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book charts this week, and has achieved the highest first week sale for a debut cookbook ever.
Demand for Deliciously Ella, penned by the 23-year-old Londoner, was so high that it was re-printed six times before it was even released due to an unprecedented level of pre-orders.
Ella Woodward, 23, embraced a fully vegan lifestyle to beat her POTS syndrome. She started blogging about her healthy living journey, which lead to the release of her debut recipe book documenting her story and sharing her healthy living tips – it’s the bestselling debut recipe book of all time
It has been the number one bestseller on Amazon.co.uk (reduced from £20 to £7.99) continuously for more than two weeks.
The healthy tome sold 32,144 copies in the last week on January – the most for a food and drink writer since Nielsen BookScan records began back in 1998.
This compares with Nigella Lawson’s How to Eat selling 1,295 copies and The Naked Chef by Jamie Oliver shifting 708 copies.
The book tells the tale of Ella, a self-confessed ‘sugar monster’, who was struck down with a rare illness that attacked her nervous system and left her bed-bound. She cured herself through healthy eating and wanted to share her story with others.
She embraced a fully vegan lifestyle and managed to beat her illness and launch her own successful business, which has led to the release of her debut recipe book documenting her story and sharing her healthy living tips.
Ella, who is the eldest daughter of Camilla Sainsbury, the supermarket heiress, and Labour MP and former Cabinet minister Shaun Woodward, blames her former diet for a multitude of problems.
Her childhood was extraordinarily privileged but her diet, by her own account, was appalling and she blames it for her poor health.
In 2011 Ella was diagnosed with a relatively rare illness called Postural Tachycardia Syndrome, or POTS.
The syndrome effectively breaks down your autonomic nervous system: the system that controls everything that is meant to happen automatically in the body - so your heart beat, digestion, circulation and immune system.
Speaking to MailOnline, Ella said: ‘As you can imagine this had a pretty devastating effect on my life. I literally couldn’t walk down the street, I slept for 16 hours a day, was in chronic pain, had blackouts, never-ending heart palpitations, unbearable stomach issues, constant headaches - the list goes on.’
Ella, who lives in London, was bed-ridden 95% of the time and prescribed conventional medication and steroids for about six months but they didn’t make much difference so she decided to make a change herself.
‘I began researching natural healing which is how I came to change my diet. Overnight I gave up refined sugar, gluten, dairy, anything processed or refined and meat,’ she said. ‘It was a huge change from someone that lived off a delicious mixture of Ben and Jerry’s Cookie Dough ice cream; mountains of Cadbury’s caramel chocolate, lots of fizzy pick-n-mix and millions of jars of peanut butter and strawberry jam eaten with a spoon.
‘I noticed a difference after just a few weeks of eating well though and 18 months later I was able to come off all the medication - which I should have been on for life - and now feel absolutely amazing.’
Ella tracked her progress and shared all her favourite recipes via an online blog, Deliciously Ella.
She quickly saw her internet fame sky-rocket, garnering 17m blog hits, 250,000 Instagram followers and 420,000 YouTube viewers, who avidly follow her colourful ‘food porn’ snaps and enthusiastic attitude to clean living.
Brimming with tantalising photography of Ella’s fresh, simple recipes, this book is sure to inspire readers to embrace a new mind-set that celebrates food and lets natural ingredients shine. It contains over 100 brand new recipes from energising breakfasts and quick snacks to simple suppers and sweet treats.
