Being called a nepo baby is hurtful, says Sainsbury's great-granddaughter
A food writer who is related to the supermarket Sainsbury family has called being described as 'a nepo baby ' unfair.
Ella Mills, a blogger known for her recipe blog and brand Deliciously Ella, is the great-granddaughter of Lord Alan John Sainsbury, of the supermarket-owning family.
She told Good Housekeeping UK magazine: '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, 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, 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.
'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.
Plants 'changed my life'
'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, Mills was diagnosed with postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome, which is when the heart rate increases very quickly after getting up from sitting or lying down, according to the NHS website.
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'.
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