Deliciously Ella hits out at 'nepo baby' label and insists being great-granddaughter of Sainsbury's baron is nothing to do with her success

Daily Mail​

29-05-2025

The star behind Deliciously Emma has hit out at being labelled a ' nepo baby ', insisting that being the great-granddaughter of a major Sainsbury's baron has nothing to do with her success.
Food writer Ella Mills has said she knew people would describe her as a nepo baby when she set about creating her recipe blog and brand.
The businesswoman, known for her cookery books that promote a plant-based diet, is the great-granddaughter of Lord Alan John Sainsbury, of the Sainsbury's supermarket-owning family.
The mother-of-two told Good Housekeeping UK: 'I passionately wanted to do Deliciously Ella on my own. Of course, it didn't take journalists long to link the dots and I felt so bad in retrospect.
'I knew people would say I was just a nepo baby, but you don't sell 100 million products because 40 years ago Sainsbury's went public.
'At the same time, having that connection meant I had a subconscious wish to do something quite different, against the odds, as my great-grandfather had done.'
In the mid-2010s Ms Mills was touted as a pioneer of the 'clean eating' movement, despite telling a magazine in 2016 that 'I would never use the word 'clean'.'
The concept, promoting minimally-processed foods, was controversial, with Nigella Lawson telling BBC Radio 4's Woman's Hour that 'behind the notion of clean eating is an implication that any other form of eating is dirty or shameful'.
During this time, Ms Mills received backlash for her gluten, meat and dairy-free recipes, as well as her personal wellness journey, which was associated with the clean eating movement.
She told the magazine: 'It (the backlash) was instigated more by the media than by social media.
'I don't have it as bad as some people who've been trolled, but I'm aware that a fair share of people don't like me, for sure.
'I accept that if you have a public platform and you share your opinion with the world, the world is quite right to have an opinion back.
'If I can help people to eat more plants and have a more natural diet, then that's more important than anything a troll can say about me.'
Speaking further about the wellness industry, she said: 'You have this bizarre, quite ironic dichotomy: as our collective health gets worse, the wellness industry gets bigger, noisier, more confusing and more niche.
'If you go online, people are following these extreme morning routines, achieving so much by 9am.
'My concern is that too many people think that their health is synonymous with expensive powder and wildly elaborate routines.
'Everything I suggest is evidence-based. It's not about gimmicks or fads. I changed my diet (to plant-based) and it changed my life.'
In the summer of 2011, Ms Mills was diagnosed with postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS), which is when your heart rate increases very quickly after getting up from sitting or lying down, according to the NHS website.
It was after this diagnosis that Ms Mills began building her business empire.
After launching her blog and publishing a book, she later began producing vegan health products, selling millions of cereal bars across UK supermarkets.
In her book, Deliciously Ella, published in 2015, she said that changing her diet meant 'in less than two years I was off all the medication I should have been on for life'.
Amid soaring success, Ms Mills announced last year that she had decided to sell her company, saying she had been 'overwhelmed with fame'.
In September last year, she announced that she and her husband, Matthew Mills - with who she co-owns the company - were selling it.
The pair sold their company to the Swiss group Hero, for what is believed to be figure around £70 million.
Despite selling, Ella and her husband have maintained control over Plants, a separate part of their business with supplies fresh pasta, kombucha and soups to outlets such as Waitrose.