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Celebrity chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall has said that he’s fitter than 20 years ago as a result of his diet that consists of eating 30 different types of plants per week.

In an interview withThe Times, the chef, who is best known for hosting the River Cottage cooking series on Channel 4, said that he grows 11,000 types of edible plants in his vegetable patch at the River Cottage HQ in rural Devon.

“With all the other changes I’ve made, I’m probably healthier than I was 20 years ago,” said the 59-year-old. “”Eating plants obviously helps with that and 30 different types a week is optimum. No one is saying don’t eat more than that, but beyond 30 the benefits begin to plateau.”

Fearnley-Whittingstall added that purchasing an electric car has helped him avoid snacking on chocolate bars at petrol stations, and has helped him swap in pistachio nuts as his snack of choice.

“I no longer have to run the gauntlet of that incredible display of sweets when you pay at a petrol station. Everywhere we go in this country we get the message, ‘Eat! Eat!’ all the time. ‘Eat more of this irresistible sweet bad stuff.’ It’s incredibly seductive. But I now probably eat three Toffee Crisps a year instead of a week.”

Fearnley-Whittingstall, who is an environmentalist and healthy eating campaigner, added that part of his wellness routine includes throwing himself in a lake for a five-minute cold-water swim each morning and fasting until lunchtime.

The chef previously worked alongside Jamie Oliver to tackle obesity in British schools, which is a cause still close to his heart.

“I do feel like I’m preaching to the converted sometimes, but I have to snap myself out of that because it is so important. Dig down into gut health and good eating and you soon intersect with issues like NHS funding,” he said.

In 2018, he made a programme called Britain’s Fat Fight for the BBC in which he pursued Jeremy Hunt, then the health secretary. At the time, Hunt promised to halve UK child obesity by 2030.

“And since then the government has done next to nothing and that makes me so angry,” said Fearnley-Whittingstall, before criticising the Conservative party for not taking his recommendations on board.

“I’m not saying all Conservatives think this way but the current iteration are completely ideologically opposed to interfering in people’s lives. They believe it constitutes an infringement of people’s freedom. And yet along comes Covid and they were ready to deprive us of our liberty to save lives. “

He added that he was unimpressed with the government’s inaction to tackle child obesity and food poverty in the UK.

“Boris Johnson almost saw the light when he nearly died of Covid and we currently have a PM [Rishi Sunak] who, I believe, understands the benefits of intermittent fasting, so they are nutritionally literate but they do nothing on ideological grounds. That to me smacks of deep cynicism.”

How to Eat 30 Plants a Week: 100 Recipes to Boost your Health and Energy by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall is available via Bloomsbury now.

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