitter using #Juice4Life

As January has closed its doors for another year, it’s time to welcome February which can only mean one thing, the start of spring together with a burst of colour from the sprouting flowers. With the influx of colours, we at Good4U have decided to implement the presence of colours in to juices.

That’s why, with the help of you, we are creating the Good4U Juice Movement.
So…what is the Good4U Juice Movement you ask? Well, our aim is to get as many people involved in the art of juicing, share your whacky creations and make you fall in love all over again!

The Juice Movement will initially run for the month of February with the potential of making it long term. Each and every Tuesday which we are nicknaming ‘JuicyTuesday’ will be a day dedicated to just juice. We’ll be having juice for breakfast, juice for lunch, and you guessed it, juice for dinner, as well as a juice or two as a snack throughout the day and we want you to join us. Remember as a child when your mother would say to you if you ate too much of something you’d turn into it? Well, that’s not going to happen.

People who are new to juicing will be invited to participate every Tuesday or JuicyTuesday as it’ll be known but if you consider yourself a dab hand at the art of juicing, why not reserve two days per week to just consuming juice. We recommend Tuesday & Thursday. By advancing to the 2 days per week, you would be without realising following the 5:2 diet, something that has been massively popular in recent months.

If we haven’t converted you already, just take a look at the benefits that juicing can have on your health;

• One piece of fruit a day is enough to lower heart disease risk by 20%. 5 weekly servings of red fruit and vegetables - such as tomatoes and watermelon – has been shown to reduce lung cancer by up to 25%. This is because vegetables are low in fat and full of fibre, vitamins and minerals. They also contain compounds called phytochemicals which fight all kinds of illnesses.

• Juicing will help you get even more of these essential vitamins because the fruit and vegetables are eaten raw. Some vitamins are damaged by cooking so eating them raw really is the best way to get them.

• Your body will also benefit from the high water content in fruit and vegetables as water helps the body to eliminate waste more efficiently. Depending on how you make your juice your drink can also contain healthy amounts of fibre.

To help you get through the Juice Movement and offer you some inspiration, we've created this e-book which you can download for free. Inside the e-book, you'll find everything you need, be it from the benefits of juicing, what you'll need to buy, and of course, some recipes which have proven to be a success! By the way, juicing doesn’t mean expensive, you won’t need to be rooting behind the couch for lost change!

To get on board with the Good4U Juice Movement and to share your own creations you can tag your posts with #JuicyTuesday or #Juice4Life as well as finding us on Facebook & Twitter

As January draws to an end so does our Need a Boost campaign which ran for 4 consecutive weeks during the month.

Over the duration of the campaign, we provided fans with some great boosting tips of four different themes. An energy boost, food boost, work boost and finally a fun boost! Advice came from our in house dietitian, Michelle in the way of blogs, recipes and general pointers on how you can cleanse your body, soul and mind.

Providing an insight to fans on how food can boost your health, energy levels, keep illnesses away and provide nourishment proved to be a popular function of the campaign.

As well as providing tips and recipes, we offered one lucky fan the opportunity to win some fantastic prizes each week to continue their self-boost once the campaign finished. We gave away some great gym gear, retail vouchers, work boosting products and some foodie delights!

We hope everyone appreciated the tips received and long may it continue.

For more great nutritional information, recipes, tips and all round fun, just keep an eye on Good4U. You can find us all major social media platforms; Facebook, Twitter, Instagram & Pinterest 

Yours Magazine, the UK's favourite magazine for women in their prime featured Good4U shoots as their 'Deal of the Day' for January 29th.

Yours is Britain’s leading magazine for the over-50s. It’s a friendly community where you can share stories and laughter, and find all kinds of advice on topics that matter to your life today – health, beauty, travel, fashion, finance and consumer issues.

This is what Yours Magazine had to say relating to the Deal of the Day!

We all want to eat more healthily, but sometimes upping our five-a-day can be expensive. Luckily, Good4U has a fab range of nutritious shoots on offer this winter - add to salads and stirfries.

