Food has always been one of the great connectors in my life. We celebrate with it, comfort people with it, gather around it and build memories through it. Birthdays, Christmases, Sunday lunches, holidays, dinner parties and those completely unplanned evenings when everyone ends up around the kitchen table all have food somewhere at the centre of them. For me, the connection between food and wellbeing goes far beyond nutrition. It is about how food makes us feel, the people we share it with and the extraordinary ability it has to bring us together.
That is why food has never just been about what we eat. Of course, what we put into our bodies matters enormously, but food is also about how we look after ourselves and how we look after other people. It is the smell of something cooking when you walk through the door, sitting around a table long after the plates should probably have been cleared, or somebody making your favourite supper because they know you have had a difficult day. There is an enormous amount of love and care communicated through food without anybody actually having to say very much at all.
Why I Love Cooking
I have always loved cooking, partly because I love the creativity of it. You can take a handful of relatively ordinary ingredients and make something completely delicious. You can follow a recipe precisely or make something up from whatever happens to be in the fridge. You can spend hours preparing an elaborate dinner or put a roast chicken, some vegetables and a big salad in the middle of the table. Both can be equally wonderful because ultimately it is not about perfection; it is about creating something that people want to sit down and enjoy together.
Cooking also makes us stop and concentrate on something tangible. You chop, stir, taste, smell and create something from beginning to end. When so much of our day is spent looking at screens and jumping between messages, emails and notifications, there is something wonderfully grounding about being in a kitchen and making something with your hands.
Food and Wellbeing: How What We Eat Can Affect How We Feel
There is, of course, another hugely important side to food: the effect it can have on how we feel physically and mentally. The British Nutrition Foundation talks about the close relationship between food and mood and the importance of giving our brains the energy and nutrients they need to work well.
A varied, balanced diet with plenty of vegetables, fruit, wholegrains, pulses, fish, nuts, seeds and healthy fats provides many of the nutrients we need, while eating regularly can help prevent the tiredness, irritability and difficulty concentrating that can come when we are hungry.
There is also fascinating research continuing into the relationship between our gut and our brain. We are learning more about the gut microbiome and the extraordinary community of organisms living within us, although there is still much to understand about exactly how this affects our mental health. What I find particularly interesting is how much more we are beginning to look at food and wellbeing as part of the same conversation, rather than simply thinking about food in terms of calories or weight.
I think we have sometimes managed to make eating unnecessarily complicated. We are surrounded by diets, rules, foods we are told to avoid and foods we are suddenly told we must eat. Yet some of the fundamentals remain remarkably simple: eat a good variety of foods, include plenty of plants and fibre, have enough protein, drink enough water and try not to rely too heavily on highly processed foods, sugar, caffeine or alcohol to get us through the day.
Food should nourish us, but I also believe it should be enjoyed.
The Emotional Power of Food
There is another side of food that nutritional science cannot quite capture, and that is its extraordinary emotional power. A particular smell or taste can take you back decades in seconds. We remember what our mothers or grandmothers cooked, the pudding we always had at Christmas, the cake somebody made for our birthday or the dish everyone in the family still asks for.
Recipes get handed down through generations, but what we are really passing down are memories, traditions and little pieces of our family history.
We take food to somebody who has just had a baby. We cook for people when they are ill. We invite someone for supper when we want to get to know them better. We celebrate engagements, weddings, birthdays and anniversaries around tables. Even in business, some of the best relationships are formed over lunch or dinner because sharing food changes the nature of a conversation.
Food has an extraordinary ability to create a sense of belonging.
What Working in Catering Taught Me
Earlier in my working life, I worked in catering and at one of my jobs we were cooking for between 90 and 150 people every day. I know first-hand just how hard professional cooking is.
The person sitting down to eat sees the finished plate, but behind it are the ordering, preparation, chopping, cooking, timing, dietary requirements, presentation, clearing up and the constant pressure of getting everything ready at exactly the right moment.
It also taught me what an incredible feeling it is to feed people. However exhausting the preparation has been, there is a point when everyone sits down, starts eating and talking, and the atmosphere changes. You have created something that has brought a group of people together, and I think that is one of the reasons I have always retained such a love of food, cooking and hospitality.
The Art of Finding the Right Cook
It was something I thought about when Caroline Yates joined the ENL Collective.
Caroline founded The Good Cook Co. in 1999 and has spent more than two decades finding and placing private chefs for clients around the world, from family homes and shooting estates to ski chalets, holiday villas and private islands.
What I particularly love about Caroline’s approach is her understanding that finding a great private chef is about far more than finding someone who can cook beautifully.
A chef is coming into somebody’s home, often becoming part of the rhythm of family life, and that requires discretion, emotional intelligence, flexibility and an instinctive understanding of the people around them. Caroline personally works with her clients and vets her chefs because she knows how important that relationship is.
And there is something else a great private chef can give a family or host that we perhaps don’t talk about enough: time.
Instead of one person spending the entire evening shopping, preparing, cooking, serving and clearing up, everyone can actually be together. The person giving the dinner party gets to sit at their own table. Parents can enjoy a holiday rather than thinking constantly about the next meal. Friends can talk instead of somebody disappearing into the kitchen for half the evening.
That is hospitality at its best. It is not simply about an impressive plate of food; it is about making people feel comfortable, relaxed and looked after.
Cooking Doesn’t Have to Be Complicated
One of the reasons people can stop enjoying cooking is that it becomes another thing they feel they should be doing perfectly.
It really doesn’t need to be.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with using frozen vegetables, opening a tin of beans, buying something pre-chopped or making enough of one dish to last for two meals. Some of my favourite food is also some of the simplest.
A roast chicken in the middle of the table, a huge bowl of pasta, soup with wonderful bread or something bubbling away in the oven while everyone talks in the kitchen can be every bit as special as an elaborate meal.
A simple supper eaten around a table with people you love can be infinitely more enjoyable than an elaborate dinner that has left the person cooking too exhausted to enjoy it.
Why Eating Together Matters
Perhaps that is what I love most about food. At its best, it asks us to stop what we are doing and come together.
We put something in the middle of a table, sit down and talk. People linger, stories are told, children sometimes tell you things they would never tell you when everyone is rushing out of the door, and friends stay for another cup of coffee.
As our lives become faster and increasingly dominated by technology, I think these moments are going to become even more important. We talk constantly about connection and wellbeing, but sometimes one of the simplest ways of creating both has been sitting in front of us all along.
Cooking does not need to be perfect. The table does not need to be beautifully laid and the food does not need to be complicated. What matters is making the time to sit down, share something delicious and be with other people.
Because the greatest thing about food has never simply been what is on the plate. It is what happens around it and the people we share it with.
