The Food For Life Cookbook: 100+ recipes created with ZOE from the #1 Sunday Times bestselling author and ITV Lorraine gut-health expert Hardcover – 10 Oct. 2024

I am trying to sort out my diet and eating habits. I suffer with serious constipation issues and no amount of water or laxative offer a long term/permanent solution; I feel sluggish and can’t be ask to eat most of the time. No, I’m not slim. On the contrary I have put weight on my waist, etc. Places I never used to worry about. A mixture of high level stress and self neglect and strange symptoms. Not interested in just losing weight. I want to be healthier or even, dare I say, healthy! I have researched and bought a few books. Then a friend came to visit and brought this book she had just purchased for me to look at. I borrowed it for a couple of days, flicked through the various recipes and read the intro and it made sense. I ordered it straightaway. The book arrived quickly and well packaged and I absolutely love it. The recipes are so appetising and quite easy to follow. I hadn’t cooked properly for ages, would buy beautiful vegetables that would end up in the bin because it was easier to randomly boil pasta and add the same shop bought pesto ( I used to always make my own pasta sauce in the past) and if I felt bothered I would make a basic salad with it. That clearly didn’t help my issue. When I first look at the recipes in this book I felt some « cooking » excitement bubbling up in me. Finally I am eating all these vegetables instead of binning them. So far I have made the seed bread, the kale pasta sauce and aubergine parmigiana and drooled over half the book. I am finally having breakfast and lunch everyday ( most of the time I just couldn’t be bothered to cook/ eat anymore. ) and I have the leftovers for lunch. There are so many recipes in this book that I want to try! I really want to bake that carrot cake!!! The beauty of this book is that it’s more than a recipe book or a fad diet book, it’s a life style change, for the better. It has all the things I love ( nuts, seeds, vegetables and mouthwatering recipes) that are doable and tasty. The advice really makes sense. I have only used it for about 4 days and I am finally going to the loo daily. I am aiming for 3 times a day. I am not there yet but for someone who would be relieved to go once a week it’s a miracle! One important thing about this book is that you know how many plants are included In each recipe so if for example you combine a slice of the seed bread with the aubergine parmigiana it all adds up ( you need to aim for 30 ‘plants’ a day for good health). You add fresh herbs on top, that extra plant points. At the moment I’m easing myself into this new way of eating/ looking at what I need so I’m not sure I’ve reached the 30 plants a day but it’s already working. Majority of recipes offer some alternative ingredients wether you are vegan, vegetarian or suffer from food allergies. This book promotes the increase of plants in your diet but also offers recipes that fulfill your taste buds and you most likely won’t miss meat or fish but they could be added if you really wanted to. At least it offers recipes that can significantly reduce your meat intake which is a brilliant thing ( environmentally and health wise). There is so much more I could write about the ideas in this book and why I like it so much I could write my own book! In short if you enjoy good food and want to take care of your general health buy this book.

Interesting recipes which are very healthy and tasty. We definitely feel good after the meals.They can be time consuming to prepare and the time guidelines given are out by a factor of around 3.I like that he takes into account the environmental impact of the ingredients he uses, so the meals are mainly vegetarian. Meat and farmed fish being an environmental disaster. He avoids ultra processed man made edible products as well (UPF).A wide range of ingredients are used some of which are expensive.This book is therefore ideal for relatively affluent people with time to spare.I would love his next cook book to be for the 'masses', fewer lost cost ingredients and much quicker to prepare. Something on the lines of the '£1 Vegan' book.

Loving this book. I havent tried many recipes yet but will as they are well written and explained in simple steps. It also gives you the recipes for sauces and dressings, breads and wraps which is fab. Lots of explanation at the beginning. Great photography showing the finished food which is helpful and good notes on swaps in recipes. I would highly recommend this book.

I liked Tim Spector's introductory chapters before the recipes - very easy to understand his explanation of how micro-organisms work in our gut, affect our health and how by eating a variety of plant-based foods we can help our own health and live more sustainably on the planet. He writes in a friendly and amusing way with little stories about his own attempts to learn to cook. It's fun. Beautifully produced - pictures really make you want to cook the recipes. The recipes are very easy to make so long as you have the ingredients - he suggests alternatives for some ingredients if you don't have it. I got the book 5 days ago and have already made 3 recipes. Very tasty and affordable but sometimes they haven't looked as good as the photos!

Very informative introduction which has changed the way I cook. Although the recipes are all vegetarian it’s easy enough to add meat to a meal. A few of my favourites were herby pea pancakes and the mushroom stroganoff (which makes a great sauce to go with pork steaks).I’m a good cook so I found it easy to substitute ingredients if I didn’t have them. The format is also just the way I like a cook book ….ingredients and recipe one side and photo on the other.Overall its top marks.

This is a book that fits the Zoe program philosophy, of course, with lots of fibre from legumes, healthy fats, seeds and veg. I've had the book long enough now to try a decent number of recipes. Particular favourites are the Roasted Broccoli Tahini Salad, the Smashed Pea Bowl and the Pea Soup with Crispy Caper Chickpeas. I've also made a fair few that I think need improving flavour-wise, e.g. pearl barley risotto, aubergine parmigiana and the green curry. They were just bland. And looking at a lot of the other recipes, I think there is a general lack of flavour in this book. Of course, this is subjective and might suit the British palate very well. But for me, who likes strong flavours from the Continental European, Asian and Middle Eastern cuisines (think Meera Sodha, Ixta Belfrage), it was just a bit boring. If you're already a decent cook, the recipes may be good to use as inspiration to then spice up as needed.