Nadine Coyle reveals she 'didn't know what an avocado was' when she was growing up
"I come from a small town where it’s very much meat and vegetables"
Nadine Coyle
Nadine Coyle has revealed that she didn’t know what an avocado was when she was growing up in Derry.
The 36-year-old singer was discussing how her diet as a child differed drastically from her daughter Anaíya Bell’s diet.
“A lot of foods growing up were not available. For example, I didn’t know what an avocado was, I don’t think you could find them in Derry or Donegal when I was growing up”
“I sound like I’m about 90!”
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“I come from a small town where it’s very much meat and vegetables – everything’s farm-fresh, but there’s not a lot of variety in foods.”
Nadine said that while her daughter is “adventurous” when it comes to food she doesn’t enjoy many of the staples that Coyle had as part of her childhood.
“If we couldn’t eat ham, eggs and cheese [growing up], we may have starved at lunchtime.”
The former Girls Aloud singer said she loves to cook with her daughter and tries to get her into the kitchen with her as much as possible in a bid to make sure the seven-year-old fosters a positive relationship with food.
“It’s so sad when food does become the enemy. I’ve been through that, where you’re thinking, ‘I can’t get the jeans on’, or ‘I’m moving up a size’ – or, in some cases, I’m moving down a size for whatever reason – maybe stress,” she said.
“Having a good relationship with food is so important, because we have to eat, there’s no way of getting around it,” she admitted.
“I have never made an issue out of food if Anaíya wants to have something, I don’t make it an issue.”
“If she wants something sweet, she loves her sweets, she would eat a whole packet of biscuits if she was left to her own devices.”
“I’m like ‘yes, you can have another one, get another one, then OK, that’s enough because you don’t want to make yourself sick, and I don’t want you to feel bad for wanting something unhealthy’.”
The Derry girl admitted that she loves to cook and misses it while she is on holidays.
“If I go on holidays and I’m gone for too long, I start to feel really weird. I realised seven or eight years ago it’s because I can’t cook.”
