88 MEN’S HEALTH S CO U
s I turn the crank handle
of my brand new spiralizer,
wholesome strings of
organic courgette tumble
pleasingly and lustrously
onto my plate. It is the
familiar tableau of
a million Instagram
posts. In her recipe,
Ella Mills – AKA
Deliciously Ella –
whose cookbook I’m
using for guidance,
assures me that I’ll find my meal to be
reminiscent of a creamy bowl of spaghetti
carbonara, only with “all the unhealthy,
fatty dairy, refined flour and meat”
replaced by “magical avocados”.
Gone is the glutenous pasta; so too
the unctuous cream and the “processed”
pancetta slices. This is clean eating at
its socially shareable best. Though it
might taste, well, a little bland all told,
page after glossy page assures me that
it’s guaranteed to make you at least feel
great. A sauce of liquified brazil nuts,
mint leaves, olive oil and, yes, avocado
completes the dish and, hey presto, my
#raw #vegan #clean dinner is served.
In 2015, with wellness queen
Deliciously Ella’s first book sitting
pretty at the top of Amazon charts,
sales of white bread fell by £100 million
as impressionable consumers turned
their backs on refined carbs and gluten
in droves. Wellness staple avocados,
meanwhile, continue to smash records as
rapidly as they themselves are smashed
onto rye sourdough, with sales up 30%
in the past year to £146 million.
Powered by Mills and other bloggers-
turned-cookbook-authors, whose
currency is in large part valued by the
popularity of their Instagram profiles,
wellness is dominating the health
conversation. More pertinently, it is
dominating lifestyles, turning everything
from the nutritional choices you make
to the gym clothes you wear into a new
status symbol. The very word ‘wellness’
has become a bastardised, cryptic
catch-all – a feeling to be acquired and
a devotional allegiance to be declared.
In pursuit of wellness, acolytes spend
big, buying immersion blenders, signingup to £25-a-session boutique classes or
guzzling green juices. And they do it all
with a kind of quasi-religious fervour
strangely absent when body goals were
as modest as, say, losing a bit of weight,
or packing on some muscle.
Not everyone is so zealous in his
or her belief, however. Many experts
question the scientific basis for the
‘clean’ ideal that underpins the wellness
phenomenon. More still wonder quite
what has happened when society flocks
toward a group of young, photogenic,
mainly female, self-taught and ultimatelyunqualified entrepreneurs for crucial
guidance on health issues. For all the
guileless smiles and woolly pontificating,
there is a welling voice of resentment
that wellness might be sick to its core.MAKING THE CUT
Aside from the book deals, magazine
shoots and Hefe filters, perhaps the
wellness blogger’s most significant
contribution to our current relationship
with food is vernacular. It is not
uncommon to see an edible product
either packaged or pre-preparedEXPERT OPINION CAN’T
SLICE THROUGH SOCIAL
MEDIA’S ONSLAUGHTFAT OF THE LAND
An estimated £146m worth
of avocados were sold in
the UK in 2016, but its jump
from Californian curiosity to
wellness mascot has been
a century in the ripening1927
The California
Avocado Growers’
Exchange petitions
to change the fruit’s
name from ‘alligator
pear’ to ‘avocado’
in an attempt to drive
sales. Good move.1992
A campaign by PR
firm Hill & Knowlton
begins promoting
guacamole recipes
through NFL teams,
sending avocado
sales skyrocketing
during Superbowl
weekend.1998
The US lifts import
restrictions on
Mexico, the world’s
main exporter of
avocados. Demand
rises, and here in
the UK we adjust
our tastebuds to
mimic our cross-
Atlantic cousins.