AFTER suffering three heart attacks in her mid-thirties, healthy eating is now a vital way of life for Sally Bee.

She’s now a regular face as a healthy eating expert on This Morning, The Alan Titchmarsh Show and Daybreak, and her fourth cookbook, The Secret Ingredient Family Cookbook, has just been published.

Michelle Obama, a great proponent of eating for health, is among her fans.

The White House ordered copies of Bee’s first three cookbooks and she’ll be sending the First Lady a copy of her latest one.

“It was all about taking control of my own destiny,” she recalls.

“The way I moved and the food I ate had a massive impact on my health.

“If I thought, ‘Oh blow it, I’ll have a cheese sandwich for lunch’, I’d sleep for 12 hours afterwards. But if I had something light and nutritious, I could walk down the drive and back.

“At one point, I had a Chinese takeaway and had to go to hospital because my heart rhythm went completely haywire.

“Very quickly I had to cut out all additives.”

She continues: “One of the doctors in the hospital told me, if you can survive 10 years, you can survive forever.

“I think I’m Peter Pan.”

Food and exercise have been her saviour, she reflects, having just done a glamorous photoshoot in homage to the film American Beauty – laying on a bed of tomatoes, one of her superfoods, instead of rose petals.

She’s currently in talks with ITV about her own series.

“I’m not Nigella yet, but it’s my time,” she says.

“The next 10 years are going to be my best ever.”

The Secret Ingredient Family Cookbook by Sally Bee, HarperCollins, £14.99.