Spotlight - Suzanne of The Happy Gut Co for The Lockdown Interviews

Suzanne and I have been following each other on Instagram for a while and just before lockdown I had the pleasure of shooting some portraits with her. Suzanne is passionate about her work and it comes through in the way she talks about it.

This interview is packed full of gold, enjoy!

Hi Suzanne, could you tell us a little about your business, how it came about, what your every day looked like before the virus and what your aims are with The Happy Gut Co?

Sure - Happy Gut Co was born out of my frustration to eat like a normal person!

I discovered - or finally accepted that I had IBS just after my twins were born in 2014. If I am wholly honest with myself though, it began way before that I just didn’t want to accept it. At the point I finally did accept my diagnosis I had newborn twins and a two year old to look after with a husband who spent a lot of time abroad for work, so finding a solution to managing this chronic illness was critical. I was suffering from a severe lack of energy, a high level of bloating and a lot of unwelcomed wind that I was unable control - I couldn’t even chase my 2 year down the street for fear of farting as ran along, and that’s without me even touching upon my toilet habits! If you have the pleasure of knowing other IBS sufferers, you’ll know we talk a lot about wind and poo!

Upon my diagnosis I was told it’s not curable but there are list of interventions that I may find useful, it’s really just a matter of trial and error to work out what works for me. Things like exercise, cutting out alcohol and coffee, drinking more water and diet were all listed. It was at this point that I found out about the FODMAP diet, a complex diet that basically pinpoints foods that could be triggers. And the results are different from one person to the next so the first stage to the diet is the elimination round. It was mind blowing, going from carelessly eating without really thinking about it to keeping a diary and eliminating whole food groups. But it worked, I was back to my energetic self and the best bit, no unexpected wind embarrassing me as I ran, and over time eating this way became absolutely normal.

I set up Happy Gut Co a year ago to inspire other people living with IBS - what began as a simple blog with recipes is now evolving in to a brand with various outlets accessible to both people living with IBS or simply wanting to eat good food and understand a bit more about good gut health. One of these concepts is my takeaway supper club, aptly named Fakeway Friday: A Takeaway Supper Club where guest receive a nutritious, FODMAP friendly plant based meal delivered directly to their door - think supper club, only in the comfort of your own home, no dressing up required!

I’m on a mission to make eating a nourishing, plant based FODMAP friendly diet simple for a happy gut and mind. Rather than focusing on the list of plant based foods that trigger IBS related symptoms, I take the bits that can be tolerated and turn them in to something nourishing and delicious. I’m a conscious being, so how we eat and how we shop is super important, it’s all about buying local, refillable where possible and zero waste in my kitchen - it’s amazing how creative I can get working this way!

Before lockdown my typical day would begin with getting the kids ready to go to school, a good breakfast filled with oats, homemade nutola, some fresh fruit and a mint tea, drop the kids off at school then I’d head to a spin class or head to the beach for a run before getting my head in to work. My working day would generally stop soon after lunch giving me a chance to prepare dinner before picking the kids up from school at 3pm. And that’s without even mentioning the vast range of distractions I would otherwise get involved in along the way - boy how things have changed!

How has the virus impacted your business and are there ways in which you’ve been able to adapt?

I’d just got back from an intense few weeks in London strategising and thinking alongside some of the worlds leading people in the plant based food world and I had plans I was ready to run with. But when COVD-19 hit, like most business owners, I needed to take a breath, a step back to consider how my offering fitted in to this new ’normal’.

Connecting with people virtually very quickly started to become a life saver, more of us have been taking to online platforms for inspriation, for company and in a small way for survival. We all wanted to know what we could do to stay safe and well, to survive lockdown without access to our normal shops, to help stop this pandemic from spreading and ultimately to enable us all to get back to our daily lives.

My mission with Happy Gut Co has always been to empower people to make real food without relying on convenience and to understand how this can improve our gut health for a healthy gut and mind - 70% of our immune system is based in the gut, so focusing on what we put in to it is more important now than ever before. And the best way to acheive this is through eating an abundance of plants and scrapping the processed foods. I was fortunate in that I was already using social media platforms to share simple tips and recipes, but with so many people at home cooking than ever before, the appetite for this was stronger than ever. So I’ve focused on creating more content and being honest - opening up my home, my family life and showing how we do things, how to be healthy in a cheap and accessible way, showing that perfection doesn’t exist and recipes can be made up by anyone. How simple it is to substitute ingredients and how we can broaden our plant based diversity simply and perhaps discovering a world of new foods we either didn’t know about or thought we’d like, how to be more sustainable with our food and ideas on how to use our food waste - let’s face it, if we waste less we’d shop less!

