My Food Philosophy
My cooking is informed by three core principles: seasonality, simplicity and sustainability.
These three foundations feed and support one another, just as a good diet can feed and support you. If you shop and cook with the seasons you are enjoying food at its natural best. Seasonal food tastes so good that simple cooking techniques and flavour combinations will allow it to shine, making meals easier to prepare, whilst being surprisingly delicious to eat. Allowing your diet to be guided by the seasons is naturally more sustainable because what you eat requires the least amount of interference with nature. Seasonal cooking applies mostly to fruit and vegetables. If you’re new to cooking this way these two food groups are your best access point.
The bulk of my cooking is made up of seasonal fruit and vegetables. To these groups, I add store cupboard ingredients like nuts, grains and pulses. These also have seasons (when they can be bought fresh rather than dried for example) and this can be fun to explore. If you eat eggs and dairy products they will enhance a seasonal diet in much the same way. If you eat meat and fish (especially game and wild seafood) these items have seasons, too.
A seasonal diet is not restrictive. In fact, it’s quite the opposite because it’s naturally varied. Many large food retailers market themselves by offering you a wide choice of ingredients. This means that for much of the time they rely on imported produce, just to ensure that they can sell the same ingredients, all year round. This dizzying amount of choice might seem like a good thing but it can actually cause you to buy the same items all the time, leading to a restricted diet.
Shopping seasonally will encourage you to eat locally produced food but will not restrict you to it. There are all sorts of seasonal treats that you can enjoy, from all over the world if you eat this way. From Indian mangoes in summer to Italian Cicoria in winter…these things are a world away from the polytunnels that churn out the same, tasteless vegetables all year round. The trick is learning to spot one from another.
Shopping with the seasons also frees you from a lot of confusing messages around health and nutrition, some of which over-emphasise the benefits of certain ingredients. Eating something because ‘you think you have to’ is a surefire way to remove the joy from your diet. The truth is that most food trends are in and out of fashion in the blink of an eye.
As with most things in life, the best advice is timeless.
Sustainable means eating food that is good for you and the planet.
Good for the planet, that’s easy enough to understand. It means having as little impact on nature as possible. But what is “good for you”?
The answer to this should not be set in stone. It means eating things that are delicious and make you feel good. It’s important to remember that feeling good about what you eat is not a short term fix but a long term project.
To ensure that I’m thinking about what I eat with a focus on feeling good about it, I tend to follow these guidelines…
I trust my gut instincts.
There’s more science in this than you might think! The more we understand about the human gut the more we realise that there is no such thing as an average person. You and your gut are actually quite unique. A lot of this is down to your genetic make up and your relationship with your microbiome (the myriad organisms that inhabit your digestive tract). All this means that you respond quite individually to what you eat. Even identical twins can show radically different responses to the same diet. As a result, it’s worth knowing that very little nutritional or dietary advice can be applied to everyone. There is no one - size - fits - all.
I believe that cravings can be a good thing.
Over the years I have learned to understand the difference between craving and addiction or dependence. I have cravings all the time and used to wonder if I had an addictive nature. After a life in food, encountering lots of ingredients, I realise that I have cravings because I know what a lot of things taste like (and most of them are delicious)! So it’s hard for me to ignore something that looks, smells or even sounds really good.
A varied diet can lead you to have varied cravings! After all, your body sometimes knows what it wants. If you “listen to your body” this way it can free you from being dependent on the same things all the time (which can feel like addiction).
I am very wary of health claims about ingredients.
A lot of populist nutritional advice is more about marketing than science. Most of us have probably heard of superfoods: single ingredients or food types that are nutrient dense. Adding them to your diet or eating lots of them will make you more healthy. Sounds good, right?
Hmmmm!
Superfood is not a scientifically recognised term. What’s more some of the studies that generate health claims about superfoods are either deeply flawed lab tests that don’t hold up in the real world, or the results are exaggerated. What’s more, some superfoods have become so sought after that their production methods have led to environmental and ethical issues. In some cases, these have reduced or even reversed the supposed benefits of eating them.
I would never ‘go on a diet’ unless medically advised to do so.
First things first: A diet guided by ethics or a medically diagnosed health condition is not what I am talking about here. The huge reach of the internet and social media has vastly increased the uptake of ‘wellness’ diets which promise to overhaul the human body and rid it of any number of modern ills (from mild symptoms such as lethargy and indigestion to auto-immune disorders, allergies and in some extreme cases, serious health issues). Because of your unique genetic make up and microbiome, there is no guarantee that over the counter diets or food, restrictions will do what they say on the tin. These days I meet many people who have been led to believe that they are intolerant of or allergic to entire food groups (for example grains and dairy). In the vast majority of cases, I would advise them that the stress or anxiety of trying to avoid a whole bunch of foodstuffs is more likely to upset their stomachs than the food itself.
I rarely eat ultra processed food
(Which means that if it happens I don’t get stressed about it)! You’ll notice that I use the words “ultra processed”. This is because the word “processed” has got all caught up in the messy, mixed messages I’ve just described. There is no black and white when it comes to whole foods and processed foods. A beautifully baked loaf of sourdough bread is a processed food. So is chickpea flour or white rice. So is honey and so are lentils. Lots of perfectly natural foods are processed to make them easier to store, cook or eat.
Ultra processed foods are those with large amounts of added ingredients: often used to enhance their flavour or texture. It’s easy to spot ultra processed food. The ingredient list will include a number of items you wouldn’t find in your own store cupboard. So not salt, sugar, flour, or spices etc but complicated additives with hard -to -understand names that you might not even be sure how to pronounce! This stuff is everywhere, it’s fun to eat…sometimes. It’s often cheap to make (even when it’s not cheap to buy). Most importantly of all, it’s a fairly recent invention. And like most food trends it’ll probably go out of fashion in time! So I pretty much ignore it. This includes, I’m afraid to say, many of the so-called health foods that people use to replace things they have stopped eating. For example, if you’ve decided to adopt a plant based diet but miss sausages,just remember that plant based sausages are just as processed as their piggy counterparts! Any health claims on their artful packaging are about clever marketing. A sausage is a sausage. To me, these ingredients are best viewed as fun treats rather than dietary staples.
I am on a path towards ahimsa, but I’m no expert on the subject
Because I try to practice yoga on and off the mat, I regularly question the ethics around what I cook and eat. The vow of non-violence in my kitchen is a serious one, but over the years I have noticed that constant, gentle enquiry is more helpful than thinking you have all the answers. For me, Ahimsa in the kitchen means eating food that tries to be non violent to all beings (including myself) and the planet we live on. Piety is not very helpful when it comes to this line of enquiry because it can make you rest on your laurels. it’s not enough to say “I am vegetarian”, or “I only eat organic”. There will always be somewhere further to go.