London, 29 May 2025 – Renowned food writer and entrepreneur Ella Mills has admitted she was fully aware that critics would brand her a “nepo baby” when she launched her recipe blog and subsequent wellness brand, Deliciously Ella. Mills, 33, is the great-granddaughter of Lord Alan John Sainsbury, a pivotal figure in the storied Sainsbury’s supermarket dynasty.
Speaking to Good Housekeeping UK, Mills said she was determined to forge her own path. “I passionately wanted to do Deliciously Ella on my own,” she explained. “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.”
Mills first gained widespread attention in the mid-2010s as a leading figure in the so-called “clean eating” movement, which advocated minimally processed foods and plant-based living. Although she insisted in 2016 that she “would never use the word ‘clean’”, the label stuck — and brought a wave of controversy. Fellow cookery writer Nigella Lawson, for instance, told 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”.
The backlash was often fierce. Mills endured criticism over her gluten-, meat- and dairy-free recipes and was occasionally subject to online trolling. “It was instigated more by the media than by social media,” she reflected. “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.”
Beyond recipe writing, Mills has been outspoken about the broader wellness industry, which she describes as “bizarre, quite ironic”: “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.” She emphasises that everything she recommends is evidence-based. “It’s not about gimmicks or fads. I changed my diet [to plant-based] and it changed my life.”
Mills’s personal health journey underpins her advocacy. In the summer of 2011, she was diagnosed with postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS), a condition in which the heart rate increases rapidly upon standing. According to the NHS, sufferers may experience lightheadedness, fainting or rapid heartbeat. In her debut book, Deliciously Ella (2015), Mills recounts how, within two years of embracing a plant-based diet, she had discontinued all the medications she had once expected to take for life.
More Read
Deliciously Ella has since expanded into a multimillion-pound business, encompassing cookbooks, an app, pre-prepared food ranges and a café in London’s Westbourne Grove. Despite her family pedigree, Mills insists that her success is down to hard work and authenticity. “I never wanted my background to be my selling point,” she remarked. “If anything, it made me want to prove myself all the more.”
In the Good Housekeeping UK interview, available in the magazine’s July issue on sale from 29 June, Mills also discusses plans to launch new product lines and her hopes for the future of plant-based eating in Britain. As the wellness market continues to evolve, her journey serves as a reminder that innovation often rides on the back of personal experience — and that even those with privileged beginnings must contend with public scrutiny.
For now, Ella Mills seems undeterred by labels or legacy. Whether hailed as a pioneer of modern healthy eating or dismissed as a beneficiary of family fortune, she remains focused on her mission: to make nutritious, plant-centred food accessible to all. As she says, “My great-grandfather showed that business can be a force for good. I just want to do the same — one bowl of nourishing food at a time.”