Where I had future plans to set up a You Tube channel full of beautifully curated recipe videos, rather than focusing on perfection, I just grabbed my camera and got to filming and uploading. Some people have a lot more time on their hands right now, so it seemed the perfect opportunity to share my recipes and what’s more a simple project to get my kids involved in whilst they’re at home. We’ve been cooking and whipping up snacks daily, it’s their passion, and I was finding whenever we shared pictures on instagram people would ask for the recipe, so I figured You Tube was the perfect place to help us extend our reach to people who aren’t users of instagram - I got the idea to use You Tube from my friends who steer clear of using social media platforms. All our recipes are super simple and really quick using store cupboard, fresh and frozen ingredients that are easy to get hold of or that we’ve simply found lying around our kitchen. I’m well aware that not everyone has access to the same ingredients so suggesting alternatives or leaving out completely is always an area I touch upon. I’m loving how people, including my own kids, are exploring the idea of playing around with flavour combinations, exploring complimentary foods rather than folowing a recipe verbatum. We’re all cooks, we’re just now cooks with more time on our hands!

My physical project, Fakeaway Friday: A Takeaway Supper Club was something I really had to think long and hard about its place in the current climate. It’s a tricky time for people right now so I spent time chatting with my customers, gained an understanding of what they wanted, then worked out how I could offer this in the current climate. That’s when Fakeaway Friday: The Lockdown Edition was born. Following strict COVID-19 food prep regulations, I am back delivering nourishing plant based meals with a strong focus on immune boosting foods. All dietary requirements remain just as important, this is an all inclusive Takeaway Supper Club after all, so all meals remain FODMAP friendly, gluten, dairy and refined sugar free. I’ve had to compromise on the amount of courses I’m able to make with my kids at home, as well as the packaging I’d normally use - I package a high proportion of my meals into jars and after each Fakeaway I run a reclycling service to pick them back up and use the next time round, but this isn’t an option right now. Whilst packaging all round isn’t environmentally how I’d like things to be, my customers understand. Most importantly Fakeaway Friday is a lovely way to mark the end of the working week and the arrival of a new weekend, a great excuse for a date night picnic on your lounge floor, a welcomed break from cooking and thinking and an all round uplifiting experience with some lovely affirmations minus the takeaway hangover you’d usually feel in the morning.

And my most recent project, Fakeaway Friday: The Live kicked off last friday, where I take to insta live and turn a traditional takeaway dish in to a nourishing, fodmap friendly immune boosting friday night supper for all around the world to cook a long to. This one has been on the cards for a while, I have some lovely followers from outside of my delivery area who wanted to get involved in Fakeaway Friday and this seemed like a natural progression. More lives are on the cards, keep your eyes peeled and please do get involved!

But my biggest adaptation - and most favourite thing to have come out of all of this - has been sharing my work with my family. Last friday my 7 year old stayed up to watch my live. She’s been watching lives with me and helping cook along so she’s well up with how it all works and for her when she sees hearts pinging up the screen she knows someone has done a good job. At the end of my live, she turned round to me with a huge smile on her face shouting ‘mummy, you got hearts!’. Her heart was literally bursting with pride, she burst in to excitable tears.

Lockdown began when you were in the midst of getting building work done and your kitchen was half finished - how are you coping with that as a family?

Do you know, we were so incredibly lucky! We were only a few weeks off of finishing everything when the schools announced they were closing by which point we were pretty much prepared for a full on lockdown. And lets face it, living with an unfinished house is better than not having a house at all!

When the builders downed tools we were left with a pile of stuff in literally every room in the house - unfitted toilets & sinks, radiators, piles of wood I had insisted on keeping to reuse around the house (it’s always been my aim to make our house renovations as sustainable as our budget would allow for), you name it, it was spread all over the house! Weirdly we lived like this for a week then we had a big realisation - it’s our space, the builder’s wont be back for a while, we can reclaim it back! That’s when we starting playing with our spaces and making them more homely, more ours. The kitchen is no longer used for storing our unfitted bathroom ware, that’s all in the bathroom waiting to be fitted, we’ve sifted through the wood and given a lot of it away to grateful people building summer homes in their garden or to use on allotments and moved all our unpacked boxes of stuff to our spare room at the very top of the house, aka the storage room! The kitchen has become our most used space, we cook everything together, we home school, we play piano, we craft, we draw, we look out in to the garden - and on lovely warm days like today, we slide those back doors open all the way and soak up all the lovely sunshine.

So yes things still need to be finished but to be quite honest we’re so grateful for all that we do have - and together with our builders we’ve created some amazing spaces to enjoy playing around in!

