Works cited on this blog

“About.” Deliciously Ella, publishing date unknown. https://deliciouslyella.com/about/. Accessed 20 February 2018.

Atkins, Robert C. Dr Atkins’ Diet Revolution: The High Calorie Way to Stay Think Forever. New York: Random House, 1981.

Coulthard, Malcolm. Advances in Written Text Analysis. London: Routledge, 1994.

D’Adamo, Peter and Catherine Whitney. Eat Right For Your Blood Type. London: Arrow Books, 2017.

Dalrymple, Theodore. “Eat Yourself Slim.” BMJ: British Medical Journal, Volume 343, 2011, p. 1157.

“@deliciouslyella.” Instagram. https://www.instagram.com/deliciouslyella/?hl=en. Accessed 22 February 2018.

Dunkan, Pierre. The Dunkan Diet. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2010.

Freer, Amelia. Nourish and Glow: The 10-Day Plan. London: Penguin, 2017.

Foxcroft, Louise. Calories and Corsets: A history of dieting over two thousand years. London: Profile Books, 2011.

Hemsley, Jasmine and Melissa Hemsley. Good + Simple. London: Ebury Press, 2016.

Klear. https://klear.com. Accessed March 12 2018.

Lempert, Phil. “Low-carb fast food: The latest trends.” Today, February 27 2004. https://www.today.com/news/low-carb-fast-food-latest-trends-wbna4388285. Accessed February 22 2018.

Mazel, Judy. The Beverly Hills Diet. London: Arrow Books, 1983.

Mazel, Judy. The New Beverly Hills Diet. London: Health Communications Inc., 1996.

Mosley, Michael and Mimi Spencer. The Fast Diet. London: Short Books LTD., 2014.

Moss, Brigid. “Hemsley + Hemsley 7 Day Healthy Eating Plan.” Red Magazine, May 25 2017. http://www.redonline.co.uk/health-self/nutrition/hemsley-hemsley-7-day-healthy-eating-plan. Accessed 20 February 2018.

Spencer, Mimi and Dr Sarah Schenker. The Fast Diet Recipe Book. London: Short Books LTD., 2013.

Woodward, Ella. Deliciously Ella. London: Yellow Kite, 2015.

Woodward, Ella. Deliciously Ella Every Day. London: Yellow Kite, 2016. Print. 

Conclusion: I still don't think bread is the enemy

My desire to start this blog was mainly driven by my anger at being told that in order to be healthy I needed to abandon bread. Frankly, that was never going to happen. So, instead, I chose the less daunting option of thoroughly researching the history of diet culture and of analysing diet books from a literary perspective in order to prove that sentiment wrong. I'm happy to say that it worked: As I write this post I'm enjoying some toast with Marmite.

Viewing the Deliciously Ella franchise through the lens of literature has helped me to understand exactly what it is that makes the clean eating movement, and diets in general, so enticing and lucrative. It's highlighted to me the various ways in which Ella's books are exactly like those of her diet forefathers, as well as the ways in which they vary just enough to convince people they aren't!

Let's get one thing clear: Clean eating is a diet. The Deliciously Ella books are diet books. Just like the rest of them, they encourage their readers to abandon all that they thought they knew about food, as evidenced by everything I symbolically threw away in my first post! They are marketed at women and tell them that living "the Deliciously Ella way" is the final solution to their eating woes. And, of course, they are selling a lifestyle full of joy and simplicity, much like the diet books that hit best-sellers lists before them. However, social media has revolutionised the reader-writer relationship just enough to convince us that Ella is not a diet guru, but a friend. It's meant that all of her books can be directly written to those that frequently comment on her Instagram posts, making her seem likeable and relateble. Simultaneously, her social media posts keep her content constantly relevant and, as such, make her clean eating principles harder to push to the back of the bookshelf and forget about. Essentially, her books and online presence combine to make a dieting super-power that is an exaggerated version of just about every diet craze throughout history. 

The research I've done has solidified for me that Deliciously Ella is nothing new and is just diet culture is new packaging. I'm sure there's bound to be a new-born health trend biting at its heels in no time. So, no, I won't be cutting bread out of my diet. I'll continue to think of it very much as a friend. 

