This is how - and what - I eat
My food manifesto (the how) and 7-day food diary (the what)
Here’s a one minute video I shared on Instagram to accompany this column.
Hi! This is Leyla from A Day Well Spent, a newsletter seeking pathways to more purposeful living.
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In the same way people want to know what skincare products a beauty journalist actually uses, or the favourite off-the-beaten-track destination of a travel writer, it seems that people want to know what - and how - a food journalist eats.
I know this because I am one and I am asked this question, a lot.
I think some of this is because of my physical appearance. I often get the ‘how do you stay so slim?’ and ‘where do you put it all?’ questions. I mostly don’t mind these but they can jar. There is rarely ever a need to comment on someone’s weight or size.
But I think the rest of it comes from a place of genuine curiosity.
In today’s column I share my food manifesto that has organically developed over the years — this is the how I eat. Plus my food diary from the past week, everything that has passed my lips - this is the what I (actually) eat.
I hope you enjoy.
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Food and me
Food is at the core of a huge amount of what I do, both professionally and personally.
I am a presenter on BBC Radio 4’s brilliant The Food Programme where we investigate every aspect of the food we eat — the show is now in its 45th year. It is my honour to be a part of it and to work with such a formidable team. I am also a critic on MasterChef (along with my fellow critics, we are the ones that sample and critique the dishes the contestants cook) — another incredible gig.
I’ve previously written about the extent of my hobbies and much of them are centred around food. Be that gathering the seeds of nettles, growing vegetables, making sparkling rosehip wine or fermenting food. Even though I don’t consume the news, the books and publications I choose to read are more often than not about food in its wider context.
For example, I have a subscription to the excellent Permaculture Magazine, I’m currently reading Edible: 70 Sustainable Plants That Are Changing How We Eat by Kevin Hobbs and Artur Cisar-Erlach, and my favourite read of the year so far has been Ultra-Processed People by Chris Van Tullekan (who I happen to be interviewing at Hay Literary Festival on Friday).
I even travel to eat. A few years ago I circumnavigated the globe for 8 months with destinations based purely on some of my favourite cuisines. You better believe Mexico, Vietnam, Malaysia, Taiwan and India were on that list.
I am endlessly interested in farming, food production, food cultures, food traditions and spent most of last month working on farms in Portugal, where for the first time, I assisted in the dispatching and processing of a sheep.
‘Was this for a thing?’ people have been asking me. ‘No,’ I’ve been replying. ‘Working on farms is just the sort of stuff I choose to do in my free time.’
This is all to say, even though I likely haven’t been to the latest hyped restaurant and barely know who has what Michelin stars (I mix up most of the chef names anyway), I do know a fair bit about food, how it’s produced and its effects on us and the planet. And I relish continuing to learn more about these things every day.
With all this intel, how and what do you eat?
The short answer to this question is, I don’t follow any particular pattern or format of eating. I just sort of, eat what I fancy. But I suppose the key thing here is that what I fancy is quite often both delicious and good for me — I don’t get cravings for McDonald’s.
That’s not to say I don’t sometimes really hanker for a burger. If I do, I will answer the craving and head straight to Bleecker.
If I had to sum up the way I eat in a sentence, it would be Michael Pollan’s aphorism from In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto — ‘Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.’
But there’s a lot more to it than that. As I began to write today’s column, I realised I too have a food manifesto of sorts. They are not a set of rules in any sense. I don’t regimentally stick to these and there is no such thing as a forbidden or ‘bad’ food in my book, nothing is out of bounds.
But I do have a list of intentions and motives I tend to follow when it comes to what and how I eat. Some of them are conscious decisions. Others have been formed over the years out of good habits or knowledge I have acquired.
At the end of it all, as my brilliant co-presenter at The Food Programme and the doyenne of food journalism, Sheila Dillon, said in this interview she did for my Substack, ‘Eating well means eating with pleasure.’ Pleasure is at the heart of all good eating. I only eat what I really want to eat.
Don’t feel any guilt and learn to love the good stuff too.
My food manifesto and my food diary
And so here is my food manifesto (the how), covering fruit and veg, meat, dairy, restaurants, food on the go, carbs, alcohol, sweet stuff, salt, liquids, food waste, food packaging and more.
Along with my food diary from the past week (the what), so you can see what I actually eat. Where things are shop bought I have included the brand.
Please note that I am in no way saying this is how everyone should eat, this is just how I eat and it works really well for me.
My food manifesto - this is how I eat