"My little boy, he had leftover Thai green curry for breakfast yesterday," says Joe Wicks, 40, deadly serious. "It had baby corn, mangetout, chicken, not even any rice, it was just the actual curry, and he loved it. And it's like, why do I need to give my child sugary cereals when that's just been sold to us as an option by food companies?"
The dad of four – to Indie, seven, Marley, six, Leni, three, and Dusty, one – points out that when he went to Indonesia, rice, curry and daal were common breakfast fare. "This is really what your body wants, not the low-fat yoghurt, granola and juice," he says.
Hence why in his new cookbook, Protein In 15 – chock-full of high-protein meals for the whole family (not just weight lifters) – he says any of the recipes are great eaten first thing. "It's a bit weird, but it tastes just as good," he buzzes. "It's real food. It's better than something you grab on the go, or a chocolate croissant and a coffee."
This is just one example of Epsom-born Wicks, best known to the world and his 4.7m Instagram followers and 2.89m YouTube subscribers as The Body Coach, getting rather adept at making a statement and taking a stand. Maybe it's because he's 40 now. ("I don't have this issue with growing old," he says. "I'm at peace with it, not trying to regenerate my youth and try to be younger. I actually feel like when you get old, you get a bit wiser, and life gets better.")
Protein In 15 comes off the back of his recent Channel 4 documentary, the horrifying Joe Wicks: Licensed To Kill. Made with Dr Chris van Tulleken, credited with raising awareness of the dangers of ultra-processed foods (UPFs), it saw the duo attempt to legally create the most dangerous 'health' bar possible. It's a stunt that will turn many a gym bunny's stomach the next time they reach for a protein bar.
"I used to drink whey protein, but my tummy didn't feel great afterwards, so I stopped," says Wicks. "It wasn't until the documentary, when we went to manufacture one of these bars, and I was like, 'Where's all the oats and nuts and seeds?' [and was told] 'Oh, no, it doesn't have that.' It's just powders and glycerin and fats and all these weird things. None of it's real."
It's us being duped into buying so-called 'health bars' when they're just a collection of chemicals, that is really weird, he explains, not having dinner leftovers for breakfast. He's also coming for your snacks. "We've been conditioned to eat a certain way," he says. "Good marketing makes you buy more snacks." But if you get back to "proper healthy, hearty meals, you won't want to eat in between meals, you won't need to".
When we speak, there's a slight weariness to Wicks, and in the book, there's anger that so many of us have been backed into a corner by food companies pushing UPFs.
"The whole food system stresses me out. It's not just health foods claiming to be healthy. It's the whole environment, isn't it? It's the marketing. It's the fact it's everywhere all the time," he says passionately. "We live in a world where it's normal to eat hyper-processed foods."
However, as you'd expect from the man who got a lot of us through Covid lockdowns with his P.E. with Joe videos, Wicks refuses to despair. "I try to focus on the solution," he says. "If I can get a family cooking one meal from my book or Instagram recipes tonight, that's a positive step."
"The documentary was all about pushing the Government to put health warnings on those foods, but that might take years and years and years," he continues. "Until that point, let's really do the one thing that makes a difference, which is cooking ourselves," because cooking from scratch, "you are, by default, replacing UPFs in your diet."
With a busy lifestyle and four kids with his wife, former model Rosie Jones, Wicks knows it can be tough. "I like it when I have a nice bit of music playing, and there's no one in the kitchen. It's just me. But that happens, like, once a week when the kids are out," he says wryly.
"Most of the time, I'm cooking around the kids, they're sitting on the side, they're chopping up the onions. They're helping me because I do also see it as an educational thing. I want them to see how food's made and to be a part of it, and be curious about trying new things."
Fundamentally, he loves the physical and mental impact of eating home-cooked food. "You can find time to eat healthy, and you can change the way you feel. In the space of a few days, a little bit of food shopping, planning and cooking, you really can change the energy in your house and in your mood, because everything links back to the food we're eating," he says. "Don't convince yourself you haven't got time and that you can't, because you can."
The recipes in Protein In 15 follow much the same pattern as Wicks' Lean In 15 cookbooks – speed and simplicity are paramount – and don't be put off thinking he's going to tell you to eat steak every night. He's well aware that a meat-heavy diet is exorbitant.
"It'd be lovely to have chicken breast and beef mince and salmon in your meals, but that might be a rare occurrence for some families," says Wicks, which is why he has lots of cheaper, plant-based recipes that feature "lentils, butter beans, chickpeas, switching from potato mash to a butter bean mash, adding quinoa and nuts and seeds".
A "lentil bolognese isn't going to taste the same, but it still tastes amazing," he adds, and a bit of planning can help your bank account too. "When you get organised, I don't think the meals cost as much as you might think," says Wicks. "[Especially] once you've got the base, core essentials, and you remove all those daily purchases of meal deals, takeaways, processed snacks – they all add up. Even cheap food isn't that cheap anymore."
These might even just fall by the wayside. "It's almost like you've got to clean your diet up a little bit, start cooking more, and then those temptations and cravings, they start to go. That's quite a nice feeling, really," he says.
That's not to say he doesn't cave occasionally. "Sometimes I'm stressed, and all I want is a massive bar of Tony's Chocolonely, and I'll go and get it, and that's it. But it's not in my house every day," Wicks explains.
"I remind myself, actually, if I want to feel better, go in the kitchen and quickly cook some food or do a workout. It changes how you feel way more than a chocolate bar would."
Protein In 15 by Joe Wicks is published in hardback by LEAP. Photography Mike English Photography. Available December 4.
