How to eat to the beet

Beetroot revisited Even if you know beetroot soup well, this is a version worth trying because it pushes entirely different buttons.

It is vaguely Moroccan and slightly Sri-Lankan, but also neither of these two. It is perfect spicy comfort for this year's weirdly cool summer.

Beetroot, tomato and cumin soup

For four:

3 tbsp olive oil / ½ cup onion / 2 cloves garlic / 1 tbsp cumin seeds / ½ tspn freshly ground black pepper / 3 cups beetroot, after peeling and chopping / 2 tbsp red wine vinegar / 1 cup tomatoes / 2 cups chicken or vegetable stock.

How:

Coat chopped beetroot with 1 tbsp of the olive oil, cover with foil and roast until tender. Roast whole tomatoes until soft, then peel. Toss cooked beetroot with the vinegar. Slow-fry onion in remaining 2 tbsp olive oil, add garlic, cumin, black pepper and fry until garlic is soft. Blend beet, tomato, onion mix and stock together until smooth. Season with good salt to taste. Serve hot with yoghurt, extra olive oil and pepper.

More lies

It's called Creche Guard. It's not a helmet that stops your child from dying of a fractured skull when pushed off the top rung of the jungle gym. It's a snack bar. It tastes unremarkable, as they all do - somewhere between astronaut food and baby formula.

What's remarkable about it is the claim it makes (and the grammar too): ''Start your day with our delicious Creche Guard Breakfast Bar, that contains the nutritional value as that found in a breakfast of sausage, egg, toast, fruit, yoghurt and juice". Really?

A bar that doesn't contain the same nutrients as these foods can still offer the same nutritional value. How is that possible? It's not, obviously.

Even if the disembodied nutrients were identical to the so-called full breakfast, numerous studies have shown that nutrients removed from their original food source, and put back into something else, do not get used by our bodies in the same way. They therefore cannot have the same value.

A R50 note covered in wood glue and glitter, as my daughter, when five, showed me in a surprise demonstration, may still be a R50 note, but it doesn't offer the same useability, and it doesn't have the same value as it did before. But there's more.

''High in protein" says the bar. Well, that's relative. The (less advertised) sugar is even higher, sitting at around Coco Pops level. I say go straight for the Coco Pops and don't kid yourself about health benefits. It might prompt you to eat vegetables and fish for dinner.

• Andrea Burgener is the author of the cook book 'Lampedusa Pie', and chef at The Leopard restaurant.