VERY VEGGIE EATING PLAN

Lily Simpson of Detox Kitchen shares her delicious plant-based dishes

Working at the Detox Kitchen head office officially has the best perk. It’s above the main kitchen for the delis and delivery service so, every day at lunch, the chefs lay out a huge buffet of vegetarian salads for staff. ‘We pile our plates high. Eating this way means that after lunch I don’t slow down or crave a coffee or snack later,’ says founder Lily Simpson. ‘When you eat loads of veg, you feel fuller for longer.’

She’s got a point. Vegetables are the one food all nutrition experts love. ‘That people should eat more fruit and vegetables is about the only thing that everybody agrees on in the scientific literature,’ says Dr Mark Hyman, author of Food: WTF Should I Eat? (Yellow Kite). A recent study by Imperial College London showed that a high-plant diet reduces the chances of heart attack, stroke or cancer. A 2017 study found that people who ate a high-plant diet were 43% less likely to become obese than those who ate more meat and dairy. In fact, Dr Hyman suggests we should be aiming for nine or more portions a day, rather than the usual five – which is easy, if you follow the eating plan on page 101.

Simpson knows the power of plants, too. When she began the Detox Kitchen in 2012, she worked 14-hour days, fuelled by chocolate. It was only after being diagnosed with a stomach ulcer that she began eating as well as her clients, and realised how much more energy she had. And last year, she went 100% vegetarian while writing her second book, Detox Kitchen Vegetables (Bloomsbury).

However, she’s very clear her recipes are in no way just for vegetarians or vegans. ‘I want to make vegetables delicious for everyone, so it’s not just lentils and an egg!’ she jokes. You could call Simpson’s cooking style ‘flexitarian’, where meat or fish is the side and vegetables the main dish, both at home feeding her family and at the Detox Kitchen. Simpson says, ‘Our mission has always been more people eating healthy food rather than processed. In the Detox Kitchen cafes, we didn’t want to alienate anyone by being only vegetarian.’

So how will eating like this make you feel? Once people have had Detox Kitchen deliveries for three days, Simpson says they find they have more energy and no longer crave sugar. ‘It helps you reconnect with what a balanced diet means and how it makes you feel.’ So you don’t have to restrict any foods for ever. Simpson herself is still fond of the odd Twix,‘our ethos is about finding a balance.’