Prudence Wade picks out some of the best new books to try if you want to boost your energy levels this January.
While we love the roast potatoes and mince pies of December, it can leave you feeling a bit sluggish - so eating the rainbow is a sure-fire way to get your energy back in January.
By no means do you have to restrict your food or stop eating the things you love though. Instead, you could use the new year as an opportunity to expand your healthy food repertoire, try some new recipes, and hopefully start reaping all the benefits that come with it.
And there are plenty of new cookbooks to help kickstart your healthy eating journey. You might find they have other benefits too, such as saving money, making your skin glow, and even helping the environment...
1. Bored Of Lunch: The Healthy Slow Cooker Book by Nathan Anthony
There's a bit of a barrier to entry for this book, as all recipes need a slow cooker. However, if you have one, you're in for a treat - because all the recipes are healthy, delicious and could even save you some pennies.
Belfast-based Nathan Anthony set up Bored of Lunch in 2020 as a way to cook healthier and more delicious meals during the lockdowns - and his Instagram page now has 906k followers. This is his debut cookbook, and is dedicated to dishes you can make in a slow cooker - which is said to have cheaper running costs than conventional ovens.
Anthony doesn't claim to be a chef or nutritionist, but he certainly knows what works for a home cook. These are the kind of recipes you can prep in advance, chuck into the slow cooker and come home to a delicious dish at the end of the day. And slow cooker meals don't just have to be an endless parade of stews, with Anthony's recipes covering everything from Vietnamese beef pho to chicken tacos.
Ebury Press, £18.99. Photography by Clare Wilkinson
2. Happy Skin Kitchen by Elisa Rossi
If you're the kind of person who always wears sunscreen and has a multi-step skincare routine, this is definitely the book for you. It focuses on a particular type of health: skin health. After all, our skin is the largest organ in our bodies, and what we eat and drink is just as important - if not more so - than the lotions and potions we put on it.
This is a highly personal cookbook for author Elisa Rossi, who struggled with painful hormonal acne until adopting a plant-based diet. She describes making small steps towards a diet with more plant-based and whole foods - rather than going cold turkey - and seeing the results in not only her skin, but also her energy levels and fitness. She created Happy Skin Kitchen to share her journey and recipes, and this is her debut cookbook.
Rossi grew up in the countryside near Bologna, Italy, surrounded by organic vegetables and homecooked meals, and this ethos really shines through in her recipes. Dishes are colourful and full of nutritious ingredients - take your pick of everything from fluffy wholegrain pancakes and quinoa and kale falafel, to lemon and tahini courgette pasta and almond butter cups.
Thorsons, £25. Photography by Elisa Rossi
3. Healthier Planet, Healthier You by Annie Bell
If you're hoping to adopt a healthier diet this year, why not try and do good for the environment at the same time?
Healthier Planet, Healthier You - by veteran food writer and nutritionist Annie Bell, who has authored 20 cookbooks - is all about how you can adopt the planetary health diet.
This is a way of eating first recommended by a group of scientists in 2019, with the aim of reducing the environmental damage of how we eat - and as an added bonus, it turns out to be pretty good for your health too.
While Healthier Planet, Healthier You isn't a hugely romantic book - Bell doesn't wax lyrical about her personal relationship with lentils - what she does is provide practical, well-researched advice on how to cut down on waste in the kitchen (from prepping to storing different types of ingredients), as well as breaking down what impact key ingredients have on the environment, and how much of them we should aim to eat.
Take eggs - the planetary health diet recommends eating one-and-a-half a week. This isn't particularly feasible, so Bell reduces it to one and has a handy chapter dedicated to one egg dishes - with ranchos eggs with cauliflower and lentils and spinach and Parmesan pancakes on the menu.
The content might be serious, but the recipes are inviting and don't compromise on flavour. Bell gets inspiration from all over the world, with dishes including spicy Lebanese-style lamb stew, miso-glazed courgette and peppers and Irish stew pie.
One Boat, £18.99. Photography by Nassima Rothacker
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here