Mealtimes
There are no set meal times at Hoogland, and with good reason. Guests are encouraged to listen to their bodies: pay attention to biofeedback. Ideally, but with a few exceptions, guests should eat when they feel like and what they feel like and not be bound by a schedule or a pre-planned detailed diet. The health buffet is available from 08:00 to 21:00 daily, and a fresh fruit and salad bar is available 24 hours a day. The chefs and cooks are available only from 07:00 to 19:00, outside of these times only limited service is available.
Where to Eat
Many of our guests fast during their stay. Please be cognisant of this and enjoy your meal or snack only in the dining room or your bedroom.
Coffee and Tea
Many of us regularly consume caffeinated drinks, and if we skip our caffeine fix, we experience nasty withdrawal headaches. Even if your goal is to be without coffee for a while, it might be a better idea to taper off over a period of 2 or 3 days rather than go cold turkey. Filter coffee or Ceylon tea can be ordered from the kitchen between 07:00 and 21:00.
If you would like coffee or Ceylon tea early in the morning in your room, please ask the kitchen to prepare a tray for you to take to your room the night before. Hoogland does not serve sugar nor artificial sweeteners. Vegan milk alternatives are available only if pre-arranged.
Meal Preparation and Ingredients
Our meals are prepared using fresh, varied ingredients. Diversity is key. We do not use sugar, non-caloric sweeteners, artificial flavourants, flavour enhancers, colourants or ultra-processed ingredients.
We do not serve pork, beef or seafood other than fish. We try to source all our ingredients as ethically as possible and support local as well as regenerative agriculture whenever able to.
Diets
For long term health, we do not support food-group deprivation, restrictive or fad diets such as Atkins, Banting, Carnivore, Paleo ‘Lectin-free’ or ‘Night-shade-free’ diets. The evidence is clear that these are detrimental to your health if followed long term.
Special Requests
People have all sorts of likes, dislikes, cravings, allergies and intolerances. We understand that the human relationship with food is quite complex, please discuss your needs with the health consultant or nutritionist.
We can provide for a vegan, vegetarian, pescatarian, omnivorous, Halal diets and a range of allergies. If you didn’t let us know at the time of booking, please inform us as soon as possible should you have any dietary restrictions.
The chefs will gladly prepare something special for you and adapt meals to suit your dietery requirements (within reason). The manager will discuss additional charges with you should they apply.
Our teams of chefs and cooks work in two shifts arriving at 07:00 and departing at 19:00. Please consider these hours and make special requests with sufficient notice, ideally the day before. Place these requests with the health consultant or nutritionist.
Juicing
Contrary to what many people believe, juicing is not a healthier option than eating whole food. In fact, juicing has many drawbacks.
At Hoogland we only offer juices and smoothies as an addition to our healthy prepared food for guests who need to gain weight, and only as approved by the nutritionist after a comprehensive consultation.
Juicing fruit and vegetables maintains their total calories, might actually increase the total available calories, and also increases the glycemic index, but does not improve satiety. It is therefore easy to increase caloric intake to aid weight gain through juicing but even then, it should be done with caution as it can cause rapid increase in blood sugar.
Juicing removes the fiber, which is essential for a health gut microbiome, but even if you blend it, and therefor keep the fiber, there are drawbacks. Some of the carbohydrates in fruit is fructose. This is not a ‘bad’ sugar, but when it comes into circulation rapidly such as with juicing, it can contribute to fatty liver disease as fructose needs to go to the liver to be converted to glucose.
Vegetable juices are not much better. Anti-nutrients such as oxalates are more freely available and absorbed from juices compared to intact cell walls which most of the chewed vegetables will still comprise of. This interferes with the absorption of nutrients and can also cause kidney harm.
When you do not chew your food, less complex nutrients are absorbed. It is also much harder to pay attention to your appetite and your like and dislike for certain ingredients when you juice or even just blend food rather than chew it.
Likes and dislikes is often our body’s way of letting us know which nutrients we need, which might not be healthful for us, or which we have already had enough of.