BEETROOT fermented for ten days. A bottle of sparkling kombucha – rather than champagne – on the table at lunch.
Potatoes roasted in chickpea flour, fresh herbs and extra virgin olive oil.
And what about a vegan Wellington centrepiece made with four different species of exotic mushrooms and more than 30 different types of plant?
Welcome to a very healthy Christmas Day with some of the nation’s leading diet gurus.
As most of us prepare to tuck in to a traditional festive feast of turkey and all the calorie-laden trimmings, some of the UK’s best-known names in nutrition and healthy eating have told The Mail on Sunday they are planning the kind of gastronomic celebration that not only avoids piling on the pounds but is actively good for them – and leaves them feeling energised rather than in a regretful post-lunch slump.
Whether it’s swapping Christmas pudding with brandy cream for a yoghurt and seed cake with a kefir sauce, or simply avoiding the swathe of tempting festive snacks packed with ultra-processed ingredients in the supermarket aisles, they prove it is possible to enjoy the season without over-indulging.
But some of their responses might surprise you. Not every expert is planning to maintain their wholesome approach on December 25.
In fact, one notorious critic of ultra-processed foods admitted that Christmas was ‘a big UPF day for me’ with everything bought from the supermarket and cooked from frozen. And another big advocate for healthy eating said, unapologetically, that if ever there was a time to ‘let it all hang out’, it was Christmas.
A turkey with all the trimmings is the only option many wil choose at Christmas
Studies consistently show that the average Brit consumes about 6,000 calories across Christmas Day itself and that many gain between one and two pounds over the festive period. Those pounds can prove stubborn to shift and, if they persist, can lead to longer-term weight gain.
So which of our experts will you be emulating this Christmas – and will your celebration have a health halo, or prove to be a health hazard?
No choccies for me… I feast the Italian way
DR FEDERICA AMATI, head nutritionist at diet brand ZOE, lives in London with her husband Paul Sculfor, 54, a model and the chief executive of addiction charity Stride Foundation, and their two daughters.
She says: ‘I really don’t buy into the whole pigs in blankets, Christmas chocolates, Christmas pastries thing. So much food is created specifically to get you to buy it for Christmas and I’m really anti that. What we have is still very much a feast – but it’s joyful and delicious and won’t leave you feeling like c***.
‘Our Christmas blends both Italian and English festive traditions [I’m Italian and my husband, Paul, is English]. Christmas Eve is a big deal for us Italians and we’ll have smoked salmon or a spaghetti con vongole (spaghetti with clams) and a panettone made with Italian sourdough and studded with sultanas, candied orange and almonds.
Join the debate
Should Christmas Day be a time for healthy eating or guilt-free indulgence?
Spaghetti with clams adds an Italian twist to the Amati Christmas
‘Christmas Day itself involves a roast. This year, we’re doing roast chicken, while last year it was lamb.
‘I parboil and cool my potatoes first, before tossing them with chickpea flour – this adds protein and soluble fibre and preserves resistant starch, which feeds gut bacteria. They are then roasted in extra virgin olive oil with rosemary and lots of other herbs.
Sprouts with bacon are a popular twist of a festive favourite
‘I’m pescatarian, so I’ll make a lasagne with mushrooms, lentils and crushed walnuts, with a homemade tomato sauce and lots of parmesan and scamorza cheese grated over it. We have Brussels sprouts with chestnuts, carrots, green beans, broccoli and red cabbage and sometimes I make slow-cooked braised peas with white onions, which are lovely and sweet.
‘My two daughters love cauliflower cheese so I’ll make one of those and again use chickpea flour to thicken the sauce.
‘Then I make a gravy from scratch from the chicken juices, thickening it with some chickpea flour and a bit of white wine, which works really well.
‘We’ll have a bottle of my favourite red wine with lunch – I can’t imagine anything worse than Baileys – and then kombucha as a nice, sparkly drink for the table.
‘And then it’s time for cheese. I love cheese, so we’ll have it with grapes, sauerkraut and some nice seeded sourdough crackers.
‘We’ll always have plenty of fruit and nuts around, like those lovely leafy clementines and walnuts in their shells.
