You feel like “cleaning up” your eating habits. Eating more healthily in a greener, cleaner way. Here’s a selection of books featuring lots of advice, recipes and photos, to help you switch to a different way of eating: Clean Eating.
You want to eat a healthy balanced diet, avoid processed foods that are full of preservatives and additives and favour natural, fresh, seasonal produce. And obviously, embrace “home cooking”. But it’s not so easy to embark on it alone. Some specialist books are good springboards. The priestesses of clean eating are of course from the English-speaking world: Terry Walters and her Eat clean live well clean food books, or Tosca Reno and her Eat Clean Diet series.
Here are ten home-grown benchmark books to devour in order to embrace clean eating.
The “intellectual” Clean Eating book
This is not a recipe book, but an essay on the way in which our eating habits have changed over time
- La nouvelle révolution alimentaire [The New Food Revolution],Dr Cyril Laporte and Pierre Joyeau, Mango Publishing, €17.50.
It’s an almost anthropological study by the two authors explaining how over time and due to our changing civilisation (increasingly sedentary lifestyles, industrialisation) our eating habits have drifted away from serving our basic needs. And how to escape this process, with lots of practical advice.
Clean Eating books for beginners
These are not so much recipe books as guides that set out the bases of nutrition and of re-learning how to eat healthily and seasonally
- Le guide de l’alimentation saine [The Healthy Eating Guide], Yuka, Marabout, €22.90
The infamous app has pricked consciences over what is in supermarket products. This very instructive guide is almost a “nutrition for dummies” manual. The first half sets out the principles of nutrition, how to demystify labels and what the various meals should be made up of. The second half offers recipes categorised by season.
- La révolution Clean Eating pour une alimentation simple et saine [The Clean Eating Revolution for a Simple, Healthy Diet], Hannah Frey, Ullman Publishing, €14.95
The author, a Hamburg-based nutritionist, is known for her publications, articles, blog and lifestyle. Here she sets out the basic principles of Clean Eating, and recipes, of course, as well as advice about cooking in such a way as to retain all the nutritional value of foods.
Practical Clean Eating books
Recipes explained step by step, or for every day of the year. Practical, basic advice for those who are not so skilled at cooking.
- Clean – La cuisine naturelle sans aliments transformés [Clean – Natural Cuisine Without Processed Foods], Frances Boswell, Marabout, €19.90
A guide setting out the principles of Clean Eating and the ingredients to favour, with 120 simple step-by-step recipes with photos.
- Mieux manger toute l’année 2021 [Eating Better Throughout the Year 2021], Laurent Mariotte, Editions Solar, €19.90
The columnist and famous presenter of the daily TV programme ‘Petits plats en équilibre’ on French channel TF1 campaigns for better eating habits and for the French population to re-learn how to cook. For some years now he has been putting out a kind of almanac, with 365 easy, healthy recipes. They come with hands-on guidance through the grocery shopping and cooking processes.
The bonus: a recipe from a big-name chef for every month.
- Cuisinez Eco-responsable [Cooking the Environmentally-Responsible Way], Emilie Hebert and Amélie Roman, published by Mango Green, €22.50
Two bloggers who are home cooking devotees put forward their simple, flavourful, healthy recipes. They also give tons of advice on embracing more eco-friendly kitchen habits, making better choices when grocery shopping, cooking without waste and optimising how long foods keep.
Clean Eating books authored by celebrities
When the priestesses of Clean Eating branch out into publishing…
- The Clean Plate: Delicious, Healthy Recipes for Everyday Glow, Gwyneth Paltrow, published by Sphere, €24.90
We could not fail to mention the actress who has pretty much turned clean “guru”. Here she puts forward simple, tasty recipes whilst dispensing lots of advice on getting acquainted with “Clean Eating”.
- Ma cuisine naturelle pour bébé [My Natural Cuisine for Babies], Angèle Ferreux Maeght, Editions Marabout, €19.90
This is already the third book by the proprietor of La Guinguette d’Angèle, the favourite eatery of Parisian women who are keen to eat healthily. This time around she outlines healthy ways to get little ones eating a more varied diet, with a breakdown by age bracket.
Clean Eating books authored by big-name chefs
Big-name chefs like to eat clean, too. And they invite us to do the same:
- Nature, Simple Healthy et Bon [Nature – Simple, Healthy and Tasty], Volume 2, Alain Ducasse, Christophe Saintagne and Paule Neyrat, published by Editions Alain Ducasse, €19.90
When a big-name chef and a dietician share their taste for healthy, seasonal cuisine. Simply outlined recipes for the “kitchen garden”, in which vegetables and cereals take centre stage, while the amount of salt, sugar and animal protein is kept in check.
- Flavour, Yotam Ottolenghi, Hachette Cuisine, €35.00
A sumptuous, healthy cookbook which broadens your horizons and gets you daydreaming as much as eating well. Ottolenghi, an Anglo-Israeli chef and proprietor of several restaurants and upscale grocery stores in London, revisits the culinary traditions of the Middle East. After his bestsellers Ottolenghi and Jérusalem, here he focuses on vegetarian cuisine, combining vegetables and spices with gusto.
