PHIL Vickery, former head chef at Taunton's Castle Hotel, has defended himself after he was attacked on social media following an article about his book Diabetes Meal Planner.

The celebrity chef, who part owns the Castle, was criticised after the article he wrote in the Mail on Sunday's YOU magazine.

Julie Spalding, who describes herself as a "freelancer, West Country girl" who "dislikes diabetes", took to Twitter to express her dismay at the magazine's intro.

She was unhappy at the sentence written by a reporter at the newspaper: "It’s a grim statistic: official figures reveal that a third of those who’ve died from coronavirus this year also had diabetes."

She retorted: "1. People with #diabetes anxious enough about #covid19 without celeb chefs making Money bag from it.

"2. Lazy journalism from @YOUMagSocial not explaining types of diabetes.

"3. I missed the news that @philvickerytv now qualified as a #Nutritionist or #Dietitian."

Mr Vickery, whose book contains recipes to help combat diabetes, says in the YOU article: "By spotting symptoms early, taking prescribed medications and making healthy changes to diet and lifestyle, you can reduce your chances of developing diabetes complications.

"The list of ingredients that you can eat if you have diabetes is very varied, but when you are building balanced, nutritional recipes, you need to be extremely careful – and it takes a huge amount of time and effort to get things right."

Mr Vickery responded on Twitter to Ms Spalding's criticism by saying: "I’d respectfully ask you to read the first 10 pages of each book I have written.

"Every word, recipe and intro have been checked by DUK (Diabetes UK), and a food scientist. This book took 16 months to research and write. I neither write headlines or leaders."