“I am lighter, healthier, fitter and less anxious than I have been in years,” so says Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall in the opening of his latest book, Eat Better Forever. And it’s clear he’s telling the truth. The market for healthy eating, diet and wellness books may seem oh-so saturated, but this latest tome from the River Cottage helmsman is big, bold and loaded with very useful, scientifically backed advice on better eating in the long term. Peppered with photographs, recipes and permanent approaches to a healthy lifestyle, HFW’s hope is that it will “frame the conversation” around a better lifestyle in a more permanent way. Eat Better Forever is a great aid for New Year changes (or changes at any time of year, for that matter) and, it seems, HFW is very much practicing what he preaches.
At the heart of the book is the message that there is no “one-size-fits-all” approach to bettering our lifestyle and that fad diets, one-off “magic fixes” and extreme diet changes don’t better us in the long run. The emphasis is that everyone should find what works best for them but, underpinning everything, are seven ideas to take on board, be kept in mind and practiced until they become a permanent marker on how we live. HFW's seven pillars make up a chapter of its own: “Go whole”, “Go varied”, “Go with your gut”, “Reduce refined carbohydrates”, “Factor in fat”, “Think about drink” and “Eat mindfully”.
“There has to be a different way of framing the conversation about healthy eating that isn’t obsessively thinking about one idea you can pin all your hopes on,” he tells me. While researching and filming his 2018 series Britain’s Fat Fight, HFW found himself speaking to lots of motivating and interesting people. “I wanted to really sort the wheat from the chaff and cut through the constant noise and chatter about healthy eating, putting something down that would stabilise the conversation a bit,” he explains. “Where are we at and what can we usefully do? What’s a reasonable spectrum of changes that will support us over time, that don’t mean we are on a diet, as such, but moving towards sustainable, healthy eating?”
HFW made some big personal changes after recognising that he was eating unconsciously a lot of the time. "It seems we now have a food awareness – you’re either being careful about what you eat or you’re not. I’d think, ‘Sod it! I’ve had a long day, I’m on the train and here is the trolly. I’ll take a beer, a chocolate bar and crisps, please.’ But self care isn’t something you should switch on and off; you should always be taking care of your future self. You should be looking out for yourself tomorrow, which I started to do and that really changed the way I shopped, planned and cooked. I feel better than I have in a long time for it.”
Unfortunately, a lot of us are still getting it wrong, despite the very best of intentions. And as he points out, one third of the population is still obese. Unsurprisingly given his work, he puts a lot of the blame squarely at the feet of big industry. “One of the things making life really hard is that whatever information we are taking in about healthy eating, we are still being bombarded and pressured to eat incredibly unhealthy food by industries with enormous advertising budgets behind them. They are finding all sorts of ways to draw us in.” His advice is simple. “Before you even start worrying about calories and carbs and so on, ask yourself what should be the fundamental building blocks of your diet. Think hard about what food you eat, not just when you eat and why, but what the actual food should be.” And to stop this becoming too overwhelming, he suggests certain steps we can all take to set ourselves on a path to better eating.
“I’m not talking brown rice and lentils when I tell you to go whole,” he reassures me, “but pieces of meat, milk from a cow, vegetables from the ground. Actual whole foods are those as close to their original source as possible. We need to be eating proper food and not industrial manipulations of food. The whole foods I push are really a big part of the story. They are always available and present and it’s about maintaining a gentle dialogue with yourself and not beating yourself up if you have a treat. Try to be conscious of how and what you eat and make that the flag you tie yourself to, not for the benefit of a short-term diet but for the long haul.”
When it comes to being mindful about what we eat, Hugh explains that he’s not mad about fasting as a single-fix idea. “I don't like the notion that you can fast and then eat whatever you want the rest of the week, because those simplifications set you up to fail,” he says. “One healthy concept is not to eat and just allow yourself to feel hunger a few times a week, at whatever time works for you. We don’t have to frame it around getting it right and getting it wrong, but it’s about eating things that are really good foods and not beating ourselves up if we eat something that tickles us every now and then. We all have an evolutionary vulnerability around certain foods.”
As the old saying goes, “knowledge is power” and Hugh himself has been able to improve how he eats “by talking to a lot of smart people who pointed things out I didn't know before. They’ve given me context for some gentle behavioural changes that don't make me feel pressured and don't feel all about success or failure. They have given me self-knowledge. We have been thrown out of kilter by the industrial food industry but I hope the book gives a background of understanding that makes sense of this multi-strand approach to finding ways to look after yourself with food while acknowledging a few modern hazards. Wholeness and diversity is a really good starting block.”
Alcohol is, of course, a big one, as are sugary drinks. Are you more mindful of how you drink now, I ask him? “Gosh, yes. I didn’t drink last night and I probably won’t have a drink tonight. Two or three days usually at the beginning of the week is where I try to sit. It’s definitely at the harder end of the changes I made because I was pretty much a daily drinker for a long time. So I muster plenty of mindfulness around the drinking issue. But I hope I explain that I go through the tricky period where I will be thinking about that first drink, about 7pm-ish, with the radio on while getting dinner going.”