Sainsbury’s- until 11th February
Alfalfa and Sango Radish Shoots now £1 (were £1.30)

Tesco- until 2nd February 
Supershoots now £1 (were £1.25)

Lentil, pea and bean shoots now £1 (were £1.25)

Alfalfa and Sango Radish Shoots now £1 (were £1.25)

Lifestyle Monthly, Merseyside’s No.1 magazine has featured our range of products, focusing on our Chilli Seed Mix

Good4U appear in the February issue of the Health & Fitness magazine after having being announced as silver award recipients in the Super Foods category and the Savoury Snacks Category

**NEWS FLASH**

Good4U recently entered three products in to an online competition, The Healthy Food & Drink Awards which was run by Health & Fitness and Women’s Fitness magazines.

The three products that Good4U entered included:

·         Chilli Seed Mix in the Savoury Snacks Category

·         Super Shoots in the Superfood Category

·         Lentil Pea & Bean Shoots in the Vegetarian Products Category 

Two of our products, our Chilli Seed Mix and our Super Shoots both came away with a silver award each from their respective categories.

Needless to say, we’re over the moon!

Winners were chosen based on the number of votes each product received and having asked you all through our social media platforms of Facebook and Twitter, we got the desired result. A big thank you to everyone who voted Good4U. Let’s hope there will be many more awards to follow.

January can often be deemed a highly depressing month having returned to work after the Christmas break, mounting credit card bills and failing New Year’s resolutions.

To overcome the negativity associated with the dreaded month, we at Good4U believe we have just the ingredient to get 2014 off to a flyer! By providing you with the support mechanisms, nutritional tips, recipes, general boosting tips for your body, soul and mind as well as in store promotions and great giveaways through social media, there really is no longer a reason to dislike the ‘dreaded’ month.

So, you may be asking yourself….How does it all work? Each week, starting from January 2^nd, will carry a separate theme or boost, starting with Energy Boost, Food Boost, Work Boost and to round off the month, a Fun Boost!

We’ll have great prizes to encourage and promote that personal boost, be it from gear to encourage you with your New Year’s resolution, kitchenware to cook up some culinary delights, a voucher for a high street retail outlet, or just something you can bring to work with you! To enter any of the competitions, visit our Facebook page – http://www.facebook.com/good4u

In store promotions will be available in both Tesco UK & Ireland as well as Sainsbury’s meaning you can avail of a boost from Good4U for as little as £1. When you’re picking up our products from the supermarket, you’ll notice an additional sticker with some extra tips on how to use our products and what dishes they accompany best! 

 1.       New Year New You – time to experiment with new foods and recipes, check out Good4U for inspiring, nutritious low-cal options. Each week try a new veg or fruit that you wouldn’t usually buy.

 2.       Sustainability - Stop thinking in terms of ‘diets’ and start thinking in terms of ‘healthier eating’. Aim to include more nutritious foods in your diet such as veggies, sprouts, seeds, lean protein and fish.

 3.       Never have a Banned food list. This generally makes us crave these foods even more. Go for the 90/10 rule.

 4.       Make sure everything you have on your plate is providing you with something good. If you know it’s not, ditch it.

 5.       Cut your portion sizes for lunch and dinner by downsizing your plate.

 6.       Aim for 50% of your plate to include a variety of veggies.

 7.       Aim to eat healthy 90% of the time but an occasional treat won’t kill anyone.

 8.       Remember that the weekends make up for 3/7 days per week – that’s over 40%. So if you think that by eating healthy Mon-Thur is going to do you any favours then you are only fooling yourself. Aim for control 6/7 days a week. You’ll soon notice the difference

 9.       Never ever shop when you are hungry. Write a list to keep your basket under control. When visiting the supermarkets try to avoid the middle isles as this is generally where all the goodies are.

 10.   Avoid skipping meals, plan ahead and have healthy snacks at hand. See www.good4u.co.uk for healthy tips.