Yet by 2024 the strains of running the business had become too much. In July that year the couple sold DE for an undisclosed sum (but rumoured to be in the \u00a370 million ballpark) to the Hero Group, the Swiss brand best known for its baby food Organix pouches. Yet when I last met Mills, 34, two years ago she had sworn this would never happen. \u201cWhat would we do? What would we talk about? It\u2019s just our world,\u201d she asked of her and Matthew without the brand.<\/p>\n
So why did they change their minds? Blame Covid, war and inflation, all of which have brought plenty of other entrepreneurs to their knees. \u201cIt was a wildly unstable environment, which took the pressure of owning a business, particularly one without investors, to another level,\u201d Mills says now, sitting in the DE offices in central London. <\/p>\n
\u2022 Quick Wins: four exclusive recipes from Ella Mills\u2019s latest collection<\/a><\/p>\n Ella cooking with her family<\/p>\n CLARE WINFIELD<\/p>\n \u201cWe had a loan against our house and when you have that you just don\u2019t sleep because you\u2019re seeing prices go up and up and then you have no margin left. There was this consistent sense of \u2018Is this boom or bust? The business is growing but we have all these problems.\u2019 It\u2019s a really anti-business climate today and you can probably only handle it for so long.\u201d<\/p>\n Certainly when I\u2019ve previously met Mills she\u2019s always been impressively glowy, a walking testament to the power of chickpeas and kale. Yet she also had a wild-eyed aura that spoke of lack of sleep and coursing adrenaline. Today she seems infinitely more relaxed. She laughs. \u201cI\u2019m very aware of that irony. I started a brand about health and wellness. Obviously nutrition is one pillar of health, but stress management is very much another and my cortisol levels were definitely not brilliant.\u201d<\/p>\n Yet now with the business sold, Mills \u2014 always on millennial trend \u2014 is finally able to lead the \u201csoft\u201d life, idealised by many of her followers who\u2019ve grown up with her, rejecting the hustle culture in favour of self-care. Matthew has stayed on as DE\u2019s CEO, focusing on international expansion, but she has gone down to part-time hours as the \u201cface and creative director\u201d of the brand.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a very different life, having worked 24\/7 my whole adult life,\u201d she says. \u201cAt first I did have a bit of an existential crisis.\u201d Since the sale, the family have \u2014 as documented to her 2.4 million Instagram followers \u2014 been on some fabulous holidays, to Thailand and Disneyland Paris among other destinations. <\/p>\n \u201cLast time I spoke to you we might have taken two days out of the office, but I wouldn\u2019t have been present really, I would always have been looking at emails. You\u2019d be in line for the teacups at Disneyland and suddenly you\u2019d be like, \u2018Oh my God, this thing has happened!\u2019 and suddenly you\u2019d be talking about how you were going to resolve this challenge. It\u2019s really nice now to feel there\u2019s a line between urgent and important \u2014 it\u2019s a much healthier way of living.\u201d<\/p>\n They\u2019ve also made the inevitable Sloane lifestyle step from their Kensington flat to an Oxfordshire manor house, which \u2014 again judging by Instagram \u2014 has acres of green space, an Aga that Mills is still struggling to master, a veg patch, and flowerbeds where she\u2019s planted daffodil bulbs. \u201cUntil they come up, I don\u2019t know if I\u2019m green-fingered \u2014 I\u2019m desperate to be.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s all very yummy mummy, yet Mills isn\u2019t idling her days away in the Estelle Manor spa. Rather, she\u2019s using her energies once invested in worrying about the rising cacao prices and national insurance contributions to concentrate on the more creative side of the business. She has a podcast, The Wellness Scoop<\/a>, has launched a kitchenware range with John Lewis and has now produced her eighth cookbook, Quick Wins: Healthy Cooking for Busy Lives, whose goal is to help us eat 30 different plants every week. <\/p>\n \u2022 Read more expert advice on healthy living, fitness and wellbeing<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cIt sounds really daunting,\u201d she says, seeing my anguished face. \u201cBut it\u2019s not as hard as it sounds. Remember nuts and seeds count \u2014 you can buy mixed bags of them in any supermarket that you can sprinkle on any salad or soup \u2014 that gets you to about nine plants. Mixing up onions with red onions and shallots \u2014 that\u2019s three plants. You can use them all if you\u2019re making a curry.\u201d And coffee counts, I say hopefully. \u201cCoffee counts, and so does dark chocolate \u2014 but it\u2019s got to be over 70 per cent.\u201d<\/p>\n As nutritional advice goes, this is incontrovertible. Yet not so long ago Mills was shouted down every time she made such statements, told that she and the other \u201cclean eaters\u201d (not an expression they ever used) of those far-off 2010s \u2014 think Amelia Freer and the Hemsley sisters \u2014\u2013 were responsible for everything from anorexia to orthorexia (a preoccupation with eating only \u201chealthy\u201d food) and that encouraging people to eat goji berries and butter beans was \u201celitist\u2019\u2019.<\/p>\n Initially, Mills \u2014 formerly a Haribo-munching St Andrews student who had overcome the rare autoimmune disease POTs (postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome) by making radical changes to her diet \u2014 found the vitriol overwhelming.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen I started, telling people that what you put in your mouth might affect your body was like telling them the world was flat,\u201d she says. \u201cI wish I had been a bit older and a bit wiser when it happened, because I probably would have taken a stronger position. But I was very young and pretty nervous on the back of it and unprepared, so it made me retreat. <\/p>\n \u201cI had low self-esteem anyway, so when people start telling you you\u2019re a terrible person, you believe it\u201d<\/p>\n SOPHIA SPRING<\/p>\n \u201cIn your early twenties, your sense of self is quite fragile. I had low self-esteem anyway, so when people start telling you you\u2019re a terrible person, you believe it. But now I\u2019m like \u2014 you know what, I\u2019ve got my family, my dogs, the foundations of my life. I just don\u2019t really care what people say about me. It\u2019s words on a screen.<\/p>\n \u201cI feel really fortunate to have spent almost 15 years working in this industry and to have an element of a voice and a community. I feel a responsibility to use that, because the way we approach food is terrible. We have to inspire people to change. If a person really doesn\u2019t want to hear what I have to say, then fine, but if it reaches some people who then suddenly start cooking a little bit more with plants or think, \u2018Oh my gosh. I never thought to use a cucumber in this way,\u2019 then great.\u201d<\/p>\n Age isn\u2019t the only thing that\u2019s empowered Mills. In the 2010s her insistence on avoiding everything from sugar to gluten to dairy (she\u2019s since become decidedly less prescriptive) sounded like faddy narcissism. Yet now she comes across as a Cassandra \u2014 warning us about the dangers of ultra-processed foods a good decade ahead of her time. <\/p>\n \u2022 Read more restaurant reviews and recipes from our food experts<\/a><\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/\/26d9b787-6d79-48b9-8397-9b98c21a1a77.jpg\")
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