People sometimes say that it's cheaper to give their kids a couple of pounds to get themselves a burger or pizza. I don't mind people doing that, but not every night. It's like everything in life, you've got to get the balance right.

If you get vegetables in season, the difference is remarkable compared to vegetables that might have been imported. You can't beat fresh ingredients and seasonal fresh ingredients. There's nothing quite like the taste of a beautiful summer strawberry.

Your skin and hair feel good, you sleep better and you start feeling so much better about yourself when you start eating properly.

When I was working on the Olympic cookbook it was amazing to discover how different athletes need different types of diets. Everybody thinks that an athlete has to eat lots of carbohydrates, however some athletes don't need that. Some sports such as sprinting are explosive so you need a diet that will give you the energy for that moment.

I know that some people feel that cooking is time consuming, but cooking is an activity that you can do for yourself and you'll be in good condition to do all the other things that you want to do in your life for a very long time.

One of the key things is to encourage people to have a go in the kitchen and not to be embarrassed by it. Try and spend a couple of nights a week cooking something up. It doesn't have to be complicated, it can be something really simple.

Like anybody else, athletes like to pig out on a bit of junk food every now and then, but they also know that they couldn't do that all the time if they wanted to keep their body in peak condition to compete at the highest level.