My breakfast bowl is already heaving with homemade bircher muesli, yogurt, hazelnuts, raspberries and chopped banana when Melissa Hemsley produces a cooking pan of her homemade chia seed jam from the fridge and urges me to try a dollop. Two bags of frozen berries warmed on a hob with chia seeds has created a dark and delicious gloop. “I put it on everything. Breakfast, puddings, the lot,” enthuses Hemsley.
We’re in the kitchen-cum-diner of her home in north London where she lives with her partner Henry Relph, an art curator, their one-year-old daughter Summer Eliza, and Nelly, their silver Staffy. This is also Hemsley’s workspace, where she tries every recipe “a bazillion times” before she’s happy it meets her standards. “If I had to have a strapline it would be ‘Delicious, doable, hearty and healthy.’”
Healthy, not bland food has always been the 38-year-old’s mantra. The chia jam is a typical example (less niche than you might think; now £1.20 a packet in Tesco). Where you and I might sprinkle a few chia seeds on top as a gesture, not so Hemsley, who has found a way to make them flavoursome and practical by hydrating them, making it less likely they will pass straight through the consumer’s system without benefit.
It is nourishing food. But when Hemsley and her older sister Jasmine burst onto the food scene 15 years ago, beautiful young women with a penchant for whole grains, they found themselves unimaginatively pigeon-holed with other young female foodies whose food message wasn’t straight out of the “chuck a knob of butter on it” school of cooking.
“Clean eating” rapidly became a dirty phrase, associated with restriction.
“Do you think my recipes are restrictive?” Hemsley counters when I rake over the coals of the old accusation. Given the way she has been trying to feed me all morning… no, I don’t.
“It’s frustrating when people don’t read the book and think I’m dairy and meat free,” she adds. “The same way if you were an Italian chef and someone called your food French food you’d be like, that’s just not true.”
Hemsley tells me about the wife of a Michelin-starred chef who told her: “I cook your recipes all the time for my husband, but he doesn’t know they’re yours.”
She doesn’t know whether to laugh at that: “Did she not tell him because it would put him off? But what she basically was saying was, ‘my partner likes your food’.”
Was it snobbery? “I don’t have enough headspace to worry about it,” she says.
Fifteen years on and how she’s changed is that she doesn’t worry about things as much. “I can’t write a book that’s going to be perfect for everyone, I can’t be everyone’s cup of tea.”
Six cookbooks and over 200k followers on Instagram, Hemsley is more a big pot of tea than a cuppa.
In recent years the sisters have worked on their own projects, with Hemsley quashing the rumours of a rift. “We didn’t fall out. Everyone’s happy.” She adds: “There are great twosomes like Ant and Dec, and then there’s people who start together and then want to do their own thing.”
For Jasmine that has been diving deeper into Ayurveda and sound therapy. For Hemsley, it has been focusing on food equality, sustainability and charity work. She is passionate about her work with the Felix Project and gives cookery workshops at Future Dreams, a hub in King’s Cross for women affected by breast cancer.
Her last book was about the link between eating well and mental health, the one for before that about trying to be more sustainable.
Right now though it is: “Trying to combine delicious food, with the doability and the convenience and the feel good factor. That’s my main mission.”
Put more simply, she is tackling ultra-processed foods.
Her latest offering is Real Healthy: Unprocess Your Diet with Easy Everyday Recipes. It is full of quick, nutritious, budget-conscious and tasty recipes she hopes will give UPFs a run for their money.
In the time since she first started writing cookbooks, she feels the food environment has become more challenging. “I remember when you could go into a newsagent and there would be a fresh food aisle. Now you’re lucky if you see a banana for sale.”
Ironically, as sales of cookbooks have shot up the charts, sales of vegetables have gone down. “There are so many cooking shows on TV yet we’re not cooking at home.”
There is no great mystery as to why though. Because, who doesn’t love a home-cooked, healthy meal, given the time, budget and access to ingredients?
It’s why on her last book tour she was asked multiple times: “Can you do more of the batch cooking?” “Can you do more 30-minute meals and tray bakes?”
The rise of UPFs
Ultra-processed food is convenient, cheap and, at least at first bite, tasty, we are only just starting to understand the impact UPFs have on our health.
“For a long time people argued whether food affected how you feel and we now know yes it does. There’s no two ways about it.”
Hemsley reels out the stats. Fifty-seven percent of our average daily calorie intake is made up of ultra processed foods. We eat more than any other country in Europe. For the nation’s children under 14, UPFs make up on average 76 per cent of their diet. “I don’t want my daughter growing up not being able to tolerate the taste of vegetables because she’s used to the sweetness of ultra-processed foods,” Hemsley says.
