Enjoy heart-healthy food

After his bypass, two-Michelin-starred chef Sat Bains tells Hannah Twiggs about his new cookbook and how simple, flavour-packed meals can help us live longer and better

It was an ordinary day, or so Sat Bains thought. One of Britain's most celebrated chefs, a man who had spent decades honing his craft at the two-Michelin-starred Restaurant Sat Bains in Nottingham, was exercising in his garden as he so often did. Fitness had always been part of his routine - a habit as ingrained as the precision in his kitchen. But as he pushed through his workout, something felt off.

“I noticed a deep pain in my chest. I assumed it was muscular, so I just carried on,” Bains recalls. Soon, the dull ache spread to his left eye socket and jawline, and suddenly the signs were unmistakable. At just 49 years old, Bains was having a heart attack.

The attack was shockingly understated. “I was doing heavy weights and said to Nick [Warren, his trainer], ‘Bloody hell, it’s a hard one today!’” He pushed through the session, showered, ate and went to the park with his wife Amanda. “At the park I lacked energy and felt tired, not like me at all,” he says. When he finally called 999 and was rushed to hospital, Bains was told the blood clot that caused the heart attack “should have killed me that morning”.

What followed was life-changing: emergency surgery, a triple heart bypass – and months of physical and mental recovery. For someone who had always prided himself on his resilience, the hardest part was listening to his body. “My mind was saying, ‘Oh come on, get up,’ but my body just failed me. I was so exhausted from the trauma of it all. It took me five or six months to get back to a strong place. I’ve always had a strong mindset and I think it’s this that got me through it.”