‘Christmas Day can actually be a bit of a public health emergency. Every year, there’s a spike in heart attacks and strokes because of what people eat and drink and how much they consume. There’s no need for it.
‘Make something really delicious and, sure, eat more than usual. But you don’t need to go overboard.’
I buy frozen and pretend I made it
Chris is happy to take the credit for frozen food
CHRIS VAN TULLEKEN, 47, professor of infection and global health at University College London, lives in London with his wife Dinah, 41, a fashion editor, and their three daughters Lyra, eight, Sasha, five, and Indigo, one.
He is one of the most prominent voices raising concern about the harms posed by ultra-processed food and wrote a book, Ultra-Processed People, in 2023.
Professor van Tulleken says: ‘Christmas Day always involves a big meal with my parents, my brothers Xand and Jonathan, and their wives, and about eight children, ranging from 16 to a few weeks old. When it’s my turn to host (every three years), I buy everything frozen, from Waitrose or M&S, tip it into my own oven dishes and pretend I cooked it all from scratch.
‘I’ve written books about the dangers of diets filled with ultra-processed, ready-made foods – but this is the one time of the year when that all goes out of the window. Christmas is about family, not martyring myself over the stove, and nothing else really matters all that much.
‘I buy a couple of decent chickens and tell the family they’re exclusive “micro turkeys” and people say how delicious they are.
‘I don’t even boil the sprouts. I buy the Waitrose frozen pre-made ones, which come with chestnuts. Even the roast potatoes are frozen.
‘All this means that I sleep well the night before. Quite honestly, we have so many people to feed these days that I might just start cooking a big curry or throwing sandwiches at everyone. But we’re not just snacking mindlessly all day on c*** either. I want to help people to feel good, which they won’t if they have binged on selection boxes. So I don’t leave snacks or sweets out and I also don’t drink until 5pm.
‘That way, everyone’s had a fun time, they don’t feel too awful and they’ve not had too much to drink. It’s win-win, and there’s less washing up.’
We love beef, sprouts – and purple carrots
PROFESSOR TIM SPECTOR, 67, an epidemiologist at King’s College London, lives with his wife Veronique Bataille, 65, a dermatologist, in north London.
He co-founded the health app ZOE, is an internationally renowned expert on the gut microbiome and its impact on health and has written several books on diet, including The Diet Myth and Ferment. He says: ‘We’ve just had our family Christmas, and we started off with my wife’s speciality – leek tart with feta – and I’d made some fermented beetroot, which was slightly al dente after ten days.
‘The main course, for the meat eaters in the family, was a side of beef, cooked rare with roast potatoes, Yorkshire pudding, slow-cooked Brussels sprouts and a variety of vegetables, including Persian purple carrots and leeks.
‘We had a mushroom and lentil wellington made by my son, who is an excellent cook, using a mixture of chanterelle mushrooms, black trumpets, lion’s mane and cordyceps, all covered in sea purslane and blended with pesto.
A mushroom and lentil wellington is a good option for a vegetarian Christmas feast
‘We included some of ZOE’s Daily30+ gut supplement, a blend of plants, seeds and nuts, in the mix to give it some extra texture and increase the plant count. We washed this down with a selection of Italian wines and had a yoghurt and seed cake with a kefir and honey sauce, which I’d made as an experiment for my next cookbook, for dessert. My niece also made a vegan chocolate tart, which was excellent.
‘Finally, we had a variety of unpasteurised cheeses, including some of my favourites such as Baron Bigod brie, Mrs Kirkham’s Lancashire, some aged Gruyere and some excellent goat’s cheese, with a variety of chutneys and other ferments, and finished off with a selection of dark chocolates.
‘We were all very full, but I felt really good the next morning.’
It’s turkey and all the trimmings for us
Professor Yeo enjoys a Christmas ‘blowout’
PROFESSOR GILES YEO, 52, an expert in obesity at the University of Cambridge, lives with his wife Dr Jane Goodall, 62, a retired scientist, in a village near Cambridge. He has written two bestselling books about genetics and their role in weight loss, including Why Calories Don’t Count.
