A year after the doctor and broadcaster’s death on a Greek island, his wife is continuing his work to improve the nation’s health
“There is this irony that I’m encouraging people to eat together, and I’m eating alone,” Dr Clare Bailey Mosley explains stoically.
I say stoic because it is now 15 months since she shared a table with her husband of 37 years, the journalist, broadcaster and healthy eating advocate Dr Michael Mosley. In this time, Clare has written, Eating Together, a hybrid recipe and parenting book that advocates for the kind of family meals that are no longer on the table in her own home.
This book is an idea she talked about with Michael, and completed while weathering the grief of his tragic death at 67.
In June 2024, Michael went missing after losing his way during a holiday stroll back to their villa on the Greek island of Symi. Four days and nights of desperate searching followed his disappearance, with Clare joined by the couple’s four adult children, Alex, Jack, Dan and Kate.
When they eventually found Michael, it was determined he had most likely slipped a few hours into his walk and fallen out of view. The weather had been incredibly hot, even for Greece, and the probable cause of death was heatstroke.
“I remember it quite clearly,” Clare tells me of that awful week. “In the first few days, when we didn’t know what had happened with Michael, everyone was eating feta and salad and other meals. I couldn’t eat. Whatever food I was given, I had to slather it with mayonnaise. That was the only way I could eat.”
Once she was back in the family home in Buckinghamshire, she remembers the children helped to keep her fed, often turning up unannounced to stay for a few days. “They were absolutely incredible.”
On the days where she found herself dining alone, she decided from the outset that she wouldn’t drown her sorrows. “I made a pact with myself that I wouldn’t drink on my own, and I’ve done quite well on that one,” she says. “I felt it would be very easy, when you’re cooking, to think, ‘Oh I’ll just have another glass of wine, and then I’ll have another one. It’s not been an issue, but you could get into quite a regular habit. People deal with these things in different ways.”
Another pact she made was to nourish her body with food. “I think eating well softened the pain, to some extent. I do think that the evidence is very clear that eating a healthy Mediterraneanstyle diet with plenty of pulses and fibre will keep you buoyed up.”
She also took on the huge task of clearing out the family home to put it on the market, a decision she’s relieved she didn’t go through with in the end. “It’s been helpful to do it. I got rid of junk that should have gone years ago. It wasn’t until I said that I wasn’t doing it that everybody expressed a certain amount of relief,” she says, smiling.
Other projects include setting up the Michael Mosley Fellowship and Memorial Research Fund to finance urgent research into metabolic health. A year on, Clare is making more effort to invite people over for dinner again. “I’m trying to get more organised to do Friday evening suppers. Last minute and very informal. If you’re here, come and join me.”
Quick and easy processed foods were Michael’s meals of choice before he was diagnosed with diabetes in 2012, and Clare recalls cooking lots of freezer favourites to keep her large family happy.
“With four children, I got pretty much a trolley and a half [on every supermarket visit]. We got through a lot of chicken nuggets and fish fingers. Michael liked that type of food until he got diabetes and changed the way he ate. He would [hide] the spinach behind his spoon, it was like having five children. It was when the children were teenagers and leaving home that we changed how we ate and it was very much promoted by Michael putting his diabetes into remission.”
Michael’s diagnosis went on to shape his life and his work, as well as Clare’s, and his commitment to promoting lifestyle changes that can improve the nation’s health is his legacy. He reversed his own diabetes through the way he ate - which Clare says should be the expectation - and set about teaching others how to do the same with his 8-Week Blood Sugar Diet and Fast 800 programme.
Clare, 63, worked alongside him, writing the recipes and co-authoring nine books. Eating Together: A recipe for healthier, happier families brings together her expertise as a GP and in nutrition and parenting. It was written with Professor Stephen Scott, a specialist in child health.
While it includes over 70 recipes, all free of ultra-processed food, from Beetroot Falafel and Parmesancrusted Fish Nuggets to Carrot Mug Cake and Chocolate Popcorn, the central message is that the prep, cooking and eating together is as important as the food itself.
“We don’t do it as we used to,” she says. “My generation wouldn’t have thought of not eating together. Now only one in three Britons eats together on a regular basis. It really does have an impact as without it, children don’t have a secure time when they know they can chat and share issues.”
Clare grew up helping her mother in the kitchen, chopping veg and setting the table, but thinks we’re too keen to usher children elsewhere these days, meaning they miss out on learning important skills and recognising common foods. Finding time to eat together every night might be a stretch, but the benefits promised are alluring. The book quotes a Harvard professor who has found that regular family dinners are associated with lower rates of depression, anxiety, substance abuse, eating disorders, tobacco use and teenage pregnancy, along with better resilience and self-esteem.
What about screens at the table? “Part of eating together is that it’s without phones,” Clare says. “It’s a time that you actually look at each other, and you connect. That, in our busy lives, is so incredibly important.”
How about parents who aren’t eating because they are injecting appetite-suppressing drugs? “It’s not ideal for children to be seeing that sort of restriction, I guess, but for some people it’s about being pragmatic. For some people it will be a major game changer.”
The recipes in are genuinely simple, from Tuna Sweetcorn Tarts to Easy Cheats Pizza (made with a tortilla wrap) to Homemade Beans on Toast and a Salmon Poke Bowl. They’re also inexpensive.
“You can use frozen food or tinned food, the quality is just as good. I encourage people to keep healthy food in stock, so that when you dash in, you can grab something healthy relatively quickly.”
I ask if she ever struggled with the mundane requirements of feeding four children.
“This is going back to before Michael had diabetes, but I really enjoy more adventurous food and the rest of them really didn’t.
“So I found the cooking quite boring. Looking back, I probably should have made a bit more effort to push the boundaries.
“I regret that in a way, but now they love food, they really enjoy interesting food, and they cook well.”
Clare is lucky to have never struggled with cravings, but she lived with Michael’s famous sweet toot and says that he was genuinely addicted.
“There’s no willpower involved. There is such a thing as food addiction that’s not really being recognised and a lot of it is fed by the ultra-processed food that we’re eating. It’s designed to be addictive.”
In June this year, Clare made a difficult but healing return to Greece with her family. “There are bound to be low points,” she says.
“But we wanted to go back to a lovely monastery at the far end of the island. We all went, and partners, and that was really lovely, very touching. It was lovely to be able to do that.”
Since then, she has welcomed a new recipe tester into her kitchen, a cavapoo puppy called Biscuit. Otherwise, she says, she doesn’t want to make any big life decisions.