WOLFING down a potato scone and mushroom buttie, slathered in tomato sauce, is perhaps not the best preparation to meet Nell Nelson. It should probably have been a breakfast of wholegrain cereals, or porridge sprinkled with fresh fruit. "Oh well," she says in a determined-to-be-upbeat manner. "At least you didn't skip breakfast altogether."
Enthusiastic positivity radiates from Nelson. This is partly due to the rosiness of her cheeks following a brisk cycle ride from Stockbridge to the Royal Mile, but also because she's a woman who knows how to eat properly. Hence the title of her lates
t book Eat Well with Nell, which she hopes will encourage others to look at their diet in a new light and make healthy food enjoyable rather than a trial.
There's no better time for a healthy cookbook to appear on the shelves than in January, after the hedonistic eating and drinking of the festive season. But Nelson is as likely to tell you how to detox yourself slim or lose a stone in a week, as Fern Britton is to admit she was actually far happier pre-gastric band. It's not all mung beans and wheatgrass.
"You won't find the word detox in there," she smiles. "If you are eating a proper diet, with good food, then your liver should be working to capacity and your body doing its own thing to get rid of any toxins. I don't believe in strict diets either, it just shocks your body. One minute it's getting lots of food, the next hardly any. It's not good for you."
Nelson is still perhaps best known as The Woman Who Ate Scotland after her two-part food programme for STV, and while she also regularly gives food demonstrations and writes expertly on the subject, her day job is as a nutritionist with Neal's Yard Remedies in Hanover Street.
There, she gives one-to-one consultations looking at the body's systems and diet before creating tailored eating plans and a 60-page recipe book for each client. As a result of that work, her latest book began to take shape.
"I had a bank of recipes because I was dealing with people who had heart problems, who had cholesterol problems, issues with stress and so on. Even when you know what you're supposed to be eating, it doesn't always mean you do. After all, spinach can be incredibly boring, and overcooked broccoli is the dullest vegetable ever. But look at what they do in Asia . . . add a little ginger, chilli and soy sauce and they can be transformed.
"So I was devising recipes for people in which they could eat the correct foods, and also eat delicious foods, and the book came out of that. I really believe you shouldn't just eat something because you know it's good for you, but because it tastes wonderful too. A lot of people see food as the enemy when really it should be our best friend."
Asian food is a major source of inspiration for Nelson as she spent ten years from 1993 working as a food and restaurant critic in Hong Kong, writing her first culinary tome, Eat Cook Hong Kong, and then a cookbook for the 40th anniversary of the Mandarin Oriental. She then decided to cycle to Australia through Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia eating all the way. However, it was a bout of food poisoning in West Timor that made her rethink her love of food.
"For the first time I stopped thinking about it in that Bridget Jones way of calories, and started thinking about it in terms of fuel and feeding the body the right things it needs.
"I had to cycle out of Timor, there was no other way, so I had to get better. I thought about what I had been eating previously, which had obviously been giving me a lot of energy, so I ate a lot of bony fish and bananas. And it worked.
"Similarly when I was skiing in France I injured my cruciate ligament and over the years I noticed that after a night out eating rich food and drinking wine my knee would flare up. A doctor told me I had arthritis and offered anti-inflammatories, but a diet rich in omega 3 can help just as much. It's knowing how your diet can affect your health and make you feel better that is important to me."
The book is a kind a cuddly version of Gillian McKeith's approach – there's even a chapter on the things "worth getting fat for" including muffins and millionaire shortbread "I wouldn't want to criticise her but I believe people should enjoy their food and it should be about being sociable and sharing and not denying yourself all the time."
But while it's all very well to preach healthy eating, right now, in the middle of a financial crisis, people surely don't want to be spending extra on buying expensive foodstuffs? "They don't have to," she says. "I don't say always buy organic. I say try and buy local and seasonal, and that way you should get the best food at a good price. It's even better if you can grow your own.
"Supermarkets also have their place as frozen vegetables can be much more nutritious than fresh ones which have maybe been sitting on a shelf for a few days. I believe Lidl buys its fruit and veg locally. I would also say that you don't need to have a great big steak or a whole chicken every other day. The body doesn't need so much protein, once a week is fine.
"If you're cooking chicken you can also use the carcass to make stock, which is really easy, doesn't mean standing over a pot, and when you use it you can feel like a domestic goddess. Similarly I believe in batch cooking – the freezer is definitely a great friend.
"I would also suggest one of the best ways to ensure you're getting your veg at the moment is to make soup – there's nothing quicker and easier."
Making soup is something the 44-year-old learned at her mother Jean's knee while growing up in North Berwick. Indeed her passion for food begins there – and she even kept a diary as a child recording what she ate at school dinners. "My mum was a very good cook and she would let my brother and I cook in the kitchen all the time. I remember making a Grand Marinier souffle at a young age."
Despite her obvious passion for food, after leaving St George's School, she went on to study English literature at St Andrews University before heading for London to work as an advertising copywriter. Food remained a hobby, until she took a course in Afro-Caribbean cooking – "lots of goat meat and rum" – and ended up reviewing such restaurants.
When she went to Hong Kong, it made sense to do the same thing and she hasn't looked back.
The one venture which has had to be put off for the moment, though, was a bespoke meal delivery service. "I was having to contract out the cooking to someone else and so didn't have as much control over it as I would have liked, so that's gone on the back burner for the moment," she says. "I'm not sure what this year will bring. I'd love to do more TV – there's so much more of Scotland still to eat – and I'm thinking of another book about eating through the credit crunch.
"People in Scotland need to be made aware of the pleasure there is to be had from food. It's always fantastic to see the difference which can be made to people through diet, but the book isn't meant to be so hardcore healthy that people use it for a week and find it antisocial and too hard to stick to. It's designed to inspire."
Eat Well with Nell, by Nell Nelson, is published by Hachette Books Scotland, priced £12.99.