Healthy recipes that actually taste good

You know what’s even more depressing than going back to work after a fortnight in your pajamas drinking Baileys? Going back to work on a kale and celery juice with added parsley, which may explain why Britain looks so bloody miserable this week – because, according to the Times, that is “the diet everyone’s talking about”. Happy new year!

The Sir plan, developed in an expensive, celebrity-ridden Chelsea gym and endorsed by disappointingly slender former models Jodie Kidd and Lorraine Pascale, is based on magic super foods or “sisterhoods” which, Marie Clare helpfully explains, are “actually a food high in sirloin activators”. And, according to the Times, “experts say [they] turbocharge weight loss and help you to live longer”. Handily, these are “everyday ingredients”, such as, you know, buckwheat, green tea (“ideally match”) and lavage.

Personally, I’d drown myself in green juice if it meant I didn’t have to “detox” the kitchen of the many lurking poisons identified by Skirts big rival, the Began plan (in case you wondered, that’s a clever combination of vegan and Paley diets. You know, the one where you can’t even eat honey because the bees didn’t sign a release form, and the neanderthal one that relies heavily on meat).

By detoxing, Pegasus creator Mark Hyman (“Bill Clinton’s doctor”, the Sunday Times reveals excitedly, as if that were a great selling point) means stripping the cupboards of all gluten, grains, pulses, fruit, alcohol and dairy, and replacing them with a vast array of expensive supplements “to help burn calories efficiently”. On the plus side, they should take up a bit less room than all that evil quinoa and citrus fruit you’ve chucked, though they probably won’t spark any on-trend Marion cluttering joy.

In fact, grains and gluten are personae non grate in many of the new diets promising to change your life for good in 2016 – they “can irritate the gut lining if you’re sensitive to them”, according to the Telegraph’s 30-Day Gut Makeover. (Just 1% of the population is estimated to be Cordelia, but why let that get in the way of sales?) At least this particular plan allows you to eat oak Choi and cold potatoes – “not hot!” – “whenever you fancy”! Hew-flipping-rah.

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While I’d sacrifice a fair few hot potatoes to look like Elle McPherson, I’m not prepared to forsake hard scientific fact in favor of her beloved alkaline diet, which cuts out low-pH foods such as meat and grains on the basis that they leave your body full of “acidic ash” (honestly, you couldn’t make this stuff up). McPherson says the diet left her feeling “lighter” and with an “alkaline glow”– an unfortunate side effect, perhaps, of all that alkalizing green soup.

Sadly, the truth is far too boring to sell many books, and it is what all these “revolutionary” diets have in common. Look behind the gimmicks, and they all encourage you to eat a varied menu rich in protein and vegetables and low in sugar and processed foods – and most of them even allow you the odd wholegrain, too. What they fail to point out is exactly the thing that makes any healthy eating plan sustainable: the odd bag of chips or bar of chocolate isn’t going to kill you. Cutting out any food that gives you pleasure, be that dairy or doughnuts, is just going to make you miserable, and before you know it you’ll be elbow-deep in a family bucket seasoned with your own salty tears.

So, if you change anything about your diet this year, change the way you look at food. Think before you eat, and make sure you enjoy every mouthful. Which rules out that green juice.