Weaving together traditions with science and adding a flourish of foodie creativity, Dr Saliha Mahmood-Ahmed is hoping to redefine the landscape of healthy eating. From her triumph as the first doctor to clinch the BBC’s MasterChef title in 2017 to her work in gastroenterology, Dr Saliha’s outlook is all about the transformative power of food.

She thanks her family for her love affair with food, which began at an early age. She says, “I think I’ve been genetically modified to like food, it’s such an inherent part of my DNA. I didn’t realise that families didn’t cook in the same way that mine did until I went to university and saw that peoples’ eating was really poor in some aspects. I realised that there was a lot of work to be done on the population level for everyone, and I’m forever grateful that I came from a family where food is such a big deal.” She credits her mother, who worked in the UK’s National Health Service (NHS), with putting nutritious food on the table and Dr Saliha is keen to continue that tradition.

As a self-described keen home cook, she was on maternity leave with her now nine-year-old son (who was one at the time), when her husband – an ardent supporter of her work – signed her up for BBC’s MasterChef. A few weeks later, she got the call.

She says, “I’m glad he did that because at the time I would have just said that ‘I’m too busy, the baby’s too young.’ He sussed out that I had the potential to do much more in food than I was doing. It’s funny because when I was at medical school, we had a yearbook, and it said, ‘where do you see yourself in 10 years’ time?’ And I said, ‘probably working in a hospital, but I reckon I’ll also have a restaurant.’ I don’t have a restaurant, but it just shows that somewhere deep in me I had the seed that I will be cooking in my life.”

Pairing her love for food with her profession as a gastroenterologist, Dr Saliha is passionate about healthy eating. Commenting on the current food culture, she says, “We live in this food climate where food industry is a really big player and we’re constantly sold ultra-processed food items full of high fat, salt, sugar – and biologically we’re designed to like those food items. And yet that’s not really what our body needs to function properly.

“There is also the interplay between the modern cookery scene and ancient traditions which our cultures have taught us, then you interplay that with everything you learn on social media – some of which is wrong, some of which is right. So everybody exists in this quite confusing food culture. I really wanted to simplify things for people, break it down… that good food, healthy food, gut healthy food doesn’t have to be complicated. Actually, it’s very intuitive.”

She advises people wanting to think intelligently about what they eat to first make a “frank assessment” of their diet, and importantly, to be patient. “It’s not about critique or blame. It’s about positive changes that you can put in place – and changes have to be slow. We sometimes think we have got to change things quickly. Well, if you’ve been eating in a certain way for years, it’s going to take you some time to change and your gut is going to take a little time to adapt. The path to achieving digestive health and happiness is not always going to be a straightforward one. But the overall trajectory will be really positive.” She adds, “As a gastroenterologist, it’s very rewarding to see that people don’t need to rely on extra medicines. They could use food as a very empowering tool to help themselves.” However, Dr Saliha is quick to add, “You’ve got to remember that I’m a doctor and I do prescribe medicine. I’m not anti-medicine in any way. I’m just pro-food in a very big way.”

Highlighting the medicinal properties of ingredients such as turmeric, she adds, “I also know my patients really like food solutions, because when you give someone a food solution to their problem, it’s something that they can take control of, and it really makes people feel empowered. Whereas sticking people on endless medications that aren’t achieving anything isn’t any good. Then you’ve really got to question what we’re achieving.”

There is, of course, the assumption that people can find it a challenge to eat healthy while still staying on budget. Dr Saliha adds, “I’m not denying that eating healthy can be expensive because fruit and vegetables are expensive, especially when you compare it to the ultra-processed food items. I’m not in a position here to critique people when they don’t have the funds to support healthy eating. However, there are ways of doing it.” She mentions inexpensive items like dried lentils, tinned pulses, grains and even frozen fruit and vegetables as alternatives. “The critical thing is, if you know how to cook, it really makes a difference because you can be creative with more cost-effective ingredients. You need a little bit of creativity, a bit of patience, but there are ways of achieving some degree of success.”

Armed with the desire to continue to assist people in their goal of healthy eating, Dr Saliha is working on her fourth recipe book. “Full details to be confirmed, but I can tell you that it’s on the theme of express healthy eating, so 20-minute recipes. Fast and furious but healthy cooking, let’s put it that way.”

Books by Dr Saliha

KHAZANA: A TREASURE TROVE OF INDO-PERSIAN RECIPES INSPIRED BY THE MUGHALS

“The first book that I wrote was called Khazana which means ‘a treasure trove’. I had just come off the show, MasterChef 2017, and I wanted to celebrate what it meant to be a South-Asian woman. There are recipes with 50kg of cashews; that’s just not going to work in today’s kitchen. So it was about refining and modernising the dishes and making them accessible to the 21st century kitchen, whilst at the same time preserving the heritage.”

FOODOLOGY: A FOOD-LOVER’S GUIDE TO DIGESTIVE HEALTH AND HAPPINESS

“I was seeing around me so many people suffering with different ailments – from bloating to constipation to feeling tired all the time to not having healthy relationships with food and not even understanding what tastes good anymore. Then, it was COVID and lots of people lost their taste and smell. The book that I wrote, Foodology, is a science reading book, which also has 50 recipes embedded within it to illustrate scientific points. It’s about making that information digestible.”

THE KITCHEN PRESCRIPTION: 101 DELICIOUS EVERYDAY RECIPES TO REVOLUTIONISE YOUR GUT HEALTH

“My latest book, which is also a Sunday Times bestseller in the UK, called The Kitchen Prescription, is really getting to the cooking. We’re talking about classic 21st century lifestyles and how we eat, and how we can optimise gut health and diversity. It’s modern, it’s to be used in your kitchen. It’s really putting some of those principles that were in Foodology into practice with illustrated recipes – a 101 of them – so a good bank for people to use at home.”