Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall - 100 ways to eat better

For Jess and Nikki, with immeasurable thanks for your immoderate help with this, and much else besides

The food we eat is the most important factor influencing our health and well-being. Yet despite (or perhaps because of) a decades-long debate about diet, many of us still feel confused, unhappy, guilty and anxious about what we eat. I want to help change that. And this book is my most focused attempt so far.

More than ever, in the light of the Covid-19 pandemic, its vital that everybody knows how much making good food choices can do to help us stay well. Its not just the healthy functioning of our digestive systems thats at stake. Its the complex web of activities in every cell of our body what is collectively referred to as our immune system. So, when we eat well, we dont just function well day to day, we also fight back when viruses and bacteria come to call. We are far better at fending off challenges to our body and, when we do get ill, at recovering quickly.

I believe that a helpful book about healthy eating must not be a negative thing, with long lists of banned foods and dietary restrictions. It needs to lead with a positive understanding of what the good foods are, and it needs to make it easier for us to choose, eat and enjoy much more of them. Thats my plan here.

Im also going to talk about when and how we eat. Thats going to help us understand why we eat certain foods that we know we would be better off not eating; and it will help us replace them with the good stuff. Were going to combine clearer understanding with achievable actions and delicious recipes so we can eat better, not just for a while, but forever.

Before we get to where were going, lets look at where we are. Although we are living longer (on average 82 years in the UK), many of us spend our last 20 years or so in poor health, often with conditions which could be prevented through different lifestyles primarily by eating better. 67% of men and 62% of women are above a healthy weight; a third of us are obese. Around 50% of adults are trying to lose weight, usually unsuccessfully. And the age at which our health starts to be negatively affected by our weight gets younger by the year. So it seems that our daily bread and our extended life span brings us neither health nor happiness. We have to change that.

I believe that the sheer volume of information about diet that now speeds its way backwards and forwards across the globe is actually part of the problem. The constant in-flow of data, advice and opinion that we are exposed to is often contradictory, unrealistic and unhelpful. A great deal of it, in fact, is flam, fashion and faddism. But that doesnt mean we should give up, or dismiss it all. On the contrary, I think its vital to realise that in amongst the cacophony there is some very sound advice.

The last few years in particular have seen some genuinely useful advances in evidence-based science around healthy eating. This is actually a very good time to mine the seemingly bottomless pit of modern dietary advice for some golden nuggets of true wisdom. Or, in other words, to size up the latest good science and summarise it clearly. Thats been my mission for the last two years, and this book is the result.

I want to stress that this is a collaborative effort. I have strong views about healthy eating, based on some pretty in-depth reading and research, but also on my experiences as a chef, writer, cook and broadcaster in the food industry for over 30 years. But I also know the value of discussing those views with people for whom understanding diet and human health is a full-time job. Ive talked to many experts in this field, including Dr Giles Yeo, Professor Tim Spector and Professor Mark Mattson, and youll find them quoted in the text. Ive also asked one of the food scientists I most admire, dietitian Dr Michelle Harvie, of the Prevent Breast Cancer Research Unit in Manchester, to read (several drafts!) of this text, and comment and challenge me along the way. Her support has hugely increased my confidence that this book really can help you change.

One problem I see looming large (and my collaborators happen to agree with me) is that the world of diet publishing and the wellness sector continue to orbit around single-fix ideas. Most books offer up one big commitment you can make, one diet plan you can sign up to, one headline-grabbing concept you can market the crap out of Some of those books may help some people, some of the time. But I think we can, and must, do better than that. And we will start doing better as soon as we stop pretending that the combined complexities of what we eat, and what our bodies do with it, can be reduced to a single mantra or one neat idea, be it Paleo, Fasting, High-fibre, Zero-sugar or whatever. They surely cant because the variables are endlessly well, variable. We need to take that into account. Ive written this book quite deliberately in order to buck this one big idea trend.

Ive been paying attention to new and not so new ideas about healthy eating ever since, as an undergraduate, I took steps to reduce my student beer (and biscuit) belly. Ive always had a taste for the good things of life including beer and wine, burgers and kebabs, fish and chips, and chocolate, cakes and puds. But I have also tried to steer my appetite towards things I know are good for me. I used to struggle, for instance, to enjoy certain vegetables, including tomatoes, beetroot, spinach, mushrooms and sweetcorn. But as a young adult teaching myself to cook, and then a chef learning on the job, I deliberately set out to find better specimens of these vegetables, and ways to cook them that I could first tolerate, then enjoy.

Learning to grow food myself massively enhanced this process, and now I have a love for pretty much every fruit and vegetable under the sun. This journey has taken time, but its convinced me that with the right help and guidance we can all make important changes to the way we eat. We can learn to eat better. And that is so much more enduring, and important for our health and happiness, than going on a diet.

Ive always enjoyed good food, but the meaning of that phase has evolved for me. It still means pleasure-bringing and therefore good for the soul, yes, but also good for my health, my familys health and the health of my environment. I have never stopped trying to learn more about what good eating really means, and as a consequence my eating and drinking habits have evolved over the decades. Its been a meandering kind of road, but I am now at a place where Im confident that Im making reasonable decisions about what to eat most of the time! I still make some less good decisions a second helping of ice cream, a packet of crisps on the train but these days I am much more aware of them. I dont beat myself up about my poorer choices, because I know Im making them less often than I used to.

I have developed an approach to eating and living that is working well for me. Im lighter, healthier, fitter and less anxious than I have been for years. I sleep better and I cope with stress better too. So, I want to share that approach with you. But I am emphatically not about to tell you that if you simply do what Ive done, youll become a new person and all your problems will be solved. Its crazy to suggest one size fits all when it comes to health, or even that one size is enough. Tackling several different things, in whichever ways are achievable for you, has got to be the way forward. And it also helps avoid the shameful spectre of failure that haunts every One Big Idea approach. If you entrust all your healthy eating eggs to one ideological basket, so to speak, youve only got to drop it once to feel like youve totally messed up. If youre spinning a few different plates, on the other hand, its not such a big deal if you take your eye off one of them sometimes.