Of course, many foods that are healthy for us – olive oil being an obvious example – under-go some form of processing. UPFs are generally understood to be foods like sweets, chocolate cereals, fizzy energy drinks. Foods that are high in trans fats and sugar. But there are less obvious ones such as stock cubes and bottled sauces.
Nobody is perfect
Look inside Hemsley’s cupboard and you will find a well-known brand’s tomato ketchup. “I’ve tried to make my own and it was a faff and it didn’t taste the same,” she says.
Even as someone who works from home, surrounded by food, she still feels the same temptation of convenience. Hemsley isn’t even anti-UPF: “I love a packet of crisps and a biscuit now and then. I just don’t want my palate to rely on them.”
Of late though, she’s noticed that ratio creeping up. “I’m like everyone else, chasing my tail, I’m late for everything, trying to work out what to eat at 6 o’clock.”
The feedback she had from readers was that they too were struggling. “Especially with breakfast on-the-go and packed lunches.”
She takes her position as a high-profile recipe writer seriously: “I don’t think we should be coming up with cookbooks unless they are really helpful.”
For anyone who wants to make cooking at home as convenient as convenience foods, she says: “Then I would like to be there to help.”
From scratch
Her lifelong appreciation of minimally processed meals can be traced back to her childhood.
And in particular, her mother. “She worked full time, my dad was in the Army and we lived on army bases in England and Germany, she was very much single parenting really.”
Her focus was always on giving her two daughters as much nutritious food as possible. “She wouldn’t have even used the word healthy, she would have thought of it as nutrition.”
Having grown up in the Philippines, with very little meat, a very modest food budget and a big family, she knew a lot about home economics.
Even still, Hemsley remembers being desperate to have the same eight packs of mini-cereals that her friends were allowed. “If Mum had asked you what do you want for your birthday I would have wanted that.”
Not having processed foods backfired for a little bit: “Because I was then obsessed with eating that kind of food. And that’s fine.”
Her mother remains a huge presence in her life, and is a devoted grandparent. While Hemsley, meanwhile, has built a career upon the foundations that she established when she was little.
“She hates the word frugal, but I love it,” laughs Hemsley. “Rolling things from one meal to another. She taught me that you look in the fridge or the freezer, and you pull together a meal.”
Batch cook
After leaving home and working as a private chef, Hemsley would come home hungry but fed up with cooking food. “I still needed to feed myself, though,” she recalls. It would be then that she would dig into her freezer and find a homemade ready meal. “I’d warm up a bolognese that I made two months ago and say thank you to my past self.”
Batch cooking has been a staple of her life. And she doesn’t mean eating the same meal four nights in a row!
“I’m a in a lucky position because I always have food in the fridge as it’s my job. But even if I wasn’t working in food, it’s in my blood to always have food in the freezer.”
Batch cooking can seem overwhelming, but if you’re already cooking it makes sense to do more.
“The oven costs money, so if you’ve got it on already, double up. Get a second tray in there. ‘Cook once, eat twice’ is what my mother championed.”
Get it in the freezer in batches, or if you need lunch for the next day: “I would smash it between two pieces of bread.”
However she is aware that not everyone has the containers, freezer space or money to invest in double the ingredients up front. “If that isn’t helpful to you, don’t do it. I have plenty of other suggestions.”
Add, don’t take away
While food stylists want food photography to look neat, Hemsley was always trying to pile more food into her tray bake shots.
“She thought it looked too messy,” she says. However more, rather than less, is Hemsley’s style.
It’s why, rather than avoiding processed foods, she focuses instead on adding more nutrition to what’s on your plate.
“If I’m having a pizza delivered then I’ll make a quick salad of cannellini beans and rocket while I wait,” says Hemsley.
The same goes if you are having a pre prepared meal, then how can you make it better for you? One tip is to put half a tin of lentils into a ready made pasta sauce.
“That’s going to make it heartier and more satisfying, so that you’re not still wanting more at the end of the meal.”
Even better, batch cook her red lentil and tomato super sauce. “It makes about 12 portions and has onion, garlic and tomato puree. Sometimes I’ll blitz carrots in there to bulk it up, and red lentils; you’d never know they’re in there.”
She uses it for spaghetti, or turns it into soup, enjoyed with a cheese toastie. You can also add beans and turn it into a chilli.
Be prepared
If you build up your store cupboard staples, then those takeaways won’t seem quite so tempting. Hemsley always has greens in the freezer and tomato puree and yogurt in the fridge.
