By Joe Sexton | Published on January 17, 2018
Cheat day? What cheat day? Here’s an ideal solution to having a top treat that still gives you the nutrients needed to gain from your hard work at the gym.
You’ll need
1 sweet potato
4 tbsp of tomato puree
2 cloves of garlic – finely chopped
1 tsp of dried oregano
1 tsp of dried basil
1 cup low-fat cheese – just enough to cover the slices
Pizza toppings of your choice (pepperoni, ham and mushroom and veg)
A little olive oil
Method
Step 1: Cut the sweet potato into several 1.5cm thick slices. Brush both sides with a little oil and place on greaseproof paper. Put in the oven, preheated to 400F, for around 10-15 minutes until the top has started to brown. These spuds are rich in vitamin A and C that’ll help you recover from training faster.
Step 2: While the bites are in the oven, mix the tomato puree, garlic, oregano, basil and if you’re feeling spicy, hot sauce in a bowl. Go heavy on the basil because research in Herbal Medicine: Biomolecular and Clinical Aspects found it has antioxidant, anti-mutagenic, anti-viral and anti-bacterial properties.
Step 3: Take the slices out of the oven, flip them and make your pizza. Start with the sauce and then toppings. Research at John Hopkins University found that taking calcium supps could raise your risk of heart disease, so increase your natural supplies by enjoying more cheese.
Step 4:Â Place them back in the oven until cheese starts to brown. Heating up tomatoes can increase the amount of lycopene you can absorb from them and up the antioxidant activity, found research in the Journal of Agriculture and Food Chemistry.
Step 5: Serve and enjoy. Reach for roughly three or four of these for a meal with a nice tasty side salad and keep the leftover slices for lunch the next day. That way you don’t need to muck about with tomorrow’s meal prep.
– RELATED: What Are The World’s Best Protein Sources? –
Joe Sexton is a nutritional advisor, star of Fit In The Kitchen and founder of fatlossfeast.co.uk.
