'A delicious guide to eating the healthy way.' - Tim Spector

'Real, good food.' - Yotam Ottolenghi

'This book will become your go-to, making eating well a joy, not a chore.' - Dr Rupy Aujla

Delicious, wholesome, life-friendly recipes to help you eat well, every day.

With a foreword by nutritionist Rhiannon Lambert, Real Healthy is a practical cookbook for time-poor people who want to cut back on ultra-processed foods, with healthy, veg-packed food that’s quick, convenient and tasty.

Research has shown that ultra-processed foods have been linked to high-blood pressure, heart disease and other serious illnesses, yet the average person in the UK gets a whopping 56% of their calories from UPFs. Here, Melissa Hemsley provides simple, doable and delicious recipes to help you tackle those tricky problem areas – on-the-go breakfasts, working lunches, snacks and sweet treats – as well as chapters on batch cooking, traybakes and 30 minute meals. She’s also includes tips on what to look out for when trying to avoid UPFs, making this your new go-to book for everyday cooking.

With recipes such as One-Pot Lazy Lasagne, Cherry Bakewell Granola and Take-To-Work White Bean Chilli, as well as ideas to help you stay on top of the week’s shopping and cooking, Real Healthy provides easy and nourishing alternatives to help you reduce the amount of UPFs that end up on your plate.

'Melissa untangles the complicated world of ultra-processed foods and puts us back into the calm and comforting space of simple, sublime and tasty cooking.' - Tom Kerridge

Sunday Times bestseller, July 2024

Real Healthy untangles the complicated world of ultra-processed foods and puts us back into the calm and comforting space of simple, sublime and tasty cooking. Embracing great ingredients, cooked with ease and simplicity but with Melissa’s own take of exciting and interesting twists to keep us all super interested and want to try every recipe in the book. Beautiful photography, amazing put together recipes that really are perfect for the home cook. -- Tom Kerridge, Michelin-starred chef & restauranteur
A practical guide for busy lives, Hemsley serves up all the delicious and nutritious solutions to our everyday eating dilemmas with recipes you'll turn to again and again and know, without question, that they’ll make you feel great. It's real, good food. -- Yotam Ottolenghi
A delicious guide to eating the healthy way. -- Tim Spector
Jam-packed full of simple and delicious recipes – this book will become your go-to – making eating well a joy, not a chore. -- Dr Rupy Aujla, author of The Doctor's Kitchen
Melissa leads us to ingredients that will help us feel well, and dishes them up in ways that will make us lick our lips. -- Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, cook, writer, broadcaster and founder of River Cottage
This has everything you want from a cookbook: nourishing and scrumptious meals with accessible ingredients. -- Dr Amir Khan, GP and broadcaster
I love Melissa’s real-life take on making healthier food easy and accessible. -- Liz Earle MBE
A game changer in the kitchen! -- Laura Whitmore, broadcaster
A delightful guide to shifting the focus onto eating more plants, cooking more intuitively and fostering a more sustainable and wholesome approach to mealtimes. -- Dr Saliha Mahmood Ahmed, NHS gastroenterology doctor, author & MasterChef winner
I talk a lot about adding "extras" into family meals to help up the veggies and also increase the nutrition of our family foods – this book offers plenty of extras with fresh and nutritious ingredients, but in really simple recipes with lots of store cupboard ingredients too. -- Charlotte Stirling-Reed, the baby and child nutritionist

Bestselling author Melissa Hemsley celebrates easy and affordable healthy food that everyone can enjoy, as well as a more accessible and sustainable way of eating for everyone. She began her food career as a private chef for actors and bands, including Take That, and has written and co-written five bestselling books, published internationally.

Melissa is a proud long term supporter of food redistribution charity The Felix Project, and volunteers with them regularly to rescue surplus food and to cook for children and the vulnerable. She is an ambassador for Mental Health Mates, the Fairtrade Food Foundation and Women Supporting Women (The Prince's Trust), among others. Over the last 5 years, Melissa has been supporting The Food Foundation and School Food Matters and working on campaigns such as Feed the Future and Free School Meals.

Melissa regularly appears on daytime TV and radio and a host of other cookery and news shows, often speaking on behalf of the charity and community projects she works with. She lives in London with her partner and baby daughter.