How to Build a Lunch Bowl (and the Toxicity of 'Wellness')

The year was 2016. It was an eventful time: over those 12 months, there were a few political (for the want of a better word) ripples, a surprising number of celebrities died, I went to cookery school, and it was the year when the tide began to turn against ‘clean eating’.

Just cast your mind back – for a few years prior to 2016, all the lattes had suddenly turned pastel shades; matcha, beetroot and I forget what the blue one was. Ella Mills (née Woodward) of Deliciously Ella, the Hemsley Sisters and Madeleine Shaw popped up like one of those grasses they would put in a bowl and serve with tahini. Every café sold tiny date energy balls snuggled under a coat of coconut. One single energy ball usually cost £1.79. Bone broth (stock) sold for £5 a pot at your nearest Wholefoods. Everything – rice, quinoa, smoothies – was served in bowls. Which is where these lunch bowls come in.

Since determinedly tweaking my diet a few months ago, I’ve noticed these blog posts have taken on a new tone, one with a green tinge around the edge. And now lunch bowls have made their way onto my radar, one of the lasting relics of clean eating, and believe me when I say this was a cuisine for which I felt nothing more than the purest misanthropy.

Maybe I judged too hastily? No, I think we all felt the same scepticism and none more so than the mainstream media when they realised they’d been sold a conspiracy theory. Some advocates and bloggers selling the clean eating story were now suffering from eating disorders, so determined they were for their diets to remain free of meat, oils, grains, sugar, the list goes on. Clean eating was labelled as ‘nutribollocks’ and all those recipe writers with their names on the line quickly distanced themselves from the fad they’d just been plugging.

So, no, clean eating is not making an appearance here, thank god. And I wouldn’t be a committed Francophile if my diet focused on wellness and eliminating toxins. Because the French love them.

The French face food with joie de vivre. In restaurants, baguette comes free with every meal. There’s a type of coffee available here called café viennois; espresso topped with sweetened cream. Apéro – snacks and wine time – is a pre-dinner appetizer. Butter is added to just about everything. The French don’t give two hoots about clean eating.

When it comes to food, nutrition and ‘wellness’, I think the best course of action is to eat like the French: respect your food and eat for the love of what is on your plate. None of us are stupid at the end of the day – we all know that regularly munching on deep fried food will make us feel greasy and squidgy around the edges. So, we need to appreciate those occasional fried chicken burgers and likewise the bowls of leaves. They balance each other out in the end, and it helps that they both can be delicious if prepared and cooked well. And this food-loving Frenchman I know, a passionate eater with a weakness for fried chicken, baguette and Comte cheese, inhaled his rice bowl the other day. And complimented me on it again a few days later.

How to build a lunch bowl

Lunch bowls don’t need a recipe as only a few components – varying flavours and textures – including a fresh, light dressing, are chucked in a bowl for a satisfying, balanced lunch which can tick all the boxes of your cravings (yes, including fried chicken!).

So, here are some ideas for your lunch bowls:

Grains:

Rice (white, red, brown, black, all the colours if you want), couscous, quinoa – I mixed two varieties of rice with peas, parsley and mint, then tossed it all in a lemony garlic dressing.

Protein:

Salmon, tuna, chicken (deep-fried or otherwise), olives, hummus, or try some crunchy roasted chickpeas cooked in ras el hanout and maybe a soft-boiled egg.

Greens and vegetables:

Spinach and massaged kale, finely sliced red cabbage, cubed beetroot, sliced radish, cucumber and tomato, spring onion, grilled broccoli, then for softer texture, roast some butternut squash or sweet potato cooked in paprika and cinnamon.

Toppings:

Goat’s cheese, burrata (for a very special lunch bowl), parmesan, herbs, pomegranate, flaked almonds, hazelnuts, sesame seeds, or my new bffs, flaxseeds.

Dressings:

I mixed together 1 tbsp tahini with 2 tbsp buttermilk (I didn’t have any yoghurt), added a little lemon juice, salt, pepper and olive oil, gave it a shake and drizzled it all over everything in my bowl. Otherwise, you could try honey, mustard and garlic, or this fiery one with anchovies.

Clean eating and its toxic belief of wellness is a superiority complex on steroids. Eat what you want and take pleasure in every meal. And, if you’re craving a boost of anti-oxidants and fibre, try a healthy lunch bowl. I can testify that even the French love them.