People should try and find an alternative, Hugh advises. “Yesterday I made a cocktail for that moment with some apple juice, kombucha, lemon verbena and mint from my garden. I sipped at that while cooking and, although that doesn’t give me the mild euphoria or that little thing you get with an early evening drink, it also meant I wasn’t climbing up the wall. By the time we sat down to eat I was over the alcohol moment and the evening was really lovely.” (Waitrose now stock the River Cottage kombucha, he tells me and, “of course I would say this, but they are amazing. The rhubarb and lovage one is really lovely.”) Take something out and put something back in, as the advice goes…
One could argue that the release of this book couldn’t be more timely, given our need to protect our immune systems, not to mention our mental health amid the backdrop of Covid-19 and lockdowns. “I have made references to the pandemic, but the message that what we eat is the most essential way of making us resilient and healthy is at the heart and was a preface of the book before the pandemic was in anyone’s sight,” he reiterates. “That said, I have been a critic and commentator of the government's health policy and lack of it, and lack of education and lack of responsibility from industry, for a long time now.”
If nothing else, the past year has shown us the government is willing and able to intervene in our lives and so, I ask him, what changes do you want to see moving forward? “Over the long term, first and foremost, further education. I want everyone to have a good understanding of what good food is, an understanding of healthy eating and practical rudiments of cookery that would make a huge difference over the long term to the next generation’s ability to look after themselves and take a huge burden off the health system. Short term, we need to head off the damage being done by the opposite of that, which is the continual bombardment of advertising poor food that makes people form poor choices over the long term, which will lead, inevitably, to health problems.”
But, on a personal level, we can all start making very beneficial changes with Eat Better Forever. “I hope people will find themselves able to get into this,” Hugh muses. “I hope readers can get into a frame of mind where the idea of what good food is is something you can think about often until it becomes second nature. I really want people to anchor themselves to these ideas and keep going back to them and the seven different approaches will help so you aren’t beating yourself up over one idea or one thing you’ve achieved or failed by reducing calories or whatever it might be. This gives people a robust background of understanding of what the foods are that you and you family need, but if you drift away from them, as you will, then you’ll come back to them and they will make you feel good and they will always make you feel good.”
The recipes found in the second half of Eat Better Forever perfectly project the ideas put forward in the first half of the book and show, once again, that a predominantly plant-based diet can be delicious and packed full of flavour. “We have become very lazy with meat and fish,” HFW says finally. “The idea is about building flavour and using the techniques on plant-based foods that we use on meat and fish, such as grilling and griddling and caramelising, to really create a diversity of flavours and the plant kingdom is where you need to turn to for that. The idea that plant-based food is bland is crazy. Everyone has lavished all the spices and crisping of the skin on fish and meat but, if you’re prepared to put the time in to do those things with meat and fish, why not do it with vegetables. It’s very liberating.”
Eat Better Forever: 7 Simple Ways To Transform Your Diet by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall is out now (Bloomsbury, £26 hardback. Audiobook also available).
The Recipe… Roots, bangers and beans
Tasty and well-seasoned, a good sausage can go a long way. In this hearty winter stew, a few bangers partner up with lots of lovely root veg and some creamy white beans to create a filling, one-pot dinner that needs no accompaniment.
Ingredients (serves four)
2tbsp olive or vegetable oil
6 free-range “butcher’s banger” pork sausages, each cut into four pieces
A splash of dry cider or white wine (optional)
2 onions, chopped
2 medium carrots, quartered lengthways and thickly sliced
2 celery stems, chopped
½ head of celeriac or 2 medium parsnips, peeled and cut into chunky cubes
2 medium potatoes (about 250g in total), scrubbed or peeled and cut into chunky cubes
400g tin beans, such as cannellini or kidney, drained and rinsed
About 500ml hot veg or chicken stock (or hot water)
Sea salt and black pepper
Chopped parsley, to finish (optional)
Method
Heat 1tbsp of oil in a flameproof casserole or large saucepan. Add the chunks of sausage and cook over a medium heat, turning often, until they are well browned all over. Add the cider or wine (or just a splash of hot water from the kettle) and cook for a minute or two, stirring and scraping up any nice bits of browned sausage meat from the base of the pan. Transfer the sausages and the pan juices to a dish and set aside for a minute.
Heat another 1tbsp oil in the casserole or pan. Add the onions, carrots and celery and cook for 10 minutes or so, until softened.
Return the sausages to the casserole with their juices and add the celeriac or parsnips, potatoes and beans. Add a pinch of salt and a grinding of black pepper and pour in enough stock or water to almost cover everything. Bring to a very gentle simmer. Cook, uncovered or partially covered, very gently over a low heat for about 40 minutes, until everything is tender. (Or cook with the lid on in the oven at 140C/Fan 120C/Gas 1.)
The potato should have broken down a little and thickened the sauce. If not, mash some of the veg and beans against the side of the dish with a fork and stir in. Check and adjust the seasonings if needed. Scatter over some chopped parsley and serve.
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