Deliciously Stella: The Instagram account that says it's ok to eat unclean

It's impossible to flick through Instagram these days without feeling guilty for skipping the gym, or having that extra biscuit.

The clean eating gang - including likes of the Hemsley sisters, Deliciously Ella and Madeline Shaw - and their #eatclean hashtags are everywhere encouraging us to have less gluten and more green juice.

However Bella Younger, better known as alter ego Deliciously Stella, is providing light relief from this trend. Instead of endless kale, chia seeds and bikram yoga, comedian Younger offers insight into her "shit, unhealthy life", whipping up smoothies with M&Ms and gin, stretching her six-pack (of beer) and enjoying fried egg sweets on top of avocado toast.

While the account makes light of clean eating it has a serious message behind it. "I think the issue with social media is that people are presented as our peers who wouldn't normally be." Younger told indy100. "Instead of looking in a magazine and seeing a model who has been airbrushed and whose job it is to work out, we've got some girl who lives down the road who drinks green juice and has amazing abs and looks fantastic.

I think that is an unrealistic precedent for normal women. It’s a weird beauty standard that we set ourselves.

Younger launched her Instagram account in May last year, and has since amassed 130,000 followers, taken her live show to Edinburgh and - as of last week - launched a book. So, where did it all begin?

I was working in food television and I was with my boss at the time and she was like ‘all these girls are so perfect, they're on a beach all the time, they're all eating avocados’.

She was like ‘you're the most disgusting person I've ever met - why don't you do a retaliation and document your rubbish life... you eat Peperamis all the time and you are always hungover’.

Ever since, Younger has taken hilarious photos of herself. “It just massively took off,” she said.

Many chefs and members of the clean eating group – including Jamie Oliver and Millie Mackintosh - are fans of Deliciously Stella. The comedian regularly receives emails from “clean-eaters” who say they love her account. “I think because the account is so silly it’s not seen as a threat or as malicious or anything like that,” she said. “It's really nice, because there was obviously the initial fear that I was being unkind.”

However Deliciously Ella, the “clean eater” Younger’s alter ego parodies, hasn’t been in touch. “She's never acknowledged me,” Younger told indy100. “I think she's just a bit busy, she's like ‘well I've got my own brand of energy balls so I don't need to talk to you’."

I think she's just busy nailing her life and having a nice time.

Younger has had her fair share of negative feedback though and has been accused of promoting an unhealthy lifestyle.

“[Stella] is very much a character - people are often surprised and ask me why I'm not drinking my Lucozade and why I’m not really overweight,” she said. “I made up this character who thinks strawberry laces are a gluten free pasta alternative, I'm not a weirdo in real life!"

“If you can't make an informed decision and see this as a parody account then I think you need to assess yourself and your decisions.”

Clean eaters are renowned for making their food look as artistic and “instagrammable” as possible. When indy100 asked Younger what the most ridiculous thing she’d seen was, she said: “those bowls where they put everything in a straight line."

I'm really against drinking your food anyway so the idea of eating a smoothie out of a bowl is horrendous to me and then everything is so perfectly arranged. 

I can't imagine how much time that takes - and does it actually taste nice when you've made it look like that or is it just warm and congealed and horrid.

Instead, Younger recommends “coconut water from Malibu”, AKA Malibu rum, as a hangover cure and a crisp sandwich as the ideal snack.

Younger now plans to develop sitcoms and scripts for television. In the mean time she can be found on Instagram or promoting her book – which involves looking for it in her local book shop.

“I’ve been in loads of shops and keep going ‘hello, I’m the author. I hope you’ve got it’ and they haven’t”.

“I’m literally on the hunt, I spend all my days popping into Waterstones.”

Bella Younger’s Deliciously Stella can be found online, if you too are struggling to find it in your local shop.

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