You focus on gut friendly recipes and food - by now most of us aware of the link between stress and the gut so what would your advice be to people at the moment who want to look after that element of their body?

Increase the amount of plants you’re getting in your daily diet - the recommended amount is 30 different sources per week. That may seem a lot, but actually when you break it down it’s easily achievable. On top of the fresh fruit and vegetables you’re already consuming, simple switches to boost our plant intake could include swapping out wholegrain pasta for quinoa or give black or wild rice a go instead of your usual wholegrain rice.

Breakfast is quite possibly one of my favourite time of the day to boost my plant intake - overnight oats can be packed full of different sources with the addition of chia seeds, some almond meal, gound flax and oats, simple spices like ginger and cinnamon or perhaps a little plant protein powder and some fresh berries on top.

And finally, try and stay away from high fatty foods and alcohol - neither are partiucarly good for our gut or our mind, and whilst as an odd treat there fine, in the long run they won’t do any of us any favours. There are some amazing, high quality botanicals on the market right now, perfect for swapping out your regular G&T with - my current faves are Seedlip Garden 108 and Three Spirit drinks.

We’re all way more focused on our food and cooking now with less convenience options available to us - what skills and processes can people learn from this time? (Note - I geared this up to talk about less waste etc!)

I’ve really enjoyed looking through my kitchen cupboards and reaquianting myself with ingredients I’ve not used for a while. Sometimes I think we’re all far too guilty of running to the shops to buy that one ingredient for a recipe rather than looking at what we have available sitting right in front of us. As this convenience has been taken away from us right now, it’s a great time to learn how to substitute and to look at a recipe as a guide. If in doubt - search engine, there’s always someone out there with an idea for what to substitute for what!

At the same time I’ve become slightly obssessed with the amount of food waste we produce - peelings from vegetables, stalks from herbs, vegetables slightly past their best. This is an area we can all improve, and if we did it would make a huge difference to our environment. Think the sheer size of the landfill space our food waste is taking up, its deprivation of CO2 to decompose safely, the wild animals being pushed out from their natural habits just to house our waste, the sheer quantity of water it takes to grow the foods we’ve thrown away - the list is endless. Now is the perfect time to reflect and install new behaviours to help this huge issue. Vegetable peelings make for the perfect veg stock, a healthy addition to a smoothie or even some healthy crisps - I like to keep a pot of peelings in a pot in my fridge and after a few days when the pot i full I spread on to a baking sheet, throw a little salt and paprika over them and quite literally dehydrate on a low setting in the oven for around 15 mins. Delish!

My last tip is a proper grandmotherly type tip, one from back in the good old days that a friends of mine reminded me of at the very beginning of this pandemic - use water to pad out your meals and help them spread further. I find if I balance my dish using herbs and spices cleverly the addition of water doesn’t make a difference to the flavour one tiny bit. And I get a bonus portion to stick in my freezer and use at a later date - just don’t forget about everything you’re freezing, a good tip is to stock take reguarly, just as you would your fridge.

Do you have any tips on how to better plan meals?

Find that one day in the week when you’re motivated to start your plan - for me it’s never a Monday, more likely a Sunday or a Tuesday. For inspiration I might use a recipe books, a seasonal ingredient, or something I know is a favourite in our house. Most importantly, don’t make things complicated, choose an ingredient or two that you love and make something super simple with it.

Dressings are really quick and simple to put together and have the ability to make a meal - think ketchup or mayo only much better! Having fresh dressings lying around in my fridge makes dinner prep super simple, and let’s face it at the end of a long day, nobody wants to be channeling their inner Ottolenghi - I generally plan to chuck together at least two dressings a week, something like a fresh pesto and a zesty tahini dressing, and make enough to save in a jar and leave in the fridge ready to chuck over a bowl of pasta, rice or quinoa, a few steamed veg, a scattering of seeds and maybe a quick pickled red cabbage.

I like to cook a little extra each night to give us some left overs for lunch the following day, if having something already to go takes the pressure off one meal a day, I’m more likely to be creative with the second meal I cook. Leftover rice can quickly and simply be turned in to a nutritious plate by gently frying some turmeric with a few seeds and raisins in a pan for a minute or two, then adding the rice on top, packing in slightly and leaving to gently turn golden underneath for a few mins. Perfect served with a salad, maybe some sliced avocado and a nice tahini dressing.

And finally, plan meals to get as many plant based foods in as possible, the more diverse, the better our gut health will be - super important for our bodies to fight off infections and disease and really important for a healthy mind. I tend to include as many different grains in to my week as I can, flipping between rice one day, noodles another, quinoa and pasta, I’m really enjoying teff pasta right now, it’s amazing for your gut. Adding a few vegetables on top, a pre made dressing, perhaps a few herbs and a sprinkling of toasted seeds, finished with a squeeze of lemon or lime is my perfect dinner!

