Saladu Nebbe: Make a Dish from Senegal!

Can you find Senegal on a map?  (Hint: It’s located in Western Africa, bordered by Ghana and Mali and Guinea.)

Once you find it, imagine we are travelling there to enjoy this delicious dish: Saladu Nebbe! This recipe is tangy and has fun textures that make it a recipe you’ll want to make again and again. It also allows for a good amount of chopping, making it a great way to students to practice their knife skills.

For this recipe you will make a dressing:

And add it to the following ingredients, all chopped:

In addition to coming together with distinct flavors, this recipe is a great way to learn about fats. Fats are one of the three essential macronutrients that we need in our diet. However, there are many myths regarding fat. It is often thought that all fat is BAD, but this is NOT true! Fat is necessary for protecting our organs, absorbing vitamins, helping cells grow and communicate, and also providing energy.

That being said, there are some fats that are better to avoid. Trans fats, which are found in more processed foods, have been linked to risk of heart disease and raising LDL cholesterol (the bad type of cholesterol). Unsaturated fats, which are found in foods like avocados, nuts, olive oil, and seeds, actually have the opposite affect. They have been shown to decrease risk of heart disease and lower LDL cholesterol. Part of the reason fats got a bad reputation was because of health marketing that pushed “low-fat” options to consumers, which really tend to have more additives like sugar, nullifying the health claims.

Learning about nutrition can be empowering for students. Making a dish that tastes good and that they got the help make is an amazing way to link the nutritional issues we learn about into practice.