Kiwinuka Health director, Cliff Bellaney spoke with Roman Travers on Magic Talk’s Sunday Café about KiwiNuka and its health benefits.
You can listen to the full segment here (approx. 9 minutes) or read the full transcript below.
RT: How confused have you become with the plethora of dietary recommendations and everlasting food fads whose only commonality is contradiction? In age where, if you don’t know by now what will reduce your life and have you waking up dead a lot sooner than anticipated, it’s good to know that some of the best supplementary food choices often come from New Zealand. Cliff Bellaney is one of the men behind KiwiNuka Health and he joins me now on the Sunday Café.
Tell me more about this KiwiNuka. It’s clearly a combination of a couple of things.
CB: The KiwiNuka is a combination of three of New Zealand’s most well-known exports – kiwifruit, Manuka honey, and spring water – and that is really the basis of the product.
It’s designed specifically for gut health. We’re aware that a lot of New Zealanders are suffering from significant gut health issues like leaky gut, irritable bowel syndrome, constipation and so forth. KiwiNuka is designed to help ease and give relief to those who suffer from that, and also to keep your gut in a good healthy condition through your life span.
RT: OK, before we look at the product more closely and how you take it, tell me a bit about the history you’ve got in New Zealand health supplements.
CB: I’ve been involved in the industry now for something like 30 odd years, in the development of health-related products, supplements, and things involved in increasing day to day life of Kiwis.
RT: Cliff, I think one of the problems we have is we bowl into the supermarket, and see all these things that we’ve heard from somebody are going to be good for us, but don’t know what it’ll actually do for us. So what will KiwiNuka actually do for everybody? Is it appropriate for everyone?
CB: It’s appropriate for most people. Not for children, because of the Manuka honey component, but it’s appropriate for all those who want to have a good healthy lifestyle, and those who suffer from digestive upset as I explained earlier on. I think going forward, those people who in their later years find their digestive and bowel activity is significantly slowed down, this will definitely help. Kiwi fruit is very well known, it has properties in it like activin, the enzyme that creates the breakdown of protein. That assists in digestion and gut health.
RT: Sounds nice. Is it a nice product to actually have and how do you take it?
CB: It’s in a 60ml glass bottle. It’s fully recyclable, and the bottle is just a single dose. You’d just take it either drink it straight or you can pour it over your breakfast in the morning. You may want to add it to a smoothie, or to anything else – your drink bottle. It’s a very pleasant drink, and loaded with compounds like vitamin C and natural fruit fibre.
RT: I notice it has prebiotics in it. What are they?
CB: A prebiotic is the feeder for the probiotic and the stomach, and the digestive tract. The biggest thing with problems a lot of people suffer from, is after taking antibiotics and things, the bacteria in the lower gut is severely knocked around and damaged. To get healthy again, you’ve got to increase your probiotics back up again. To get good probiotics going, you can give it a prebiotic to kick it up and get it started. That’s effectively what this is – a prebiotic to feed the probiotic that gives you good healthy gut activity.
RT: I’m thinking about the Manuka honey. It’s 80% sugar, 20% water, and we’re all hung up about the sugar quantities of things. But you’re talking about unrefined sugar?
CB: Yes, it’s the sugar that’s naturally found in honey, and simple sugars – not refined in any way – based on glucose and so forth. With the addition of the fibre of the kiwi fruit, it naturally slows down the uptake of the sugar into the bloodstream anyway, so you’re going to have a prolonged duration period to allow the sugar to be absorbed into the bloodstream.
RT: So for someone with diabetes, for example, where sugar is a thing they have to watch, this is OK for them?
CB: I would suggest just be careful. If they consume honey normally as part of their normal diet, it’ll be ok, but any fear or worry, they should check with their medical professional to be on the safe side and make sure they’re not going to have any kind of sugar shock from it.
RT: Ok so you’ve talked about the gut, and we carry kilos and kilos of bacteria in our stomachs all the time? What else is it good for? Balancing the gut, helping digestion… does it have any effect on natural immunity?
CB: Yes, that’s part of where the Manuka honey comes it. It’s very well known for boosting immunity, brought about by the natural components found in it which are anti-viral, anti-bacterial, which is why it’s so good for products like strep throat and ailments that are viral related.
RT: I know some of the GPs these days don’t talk about some of the wacky stuff. They kind of talk about complementary things you can take with medicine… do you have GPs that are fans of this product, KiwiNuka?
CB: Yes, we have GPs that are starting to show a lot of interest in it now, mainly due to its natural blend and so forth. As time progresses, we believe we’ll get an uptake into the medical recovery and surgery recovery areas.
RT: Isn’t honey an amazing product on its own? You’ve combined it with something else, but the use of honey goes right back to before antibiotics were used to dress wounds in the war?
CB: Well yes, I think it goes right back to the pharaohs, to the Egyptian tombs and so forth, so it has an amazing history behind it definitely.
RT: So it’s called KiwiNuka. Where can people grab it and how much does it cost?
CB: At the moment we’re just getting underway. We’ve got it in Foodstuff stores like New World and so forth, unfortunately we’re just in the south island at the moment but will be progressing into the north island very soon. We’ve also got it in selected Fresh Choice supermarkets. We’re spreading it round the supermarkets and now we’re getting into the pharmacies. Some little probiotic chillers and so forth, they’re starting to put us in there. Hopefully in the next 3-4 months, we’ll have it right throughout NZ.
For all trade enquiries please contact:
Pierre Flavell
0800 KIWINUKA
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