If people could make one change towards their cooking habits during this time what could it be?

Cook from fresh, use as many different plant based sources as possible and consider how you can incorprate the whole plant in to your meals.

Bulk cooking and creating your own version of ready meals in your fridge/freezer will give you a constant stream of nourishing food, because lets face it, we’re not always going to feel like cooking every day, or have the time.

And finally, be creative and have fun experimenting - theres something quite meditative about being in the kitchen preparing food - use recipes as a guide, follow your instinct that what’s people used to do before recipe books were a thing!

Have you had any clarity on how you want to progress your business during this time?

Clarity is continuous - I’ve got a few ideas and some lovely collaborations in the pipeline so watch this space!

What has been keeping you getting through each day of lockdown personally?

I feel incredibly lucky to be surrounded by my family right now we all keep each other going. My kids are still quite young so they’re very playful and actually having this precious time together has allowed us to bond in an incredible way - it’s a bit like when we go on a holiday for a few weeks, but this time we’re doing it in our own home! We’re actually quite enjoying not having the usual distractions and constraints. We’re living life the way we collectively choose, and together we seem to have found a new respect for each other and our interests.

We spend a lot of time in the kitchen together and in a short space of time my 7 year old daughter is making up healthy snack recipes from random ingredients she can find hanging around our larder (her current fave is ground flax?!), my youngest 5 year old twin is making her own overnight oats for breakfast, and my oldest twin is the best washer boy around!

That said, it can also be quite relentless - home schooling, playing, cooking, cleaning - so my morning routine has became a really important part of my day. I get up before my kids to give me an hour to get a few bits done in peace, then we all sit down to eat breakfast together before I head out for my morning run - either running alongside, chatting to my 7 year old or catching up with a good podcast. Podcast content has been amazing, in fact the amount of quality online content in general is through the roof right now, from amazing people we wouldn’t normally have access to. And seminars that would otherwise require physical attendance, are all adapting and taking their content onlilne - brilliant for full time Mums like me who would otherwise have missed out!

Finally, if one good change could come out of this in general what would you like to see?

That’s easy, it has to be a permenant change to the way we eat and shop.

Understanding the importance of food to keep our bodies and mind happy - and strong enough to fight disease - has been brought to the forefront our attention in the last few months. Health is at the centre of our daily lives right now, understanding our mortality and the impact our lifestyle can have is finally becoming more and more important to people, we’re starting to take responsibilitiy through one simple thing, our diet.

For years I’ve been banging on about the endless shelves in our supermarkets filled with conveninence crap full of very little nutitional value, but it’s there because everyones buying it, it fulfills a need, one of convenience. But right now we’re in a unique position where people have the luxury of time with very few distractions, people are turning their hand to bread making, people are enjoying growing their own and more and more people are enjoying reconnecting with their kitchens. And all of this is so much better for our health, we’re feeding our bodies and our minds happy giving us the power to fight disease and stay strong. If we can keep these changed behaviours - it only takes an average of 66 days for a new behavior to become automatic - then perhaps all these unhealthy conveinice foods will start to disappear from supermarket shelves.

At the same time community ties have strengthened more than ever before. Local businesses have rallied around to make buying food as simple and safe as possible, new simple processes have been put in to place to look after both the vulernable and everyone else, they’re offering a wider variety of stock than ever before just to make shopping that bit easier and they’re delivering direct to our homes. These guys are going above and beyond to keep our communities alive and its being greeted with an abundance of love. People are begining to notice these small businesses on their doorstep, trading in their usual supermarket of choice for their local shop. And it’s making people smile - both the shop owners and their staff, and us, the customer. It’s feel good shopping at it’s very best.

For some, they’ve discovered the ease of buying from refillable stores, something that perhaps they’d always meant to try but never quite got round to it. When all the supermarket shelves were empty of flour, pasta and toilet rolls, these stores were full and very quickly word got out. From the word go the refillable stores ensured customers were limited on what they bought, they managed the panic and in turn stock flow. Just switching to these stores has the power to change our buying and our eating habits, we naturally increase the variety plants going in to our diet, we become more open to trying and switching foods, whether that be trading in our usual cous cous for quinoa or trying out buckwheat flour because white flour has run out. And a big one, we only buy what we need!

Such a passionate and inspiring interview! Find Suzanne on her website here, on Instagram here and on YouTube here. Suzanne also has a family friendly YouTube channel here.