Tim Spector’s Gut-Healthy Recipes Come to GRUBBY Meal Kits

Want to eat more plants and support your gut health without having to plan every meal from scratch? Professor Tim Spector has teamed up with plant-based recipe box company GRUBBY to bring five recipes from his new cookbook, Good Mood Food, directly to UK kitchens.

The limited-edition collaboration combines Spector’s focus on the gut microbiome and plant diversity with the convenience of a home-delivered recipe box, giving people a simple way to experiment with more varied, plant-rich meals.

Available to GRUBBY subscribers for a limited time, the five dishes have been selected from Good Mood Food: 100+ Gut-Friendly Recipes to Feel Better Every Day, Professor Tim Spector’s latest cookbook, created with ZOE.

The recipes focus on a principle that has become central to Spector’s work: eating a wide diversity of plant foods to support the community of microbes living within our gut.

Why is plant diversity important for gut health?

Our gut microbiome is home to trillions of microorganisms, and research continues to explore the relationship between these microbes and different aspects of health.

Rather than concentrating solely on calories or individual nutrients, Spector has become a prominent advocate for increasing the diversity of plants in our diets. Plant foods provide different types of fibre and other compounds that interact with our gut microbes.

Importantly, “plants” in this context extend beyond fruit and vegetables. Wholegrains, beans, lentils, nuts, seeds, herbs, spices and fermented foods can all contribute to dietary diversity.

The GRUBBY collaboration aims to make that approach easier to incorporate into everyday cooking by providing pre-portioned whole-food ingredients alongside step-by-step recipe cards.

Professor Tim Spector said:

“Good Mood Food is all about showing how eating for your gut can transform how you feel every day. GRUBBY is a great way to get cooking with fresh, diverse ingredients, and I’m excited for people to have this limited-time opportunity to try these recipes from the book with everything delivered to their door.

“By nourishing gut microbes with diverse, plant-rich foods, home cooks can experience rapid improvements in daily mood, mental focus, and energy levels, and these recipes can do exactly that.”

Five Tim Spector recipes available through GRUBBY

The limited-edition Good Mood Food collection features five recipes adapted for convenient scratch cooking at home.

Miso Tofu Kimchi Tray Bake combines tofu, miso and kimchi in an umami-rich tray bake incorporating fermented and plant-based ingredients.

Mushroom and Hispi Cabbage Pappardelle uses shredded hispi cabbage alongside mushrooms to create a vegetable-rich interpretation of creamy pappardelle while increasing the variety of plants in the meal.

Mushroom and Lentil Bolognese gives the familiar family dish a plant-based makeover using lentils, mushrooms, black olives and miso to create depth and richness.

Zingy Chick’n Casserole is a colourful one-pot dish combining plant-based ingredients with fennel, lemon and other vegetables.

Fragrant Thai Green Curry brings together vegetables, herbs and aromatic ingredients in a plant-rich take on the classic curry.

Each recipe kit contains pre-portioned ingredients and an easy-to-follow recipe card, with information highlighting the ingredients and their potential contribution to a varied, plant-rich diet.

Can food really influence our mood?

Interest in the relationship between the gut and brain has grown significantly in recent years. Researchers are continuing to investigate the so-called gut-brain axis — the complex, two-way communication network connecting the gastrointestinal system and the brain.

Diet is only one part of an individual's physical and mental wellbeing, and food should not be viewed as a treatment for mental health conditions. However, the emerging science around the microbiome is helping researchers understand more about the ways dietary patterns, gut microbes and overall health may be interconnected.

It is this developing area of nutritional science that sits at the heart of Spector’s latest cookbook.

Published by Vintage on 22 October 2026, Good Mood Food contains more than 100 gut-friendly, predominantly plant-rich recipes designed to make eating a greater diversity of whole foods achievable for individuals and families.

Making gut-friendly cooking more convenient

For many people, knowing what constitutes a healthy diet isn't necessarily the problem. Finding the time to plan meals, shop for multiple ingredients and cook something interesting at the end of a busy day can be the bigger hurdle.

GRUBBY founder Martin Holden-White believes recipe boxes can help bridge that gap.

“Following our work alongside Dr Federica Amati and ZOE, we are thrilled to step it up as the exclusive meal kit partner for Tim Spector’s amazing new book, Good Mood Food.

“We’re all about making delicious meals super convenient and simple to cook, and bringing these gut friendly, plant-rich recipes to life has been a real pleasure. Tim’s new book proves just how transformative plant diversity is for physical and mental health, and we’re proud to be the only place where people can cook these delicious dishes from scratch with everything delivered straight to their door.”

The partnership follows GRUBBY's previous collaboration with ZOE head nutritionist Dr Federica Amati on a collection of ZOE-approved recipes.

Founded in 2020, GRUBBY specialises entirely in plant-based recipe boxes and says it has now delivered more than three million meals to over 150,000 customers.

Sustainability is also part of the company's proposition. GRUBBY is a certified B Corp and allows customers to compare the carbon footprint of individual meals with their meat-based equivalents through a personalised dashboard.

How to try the Good Mood Food recipes

The five Good Mood Food recipes are available for a limited period through GRUBBY's plant-based meal kit subscription.

To mark the collaboration, GRUBBY is also giving away 500 copies of Professor Tim Spector's Good Mood Food cookbook to customers during the campaign.

For anyone interested in eating a wider variety of plants, experimenting with fermented ingredients or simply introducing some new recipes into their weekly routine, the collaboration offers an accessible way to put some of the principles of microbiome-friendly eating into practice.

Find out more and explore the available recipes at GRUBBY.