GOOD MOOD FOOD

WHEN you turn on ITV's This Morning to watch Clodagh McKenna, she’s fresh off doing a meditation behind the scenes - and probably a dance too.

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All the crew are so used to it after six years of the Irish chef appearing on the popular daytime show that, “they all know - they just walk past”.

The 50-year-old explains: “I do a meditation when I wake up in the morning, then I do another longer meditation about half an hour before I go live [and] I do my dance for five minutes in my headset all around the back of the studio. The dance is to really be myself [on live TV] and be calm inside.”

But how she eats is the main driver behind the energy and smiles we see on TV. “It’s a running joke, how many times I get asked, ‘How do you look so positive and happy?’”

The answer is her diet, which “helps me with energy, it helps me with my mental health and it keeps me happy”.

She says there isn’t enough attention paid to the relationship between food and mood, she says, which is why it’s the centre of her ninth cookbook, Clodagh’s Happy Cooking (“a really personal book where I share my relationship with food,” she notes).