Sometimes, when you live in the Northern Rivers, particularly in the Byron Bay region, it seems as if everybody has come from ‘somewhere else’, but in nutritionist Janella Purcell’s case, it’s more that she’s travelled back to her roots, writes Candida Baker.

I’m sitting talking to Janella Purcell on the beautiful wide verandah of her Coorabell home, and the author of the recently published Janella’s Super Natural Foods, is in relaxed mode.   She’s been in Sydney for a few weeks seeing clients, and the leaves have got a bit out of control, so she’s been sweeping the verandah of the house she moved to a little over three years ago.

“It was always a dream of mine to eat off the land,” she tells me. “I moved from Sydney and for me, the move back to this area was definitely about achieving a balance in my lifestyle – the kind I recommend to my clients!”

But for Purcell, the area perhaps had more calling than for others. “My mother was born in Casino,” she says. “I actually come from the first Lebanese family in Australia, and our tribe is scattered from Brisbane to Kyogle and beyond, so the idea of land was deeply ingrained in my psyche.”

Purcell, of course, is well-known to television audiences as the Good Chef, in Good Chef, Bad Chef. Her first book was the award-winning Janella Purcell’s Elixir, How To Use Food As Medicine was published in 2004, and her first recipe book, Eating for the Seasons in 2010, followed by the second edition of Elixir. Her first recipe book, Eating for the Seasons was published in 2011, follwed by Janella’s Wholefood Kitchen in 2012. In this latest book, Janella’s Super Natural Foods, she follows and the lead of her first two, taking us further down the path of understanding that food can be medicine for our bodies (and souls) as well as simply fuel.

“I’m not an evangelist however,” she says. “I think it’s very important to understand that families have time constraints and that it’s important to keep things simple and straightforward – and that’s what I’ve tried to do in this book.”

In our family, we have a range of dietary needs. I’m a vegetarian, my daughter is gluten-free, another family member is sensitive to dairy, and so putting that all in the mix, this latest book is a godsend, with every recipe carefully coded so that you can see at a glance if it’s suitable. A dish that’s quickly become a family favourite is the Indonesian Salad which is gluten free, dairy free, vegetarian, vegan and grain free – and yet, I promise you, still tastes delicious. It’s also a dish that has a small lesson in it. Did you know, for instance, that shop-bought peanuts have been heavily treated with chemicals? Making the peanut sauce with organic peanuts is a revelation in terms of taste, and it’s so easy. Egg is optional, but personally I enjoy it.

‘He that takes medicine and neglects diet wastes the skills of the physician.’ – Chinese Proverb

Purcell found her way into organic cooking and natural health because of some health issues of her own as a child. “I was often bloated as a child,” she says, “even though I was really fit and active, and my whole family – having a Lebanese mother – was naturally into healthy food. I also had a constant problem with my weight, and so I started a lot of diets, which led me into trying to work out why I could eat some foods, and not others.” Purcell quickly found out that she found meat indigestible, and that dairy was not so good for her either. “I would have been a chef then really,” she muses, “but if I’d served an apprenticeship I would have had to cut up meat, so that really counted me out!”  She did end up getting her chef’s paper simply by spending so much ‘time on the job’.

After she left school Purcell decided to study fashion, but she remained fascinated with food and cooking, and gradually began to immerse herself in naturopathy, Chinese medicine and Ayuverda. As she learned more and more, she realised that her own emotional state was affected by what she ate, (and vice versa) and she began to minimize the heavier western foods – white flour, bread, rice and dairy, and replaced them with easier to digest eastern foods.

Adrian Richardson and Janella Purcell on the set of Good Chef, Bad Chef.

Diet was always a large part of her work in her private practice, so cooking classes were a natural progression which in turn led to her TV role on Channel 9’s Today Show as their resident nutritionist, and then moved onto her role as the Good Chef on Good Chef, Bad Chef. Her profile has steadily increased, as has her list of private clients, and these days, dividing her time between Sydney and her home near Byron Bay, Purcell has achieved an enviable balance between career and lifestyle, and in Super Natural Foods, her goal is to help people see how easy it can be to create easy, delicious and nutritious food. “It’s just a question of changing your thinking,” she says. “For instance, buying local, buying organic, and buying in season will all improve your diet enormously.”

If you’re wanting more information on Purcell and her approach to holistic health and wellbeing her website is full of information. https://janellapurcell.com/

Her book: Janella’s Super Natural Foods is published by Allen & Unwin.

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