Ella Mills, née Woodward – aka ‘Deliciously Ella’ – was on Radio 4 this morning discussing ‘clean eating’. Many will know her as one of the main advocates of this fashionable nutritional advice, even though she now says she doesn’t like to use the phrase ‘clean’. Her best-selling book suggested that food could be used as medicine and could help cure illness.
In August 2015, Isabel Hardman and I looked at the cult of clean eating in The Spectator. It had all the elements of a classic cult – devotees, a life-changing, inspirational message, a distinct lack of evidence to back up any of it – and now, it seems, even its most prominent priestesses are starting to repent.
Mills’s book became one the fastest-selling debut cookbooks of all time. She capitalised on the clean-eating phenomenon – and countless women have followed her advice. She suggested people cut out gluten and dairy. Milk,
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Donald Trump’s campaign manager Chris LaCivita hardly minced his words on hearing that Peter Mandelson had been appointed as the British ambassador to the United States. Mandelson is an ‘absolute moron’, he said. While one might have chosen an alternative rhetorical style, there is no denying that Mandelson’s appointment at this particular moment in history is deeply problematic
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