Sunday Selection: Gusto Cola, Camelina Oil
This week’s selection includes 2 new products I’ve recently encountered.
Gusto Cola
Gusto Cola is created by founder of Green and Blacks. This is the worlds’ first organic low calorie fairtrade cola. It is their own blend of organic spices and essential oils with real African cola nut. Instead of just sugar, they us organic Stevia leaf extract, organic agave inulin and organic fairtrade cane sugar. Each can is 49 calories nad has no preservatives.
It doesn’t taste like any other big name colas and is not too bad. There are no distinct strong flavours, quite a refreshing soft drink with less sugar. Give a it a try.
Camelina Oil by Newgrange Gold
This week I met this ex Barrister who now works for the family business, Newgrange Gold, producing edible oils. Their farm in the Boyne Valley in Ireland used to produce crop for bio-diesel but found it more lucrative to produce cold pressed rape seed oil. In addition to that, they started to farm Camelina which is Irish Wild Flax. In terms of nutritional content, this oil has a much higher Omega 3 content than rape seed, is rich in antioxidants, low in sturated fat, has high Vitamin E and low in Omega 6. The Vitamin E prevents the Omega 3 from deteriorating.
This oil has a host of health benefits like being anti-inflammatory, has a higher smoke point than rapeseed at 245°C, good from healthy heart and skin and increases good cholesterol.
The Camelina oil doesn’t have a very strong flavour and can be used for cooking or in salads. I would happily swap using cold pressed rapeseed oil to using Camelina oil instead, if not for the price. Due to the nature of the crop, the yield is much lower than that of rapeseed and the price is therefore higher. For the added healthy benefits, I would say it’s worth it.