Have tins of chickpeas and pulses in your cupboard, and your favourite versatile spice.
Homemade sauces and dips are one immediate way to reduce UPFs. “If you make a habit of making your own hummus or feta dip, then it will become easier. It’s about mindset. You will also eat more vegetables with it.”
Still, she adds: “I still buy a pesto every now and then.”
She finds the salad dressing aisle in supermarkets interesting. “It’s huge business.”
If she had to make a salad dressing every time she ate a salad: “I wouldn’t bother eating salad,” the solution is to make a jar, keep it in the fridge: “And you’re OK for two weeks.”
Cucina povera
Translated as “the kitchen of the poor”, cucina povera refers to the traditional cooking techniques and recipes that originated from Italy’s rural peasant populations.
It means using a smaller amount of meat to make them go further. This is frequently Hemsley’s approach to cooking with meat: “But when I think about it, that’s about how my mum would cook. It’s not only Italian.”
What’s left of a whole chicken is shredded and added to lunch. Leftover herbs can be used instead of salad. Basil stalks go into a pesto.
Another habit she has picked up from her mother is to always make vegetables part of the main dish. “Mum never eats veg on the side. The veg was always part of the meal. That’s why with my recipes most of them are traybakes and one pot because it’s one less plate and pot to wash up.”
Keep it simple, stupid
KISS is what Hemsley keeps in her head as she’s working on new recipes. Even though she has the privilege of coming up with recipes for a living, she’s always putting herself in the shoes of someone who is coming home after work and has to grab a few ingredients to turn into a meal: “And then do the washing up afterwards and then maybe make some lunch boxes.”
She loves nothing more than when people tell her online that they’ve discovered you can skip a step in a recipe. “I always think, ‘That’s amazing, thank you!’”
One pot, less than 30 minutes and double batch so you’ve leftover for lunch is at the core of her work.
“Maybe the main difference from my past books is that I’ve tried to make the ingredients list even smaller. I also want you to be able to swap this for that, make it your own.”
It’s about less time in the kitchen overall. “If I can write recipes that mean you can spend more time with your feet up eating, than washing up and worrying about cooking it, that would be the dream.”
And while the air fryer phenomenon hasn’t tempted her yet, she says: “I’m a fan of everything that gets people cooking more. One of my friends will text me, and say can I make your recipe in an air fryer? And then tell me she did and it worked!”
Bread and sandwiches
“I never make sourdough,” Hemsley confesses. She might make bread once a month. “I posted a recipe on my Instagram but not in my book, you know why? Because I think it’s too complicated.”
Instead she has a flatbread recipe, which is simple: “Providing you make it regularly and it becomes a habit. And they go with everything. I can use them as a wrap or with a dip.”
Bread has frequently been at the centre of the UPF discussion, especially the preservatives used to extend its shelf life.
For Hemsley, mass-produced bread fails because it provides no satiety. “I can eat half a loaf of mass produced bread and it does not touch the sides. Whereas a proper loaf of bread might be more expensive, but you don’t need as much of it.”
A shop-bought sandwich fails to deliver for her not just because of the bread, but the filling too.
“For me it’s all about the deep fill. That’s what annoys me about high street sandwich shops. The filling gets smaller and smaller. Also, I really don’t like things right out of the fridge.”
Of course, access to good quality bread can be limited.
Hemsley’s advice is: “If you’re in the bread aisle and there’s 50 different breads, just look for the one with fewest ingredients.”
Don’t be obsessed
OK, so you want to eat more healthily. But what Hemsley doesn’t want is for people to be obsessing over food labels and ingredients.
“I feel like we should flip that word [obsessed] and turn it into empowered. In the same way that I’m a Fair Trade ambassador. When I pick my coffee, I give myself three seconds extra to check, ‘Is it Fair Trade?’ So if I’m picking my yogurt and it’s a brand I’m not familiar with, I’m going to check the back. I want to eat the product I think I’m paying for, not with bits added.”
At the same time, a bit of tomato ketchup is the drop in the ocean of a balanced meal. Not everything has to be made at home.
Hemsley loves a sofa snack plate. “So I will buy some really nice tortilla chips. I’m not going to make my own; that would be impossible. But maybe I will make a hummus or cottage cheese dip to go with it.”
Remember, that this is about building habits over a lifetime. A few UPFs here and there aren’t a problem. “It’s not one day and one dish. If you want people to build healthy dietary patterns it’s about your diet over a week, a month, a year, a lifetime.”
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