A warming, comforting salad to take you through to the warmer spring months and the high protein content makes it a real winner for vegetarians. This dish has so many of my favourite things – I love all the different tastes and textures so it’s a real staple in my house.

Serves 6

Ingredients:

• 2 large sweet potatoes chopped into small cubes
• 2 large peppers, cubed
• 3 tblsp olive oil
• 1.5 cups cooked quinoa
• 1 handful mint, chopped
• 1 handful coriander, chopped
• large handful of mixed leaves
• 150 g feta cheese, chopped into small cubes (optional)
• 1 pomegranate, arils only
• 2 avocados, chopped
• 3 tablespoons toasted pine nuts/sunflower/pumpkin seeds

Dressing:

• Olive oil
• lemon
• 1 tablespoon honey
• Salt and pepper to taste

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 200C/180C fan/gas 6. Place the cubes of sweet potato and peppers on a baking sheet, drizzle with one tablespoon of olive oil and season with salt and pepper.
2. Roast for 25-30 minutes until soft in the middle and crisping at the edges.
3. Mix the quinoa, sweet potatoes, leaves, avocados and feta (if using).
4. Mix the dressing ingredients together and add to the salad together with the chopped herbs and pine nuts/seeds. Scatter with the pomegranate seeds and serve.  Season to taste.

This dish tastes better warm with the feta cheese melted slightly.

The post Quinoa, sweet potato and pomegranate salad appeared first on Neema Savvides | Fertility Nutrition.

I am so excited to share with you my new website. It has been a whirlwind of new clients, ventures and opportunities over the last 3 years and I feel extremely fortunate to be have met with some extremely talented people, taking on new clients and expanding the business as a whole.

I owe so much to my regular readers and sharers of my content.  I hope you will continue to visit the site regularly whereby you’ll find articles, delicious recipes and a host of top tips to help you along your healthy eating journey.

If there are any topics you want me to address or recipe ideas please do let me know.

Warmest regards,

Neema xx

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Obesity is at an all time high, with no signs of slowing down.  Given the rise of cancers, heart disease, diabetes and many other illnesses caused by obesity, the burden on the NHS is monstrous, and I’m not surprised the Government are thinking about imposing a ‘Fat Tax’ – something has to be done to tackle this.

However, is a fat tax the right way to go about it? The tax itself has to be high enough to deter the consumer. If the tax is imposed on saturated fats, and people replace them with sugar and carbohydrates (such as those found in low fat processed ready meals), then the tax will be defeating the object as these are just as detrimental to ones health, leading to a negative effect on health.

I do think that unhealthy foods should be made to be more expensive. You can’t go down a high-street without seeing a deal in a fast food place such as ‘family sized fried chicken, with chips and a coke for fiver’  and this is outrageous.  Why can’t you get healthy food on the cheap? This brings me to my next point – if the fat tax goes ahead, subsidies should be made towards healthy, better quality, real whole foods, encouraging their consumption.  All of this goes hand in hand with education.  Educate people about the negative effects of white sugar, refined and processed foods.  A fat tax in itself in my opinion will not reduce obesity rates on it’s own.  In previous times food was rationed, people had to think about what they ate, meals were cooked from scratch and more than likely families would sit down together for their meals.  This has changed significantly – food is everywhere – from fast food outlets to the abundance of ready meals in supermarkets.  Encouraging a change in people’s way of lives and how they think about food and what they feed their families will be key to achieving success in the obesity war – a fat tax alone won’t solve that, but surely it’s a step in the right direction and worth a shot?

The post Britain to introduce a ‘fat tax’ on healthy food appeared first on Neema Savvides | Fertility Nutrition.

This is an interesting story, and a controversial one at that.  The breastfeeding debate is huge, and the extended breastfeeding debate is even bigger.

Breast milk does provide the best nutrition for a baby.  It is full of nutrients to support the needs of a growing child, essential (omega 3) fats for brain development and antibody’s to support the immune system.

As the baby weans their nutritional needs can be met through food – therefore is there any reason/nutritional benefit to continue breastfeeding longer than ‘necessary’, which is considered usually to be longer than one to two years? As there is little scientific evidence to support the benefits of extended breastfeeding in the developed world (research shows the benefits of extended breastfeeding in the developing world but this is a different scenario entirely whereby their nutritional status is lower, and their access to nutritious food is lower) the question arises why do some mothers continue to breastfeed their children above a certain age.

 However, does the lack of scientific evidence to support extended breastfeeding make it wrong?

 I’d love to know your thoughts!

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The post School lunch shockers appeared first on Neema Savvides | Fertility Nutrition.

Reports came out this week about McDonald’s producing a ‘healthy’ fizzy drink for kids which contains 12g of sugar (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2141631/McDonalds-launches-healthy-drink-children-contains-12-spoonfuls-sugar.html). I could go on and on about why people should not be eating there and especially why they should not let their kids be eating there but that’s another post altogether so let’s stick with the drink for now.  It may contain more nutrients than a coke given the fruit content however 12g of sugar for a large portion is still a LOT of sugar.  People will argue that these are ‘fruit sugars’ otherwise known as fructose, which makes it ok.

It doesn’t.

Fructose is processed in the liver (unlike glucose which can pass directly into the bloodstream for energy or storage) which tends to turn the fructose into triglycerides (a type of fat found in your blood and a major cause of heart disease).  Elevated triglycerides has been shown to lead to leptin resistance.  Leptin is the hormone that signals the brain that we are full, and thus we should stop eating.  High triglycerides are thought to prevent the leptin from reaching the brain.  When the body stops responding to leptin, it causes the appetite to run out of control.

Fat storage is also thought to be increased after fructose consumption as lipogenesis – the process of converting sugars into body fat increases with fructose consumption.

So all in all, too much fructose decreases the body’s response to to leptin to stop eating, and it increases fat storage.  So you eat more and the body stores more as fat.  And we wonder why the nation is getting obese?

All of this coupled with the effects sugar has on teeth makes this drink a no no.  If you add the rest of the meal into the equation and you have a sugar time bomb….

The post McDonald’s making a ‘healthy’ fizzy drink for children which contains 12g sugar appeared first on Neema Savvides | Fertility Nutrition.

This is truly horrifying and just goes to show far we still have to go in regulating this industry, and how little we know about what goes into the supplements we take.

As well as the dried baby powder, scientists have discovered the supplements in question contain a super bacteria which means that the body will be unable to overcome it, and it will be resistant to the antibiotics that we have on the market – a position no-one wants to be in.  Whilst I’ve never heard of any westerners taking this drug specifically (although the chances of someone admitting to taking them are slim) the use of chinese herbal medicines are huge.

This isn’t the first time something like this has come up – previous studies have shown chinese herbals to contain endangered species – rhino horn, bear paws etc.  That doesn’t mean that the western supplements are much better, with reports claiming the presence of lead, arsenic, mercury and pesticides…

The moral of the story: Don’t take anything where you don’t know the true ingredients!

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