She feels many dieters are too restrictive about their consumption, which causes them to binge.
The TV personality says we should not abandon staple foods and meat and butter “are not bad for you”.
The 58-year-old sees moral arguments for being vegan but that “a lot of vegan food seems processed” and warned it can make you “deficient in iron and vitamin B12”.
Despite an endorsement deal with Sainsbury’s, Nigella said: “We are unsure of what’s behind the food in the supermarkets and I do feel we’re not being told about what chemicals are put in the food, in the earth.”
She added: “We live in an age of fads. A lot of so-called healthy eating is a cover up for an eating disorder.
“And people persecute themselves with what they do and don’t eat.
“Friends who deny themselves certain food stuffs tend to binge on it. They say ‘I don’t know how you live with so much chocolate in your house,’ and I say ‘because I don’t stop myself eating it’.
“I know it’s there and, just like when I travel, I came away with eight bars, because I knew I was going to be away for a while and that if I were one of those people who didn’t allow themselves to eat chocolate, they would all have been eaten by now.
“As it is I’ve only eaten two and a half bars.”
Nigella, in Canada promoting her book At My Table, continued: “People are extreme.
I put cream in a recipe and people say ‘that’s so much cream’.
“You think ‘there’s a third of a cup. There are six eating. Get a grip’.
“Also it doesn’t make sense to keep removing whole food groups from your diet. You should eat a bit of everything.
“What is regarded as healthy changes all the time.
“I recently read Big Fat Surprise, by Nina Teicholz, and it says eating meat and butter are actually not bad for you.
“It does not make sense that the food humans have been eating for so long is worse for you than food created in a factory.”
