Clare Mosley: ‘Michael, in the early days, liked his chicken nuggets’

“It really happened! I was sitting at the desk where I am now, and I stood up. I was rummaging through the books at the back of the shelves and there was just this loud clunk,” says Dr Clare Bailey Mosley, remembering the day she wrote the introduction to her new cookbook, The Fast 800 Favourites.

“It was one of the chocolate bars he’d asked me to hide. It was a message from another world really.”

She is talking about her late husband, the celebrated TV presenter, 5:2 diet and fasting pioneer and science writer Michael Mosley, who might have been committed to improving the nation’s metabolic health, but also had quite the sweet tooth.

Michael, 67, died on the Greek island of Symi in June 2024, after succumbing to heat stroke while on holiday with his family. Mosley’s love for her husband of 37 years is felt on every page of The Fast 800 Favourites, which brings together dishes from the pair’s own kitchen, and from the series of Fast 800 books they co-created.

“Really, it’s a tribute to Michael and the lovely recipes we put together over the years,” says Mosley, 64, who, the morning we speak, has spent “a ridiculous amount of time” going through their “really nostalgic” shared meals.

“I got absorbed in them. There’s something about recipes that are so personal, and you often remember them, and they have a feel to them,” she says thoughtfully. “I’m sitting here looking at Michael’s favourite breakfast, which was chorizo omelette. That’s one he used to cook. I would come down and it would be there, ready for breakfast, which was such a treat. He didn’t do that much of the cooking, but he absolutely mastered that one.”

She says it’s a recipe that defines the way they ate: “Not too starchy [or] sweet, but plenty of protein, plenty of fibre, and [a] healthy meal that keeps you full for longer.” It is how she’s almost always eaten, especially “once the children were a bit older and no longer living on chicken nuggets,” she says wryly of their four kids, now all grown up. “Michael, in the early days, liked his chicken nuggets too,” she adds with a laugh.

It is also how she still cooks, even when she’s cooking for one. “I did go through a short period of buying lots of takeaways, and then I got really fed up,” she admits, which is understandable, as grief can so easily make cooking for yourself seem utterly pointless.

“I could see people in the supermarket looking at my trolley sometimes, and it had completely, radically changed,” she says, but Mosley found her way back to cooking from scratch. “I feel better having eaten well. It’s been one of the things that has really kept me resilient. It’s so easy to have a glass of wine with your supper, or two glasses, and to just grab food as you pass, because why not? And this isn’t a moral thing. It’s a practical thing. When you’re not really paying attention to it, you’re not feeding your body and your brain as well as you could do, and it’s a time when you need every [bit of] resilience.”

The Fast 800 Favourites is Mosley’s second recipe collection to be published this autumn, following September’s Eating Together, which focuses on healthy meals the whole family can sit down to eat as a clan.

“There is that irony after Eating Together, that I’m not eating together, so to speak,” muses Mosley, but notes: “I have a lot of people who come through the house, which is really nice, family come and stay. People come for supper.”

“I’m a big fan of promoting getting children and families around the table,” continues the retired GP, noting the many physical and psychological benefits of having dinner as a unit. “We did it as children. Michael did it with his family. And I think for us, it held us together. It was our core cement in the day.”

After Michael’s death, Mosley and their children made a pact to remember him by eating together, as they did the day he disappeared. “Yes, it’s very emotional,” she says quietly. “On the other side of it, we, the family, I think, are much closer in many ways since then, but we miss him hugely.”

Michael was dedicated to boosting peoples’ metabolic health – which, when poor, can lead to chronic conditions, such as diabetes, non-alcoholic liver disease and sleep apnoea – mainly through diet and rapid weight loss.

“It’s about how your body processes energy from food,” explains Mosley, hence the Fast 800 books, which contain healthy, balanced recipes that are low in starchy carbs, revolve around a Mediterranean-style diet, and ‘fast days’ where you consume 800-1,000 calories, “which is plenty for you to go into fat burning and lose weight, but also have some bright nutrients”.

The Mosley family, in honour of Michael, have partnered with King’s College London and the Chronic Disease Research Foundation (CDRF) to advance research in this area, to help people live longer and more healthily. It’s the importance of continuing “Michael’s amazing legacy” that drives Mosley on.

“He was really passionate about his work and improving the nation’s health. It felt important to do. I’m really pleased, and I feel very privileged to be carrying on his legacy, because he had such a huge impact. We had not realised quite how much an impact he had been making over the years,” she says. “The response [from people when he died] was so incredibly touching. It really did make a difference.”