It's a lifestyle, not a book

“It’s not a diet, it’s a lifestyle” is one of those phrases that I’ve heard almost every person on a diet say. I’m not sure whether these people truly believe it, or whether they are trying to convince themselves that they’re content to spend their remaining years on this earth not eating a single slice of pizza. Either way, I think it’s rarely ever the case.

Deliciously Ella Every Day is the physical manifestation of that sentence. Perhaps aware of the criticism that her first book got as promoting a restrictive and complicated relationship with food, her second is instead focused on emphasising how Deliciously Ella recipes can be implemented into your every-day life. Its whole 254 pages are focused on promoting the message that it’s not only possible, but positively simple to adopt a plant-based (a term which is apparently interchangeable with the word “happy”) diet. Throughout the book Woodward truly is selling a lifestyle in some subtle, and not so subtle, ways.

On the front inside cover Ella writes, “FOOD FOR HAPPINESS / FOOD FOR ENERGY / FOOD FOR EVERY DAY” and on the back inside cover, “LOVE YOUR LIFE / LOVE YOUR FOOD / LOVE YOUR SELF”. This progression suggests that living the “deliciously Ella way” is a process: Learn to cook plant-based food, learn to live a happy life. On top of that, the repetitive, three-word sentences mirror the book's insistence that attaining such happiness really is as simple as a diet change. This is reinforced in the introduction, where words like “straightforward”, “simple” and “speedy” (7) are sprinkled in more liberally than chia seeds at a plant-based banquet. Similarly, Mimi Spencer and Dr Sarah Schenker write, “We believe that the Fast Diet’s success had to do with its flexibility, its simple, basic tenets” (6), where the the use of the use of synonyms "simple" and "basic" shows that she is as keen as Ella to highlight that the book's way of life is "easier than you think" (Woodward, 7). What's more, Spencer and Schenker categorise their recipes into chapters such as "Simple Suppers" and in much the same way Woodward uses titles such as "Simple Sweets" and "Healthy Eating On-The-Go". As such, whilst these writers are perhaps quite blatantly selling the dream of living a thinner life, they are also suggesting that their diets will create one that is altogether less stressful. Who knew that matcha powder was that powerful, eh?

The idea that with Ella’s recipes “you can look and feel your best” (7) – quite a presumptuous statement, if you ask me – is a theme that is carried throughout the book in its use of images. Sure, there are pictures of the recipes themselves, but the photography also extends into giving the reader insight into Ella’s personal life. There are pictures of her on holiday, of her home, of her dog and various pictures of luxurious bouquets. Similarly, the beginning of her recipes are prefaced as being “My favourite post-yoga or -gym dinner” (147) and a dish that “Most of my girlfriends would say…is their favourite” (150). The underlying suggestion seems to be that if you buy this book and treat it like your food bible, you too can get yourself a sexy body, a sexy husband who buys you flowers and sexy friends that you can jet off to the sexy Bahamas with. And this isn't a stand-alone example of this sales tactic by any means. In The New Beverly Hills Diet Judy Mazel says that her "lifestyle eating program" (3) - that's right, this totally isn't a diet - is one that "allows you to indulge in your every food fantasy" including "Hot dogs at the ball game" (3). Mazel isn't just promoting her diet through the promise of hot dogs, but through the promise of care-free living that is encompassed within the image of this "ball game". In a quote that almost seems too cliché to be true she even states “Welcome to the world of dreams come true - to a “diet” that’s a dream come true.” (3), this time explicitly suggesting that her eating plan truly can solve all of your worldly problems.

Reading Deliciously Ella Every Day and other diet books from a literary perspective (instead of the perspective of someone who is just pretty angry about being told not to eat bread) made me realise exactly why franchises like this can be so successful. Clever uses of language and photography make the perfect life into something we can attain with just £20 and a Holland and Barret points card. That's pretty irresistible, isn't it? When we purchase books like this, we’re not simply purchasing the words on a page or even access to the recipes that they provide, we’re purchasing the life that it overtly and covertly promises us.

The Imagined Dieter

“Because texts are designed for a specific audience, once they exist, they define that audience; indeed, as no writer can create even a single sentence without a target Imagined Reader, almost every sentence provides some clue(s) about this Reader."

