Some women, particularly if they gain lots of weight during pregnancy, can develop gestational diabetes – high blood sugars. They usually return to normal after the baby is born but it does make you more prone to developing diabetes later on. If it’s not controlled by diet you end up having a big baby (ouch!)and he or she has a higher risk of being overweight and developing diabetes when older. Now here’s a study, just published in the British Journal of Nutrition, that has found taking specific probiotics may reduce gestational diabetes by 20%.

What did they do? It was a double-blind, randomised controlled study which means the study participants (256 healthy pregnant women) were randomly assigned to one of three groups: dietary counselling plus a daily probiotic capsule, dietary counselling plus a placebo capsule (looked and tasted the same but had no probiotics in it) or just the placebo capsule.

Double-blind means that neither the study participants nor the study organisers knew which group was which. Actually the control group who had no dietary counselling and just took the placebo capsule were single-blinded which means they didn’t know it didn’t contain probiotics but the study organisers did.

There’s no denying that eating fish is good for you. One of the key reasons is that it’s a great source of polyunsaturated fat – in particular the omega-3 fats called EPA and DHA. These fats are help reduce inflammation, clotting, high triglycerides (a type of fat in the blood) and help keep the blood vessels flexible. They are a critical part of brain growth and visual and nervous system development. Some parents and teachers swear by fish oil as a solution to lack of concentration and unruly behaviour in kids although the scientific evidence is not so certain about this.

The Nutrient Reference Values for Australia and New Zealand have a ‘suggested dietary target’ of 610mg per day for men and 430mg per day for women of long-chain omega-3’s.

I just had to take a photo of the delicious scallops I cooked on the weekend. I heated some olive oil in a small fry-pan and dumped them in along with finely chopped garlic, ginger and coriander root. “One minute each side, turn them over only once and don’t over-cook them,” the helpful man at my local fish shop ordered me. I obeyed the orders and they turned out perfectly. For NZ$15 we had a smoked kahawai and 12 scallops – more than enough for three of us to eat.

“When I was a kid, scallops just washed up on the beach,” my father-in-law reminisced. They don’t do that now so we headed off to what I think is the best fish shop in Auckland – Marsic Brothers in Glen Innes.