Prof Yeo says: ‘My opinion has always been that, in general, we all need to eat more healthily. But I don’t think that day is Christmas Day. It won’t be debauched in my household, but it will be very traditional and we’ll let it all hang out – and probably won’t rein it back in again until after the New Year.
‘While the rest of the family might have toast and mince pies or panettone for breakfast, I won’t have anything until Christmas lunch itself (although I’ll probably start with some beer or wine around 11am). That’s not because I’m holier than thou, but because I like my stomach to be completely empty so it can be filled by lunch at about 2.30pm. We go to my mother-in-law’s and I’ll do all the cooking. There will be a turkey and my roast potatoes are always done in goose fat – not olive oil.
‘I make my own sausage, liver and chestnut stuffing and will roast plenty of veg like parsnips and carrots in rosemary. And I’ll also make a bread sauce, even though I really don’t understand the appeal.
‘We always have litres and litres of homemade gravy.
‘While the Christmas pudding will be shop-bought, my mother-in-law does tend to make a trifle. After three hours or so, because we’ll be too full to continue, we’ll have some cheese with port.
‘I think we’ve got to mostly behave ourselves and eat healthily. But if you can’t have a blowout on Christmas Day, what’s the purpose of life?’
I balance whole food with soul food
NICHOLA LUDLAM-RAINE, 39, is a specialist dietitian who lives in North Yorkshire with her husband and two young children. She is the author of How Not To Eat Ultra-Processed, a four-week guide to reducing UPFs.
She says: ‘I balance whole foods with soul foods, even at Christmas. That way you treat yourself without getting totally derailed.
‘We’ll have smoked salmon for breakfast, with crumpets and avocado and a couple of glasses of buck’s fizz, while the kids might have sausage sandwiches.
‘Christmas dinner is actually pretty healthy – wholesome and nutritious.
‘We have a prawn cocktail starter, then roast turkey with all the trimmings: potatoes roasted in olive oil, parsnips, honey-glazed carrots, red cabbage, Brussels sprouts with lean bacon and stuffing balls.
‘The one thing I personally skip are the pigs in blankets, just because fatty bacon wrapped around a poor-quality sausage doesn’t fill me with joy.
‘There will be Christmas pudding, with a bit of vanilla ice cream, and some cheese later with crackers. I’ll try to find some with a shorter ingredients list.
‘I’ll have a couple more glasses of fizz and maybe a Baileys later on but I’ll probably move on to a slimline tonic or a Seedlip non-alcoholic gin so I still feel good on Boxing Day.
‘If we’re snacking, it’ll be on non-UPF crisps like Kettle Chips with salsa, guacamole or houmous and some low-salt nuts, and maybe a box of Quality Street if they’re around.
‘And if my kids want a Diet Coke with their Christmas dinner, they can, as it’s a definite treat. It’s about feeling good throughout the day, but equally not feeling like you’ve missed out.’
Chocolate in bed and pigs in blankets for breakfast
Mince pies feature in the Mosley household
DR CLARE BAILEY MOSLEY, 64, left, a retired GP, lives in Beaconsfield, Bucks. She has written many best-selling diet books, including The Fast 800 Recipe Book, and recently published Food Noise with her son, Dr Jack Mosley.
She says: ‘Although my late husband, Dr Michael Mosley, was known for his blood sugar diet to combat type 2 diabetes and his 5:2 diet, Christmas has always been a day of total over-indulgence in our house. It starts, in bed, with an interesting bar of chocolate from our stockings. Then I’ll make pigs in blankets for everyone to snack on for breakfast.
‘Michael was always the one to cook the turkey. He approached it with real scientific rigour, with temperature gauges. Daniel, our son, has now taken up the mantle. We have up to 18 people around the table at Christmas and everyone brings something – from the roast potatoes to the mince pies.
‘I love a good Christmas pudding, which we buy from the supermarket, with brandy sauce.
‘At some point, we’ll all raise a toast to Michael. We’ll say that at least he has escaped having to eat Brussels sprouts, because he absolutely loathed them.’