- Malcolm Colthard, Advances in Written Text Analysis, 5


I think we can all safely agree that the diet book is usually written with women in mind. After all, it's us that are archetypally associated with the fight for bodily perfection and it was us that were expected to wear the corsets whilst the worst men had to put up with was the cravat! The New Beverly Hills Diet promises "Hamburgers and hip bones...Cheesecake and cheek bones" (3), neither of which are revered masculine features in our society. One edition of The Dunkan Diet shows a sketch of a thin woman in front of the Eiffel Tower, acting assumedly as the epitome of French thiness and elegance that all women are supposed to aspire to. And, of course, thin, smiley women fill the pages of just about every diet book you can find.

Gender marketing is everywhere in the diet book world. However, as I briefly touched upon in my last post, it's particularly interesting to examine the position of the imagined reader in regards to the Deliciously Ella empire. The online world where Ella made her name has completely changed the way in which a reader can be understood. Her books do not so much have an imagined audience as one that is already predefined by the social media community that has amassed for her 'clean' lifestyle. That is to say, that her ideal readers are the ones that already read her blog, tweets and Instagram captions on a regular basis.

Using the analytics tool Klear I was able to find out exactly who Ella's average follower is on Instagram and, therefore, who it is that she's assumedly addressing throughout her cookbooks: A 28-year-old woman, living in the UK or the US and with an average salary of more than $50,000 p/a. Of course, there are some obvious signs that this is who Deliciously Ella Every Day is created for. It uses archetypally feminine colour schemes, shows pictures of Ella cycling and jumping into the sea that just scream “youth” and the recipes are hardly created for someone on minimum wage (a less than 500g pack of chia seeds costs £10 for goodness sake!). However, Ella also employs a range of literary devices throughout the text that speak directly to her young, female audience.

In all of her writing, Ella is basically talking to her peers, since she herself is only 28 and lives in London. This explains her colloquial and friendly approach to writing, which is likely to also appeal to those that know her through informal, social media posts. In the introduction alone the text employs direct address, contractions (“I’ve”, “you’ll, “We’ll”) and colloquial phrases (“crazy, overwhelming task”) all of which create the sense that the reader is having a chat with a friend. On top of this, the book’s demographic of working women is apparent in lines such as “I’ve created this book with busy people in mind” (21) and the branding of her recipes as “healthy eating on-the-go” and “Easy weekday dinners” (5). Deliciously Ella Everyday is also quite clearly written with a female audience in mind, just like pretty much every other diet book under the sun. Not only are the colour scheme and the curly font used at the beginning of each recipe archetypally feminine, but there are no pictures of any men in the entirety of the book. Women? Yes. Dogs? Of course! Men? Certainly not. Solidifying that this is a book written by a woman for women, Ella defines one section of recipes as those perfect “for easy kitchen suppers with girlfriends” (165).

The book is the perfect example of the way in which social media has completely changed not only the way that we read, as discussed in my previous post, but the way that we are written to. Thanks to the internet, Ella Woodward knows exactly who her demographic is, down to the city they live in and the jobs that they do. The already lucrative diet book industry has become even easier to market!

Omnipresent Ella

In my previous post I discussed the fact that many diet books of the past have since been re-vamped in the form of second editions and spin offs. Atkins alone has a whole army of them! In attempts to fend off the new food crazes that are biting at their heels, the writers and publishers create sequels that give out the same core message in newer, prettier packaging. But what happens when dieters everywhere don't have to wait for the entire tedious publication process to get completed and instead can get fresh updates every day? Even every hour?

The clean eating movement was founded online: It doesn't feed off organic cocoa nibs and almond milk; it feeds off likes and hashtags! Before Ella Woodward became a best selling author, she was a blogger and popular Instagrammer. Now, with four book deals under her belt, Ella continues to share recipes, tips and general reminders of the greatness of plant based living frequently across all of her platforms. When it was Atkins and Dunkan you could close the book and eat that donut in peace. These days, there's no escape. Even Ella's Instagram bio is a reminder of her online omnipresence:

Thanks to the internet, the way that we consume (pardon the pun) diet and healthy living books has completely changed. We barely have time to digest (pardon the pun, again) one piece of information before we are given another. Ella's genius use of social media means that it's impossible to simply push her book to the back of the shelf and move onto the next fad: Her content is constantly #relevant and therefore is harder to replace.

Social media also shifts the reader-writer relationship from one that is pretty clinical to one of best friends chatting over a hot chocolate cup of green tea. Whilst the books of her forefathers were full of scientific analysis and, you know, actual qualifications in being dietitians, you won't catch Ella talking about the "biological catalyst" that is the enzyme (The New Beverly Hill's Diet, 5). In fact, in her first cook book she admits that "everything comes from experiments in my own kitchen", the suggestion being that she is no more qualified than the reader. She's not a doctor, but a friend.

In a post on Instagram that I feel epitomises this change in the reader-writer relationship, Ella says, "We're just finalising the recipes for our next book and I think this guy has to go in there...what do you think?". Social media means that readers are no longer talked at and fed information, but are placed at the same level as the writer, to the point where they can even influence what is put in the next book!

In Deliciously Ella Every Day's deciation she writes, "This book is dedicated to all of the amazing people who love and follow deliciously Ella...I hope you love this book as much as I do!" (4). Unlike diet books of the past, Ella's audience are not stumbling upon her work, they are driven to it by the social media influence she already has. In a way, there is no longer an "imagined reader" during the writing process, but one that is already predefined as the people that consume her online content.

Social media truly has revolutionised the diet book industry and I'm excited to explore this topic in greater detail in my next post!

A fad diet a decade: The history of the diet book

“Fad diets are little better than useless. They do the biggest business and arguably the greatest harm, and they have been around since long before your great-grandmother was eyeing up that fetching knitted knee-length number for her trip to Bognor with a new beau” (2)

- Louise Foxcroft, Calories and Corsets: A history of dieting over two thousand years

Whilst the obsession with our sizes and shapes is nothing new (we have a whole history of corsets, bustles and chest binders to prove that), the contemporary trend for diet books themselves perhaps begins in modern memory with The Atkins Diet. Published in 1972, Dr. Atkins' Diet Revolution encouraged readers to cut out carbohydrates in favour of protein-filled food to open the gates to weight loss heaven. It became a best seller and, in the early 2000s when the diet regained popularity, it was even linked to a 4.6% decrease in pasta sales (Phil Lempert)!

What followed in the years to come was an onslaught of fad diet books, most of which graced my mother's, auntie's and family friends' book shelves at some point in my childhood. The Beverly Hills Diet (1981) told readers that losing weight wasn't about what you ate, but about when you ate it and in what order. The Blood Type Diet (1997) suggested that eating habits needed to be modified based on which one of the four blood groups you are. The Dunkan Diet (2000) is set out in phases, the first of which consists of only being allowed to eat from a list of 72 high-protein foods. The Fasting Diet (2012) is all about a 5:2 day split of eating a normal amount of calories and fasting. Then, of course, we come into the realms of Ella Woodward, the Hemsley Sisters and Amelia Freer and their clean eating empires.

Perhaps what's most striking to me about these books - aside from the fact that the diets themselves sound absolutely insufferable - is the fact that they cannot be used in conjunction. The discourse of the diet book is one of complete prescriptivism. Each of these texts is aiming to replace the one that came before it. They are marketed, almost without exception, as the final solution to all of our weight loss woes. Dr Atkins' Diet Revolution was called "The High Calorie Way to Stay Thin Forever" and The Dunkan Diet was marketed as being the "2 steps to lose the weight" and the "2 steps to keep it off forever". As Theodore Dalrymple brilliantly summarises, “When a book’s title includes words such as ‘final’ or ‘ultimate,’ there are sure to be more books to follow”. And, sure enough, both of these books were re-released in various editions and had sister books created that attempted to make the diets simpler and more effective.

Understanding this, the 'clean eating' movement seems a lot less revolutionary. Just like every other diet book before it they insist on you relearning everything you thought you knew about health (you thought brown pasta was good for you? WRONG!) and are treated as the final solution to the ultimate problem. Basically then, they are just a repackaged version of the good ol' fad diet, in a cycle that's been doing the rounds for decades.

I can't help but wondering, what food group are we going to be told to abandon next?