After working as a Chef for 25 years, writer and food-industry insider, Angry Chef (not his real name, in case you haven’t guessed) noticed somewhat of a shift in the foodie rhetoric. What was initially a ‘niche-pursuit’ of a career in the restaurant industry with only a few passionate enough about grub to work 17 hour, sweaty shifts, had morphed into a much wider world, that everyone and their Instagram account wanted to be a part of.
And then came one particular health food blogger, who seemed to captivate an entire generation with unscientific dietary advice.
With the influx in bloggers setting up camp within Angry Chef’s beloved world and tarnishing it with an offering of faddy diets and nutritional instruction, the culinary king began to get a little miffed. Okay, a lot miffed. Although it wasn’t the young, twenty-somethings stepping on his toes that got Mr Chef’s back up. Rather, the lack of scientific fact that seemed to underpin much of the information and diets that these unqualified bloggers were advocating.
Angry Chef argues that this so-called ‘pseudo-science’ is delivering lies about food to a nation of worried consumers. In a bid to right the wrongs of the ever-increasing ‘health’ blogs, this science-lover decided to start his own website and tell his readers a few home truths about the food information they – we all – consume. As he himself admits: “I love food more than anything, but science is my other love.”
Oh and not forgetting his special skill; “I also have a pretty good bullshit detector.”
NOT PLANT BASED gave him a grilling.
WHAT IRRITATES YOU ABOUT FOOD INFORMATION IN THE MEDIA?
“Angry Chef is all about exposing lies in the world of food, and perhaps the most irritating thing for me is the lack of accountability when claims are made. We all have a certain level of trust and tend to believe that if something is published in the mainstream media or broadcast on television that the facts have been checked, but it is fairly obvious that this is not always the case. Plenty of newspapers report on things like the alkaline diet, or celebrity detox regimes, and yet these are based on the most ridiculous pseudo-science.
“If you want to talk about health claims on a retail product, there are strict laws governing what you can and can’t say, but when it comes to making claims in the media it is like the Wild West. Unqualified health bloggers position themselves as experts and make wild, unproven claims for various recipes, ingredients or diets. All of them are trying to sell something and so have a vested interest in selling lies. Incredibly, if there is a healthy eating programme on TV they can claim whatever they want in the programme content, but anyone wanting to advertise in the break will have to comply with very strict rules under the ASA code of conduct. It can make it seem that the shiny new health gurus making the programmes have some secret to healthy eating, when in reality they are just making stuff up.
“At the extreme end this can be very dangerous. Belle Gibson, the Australian blogger who claimed she had cured cancer through her diet, is being taken to court in Australia, but crucially so is her publisher. Hopefully this might be a wake up call for the media to help them realise you cannot just publish wild, unproven claims.”
WHAT HAVE YOU FOUND MOST STRIKING?
“The most surprising thing for me is how susceptible we all are to adopting false beliefs. People tend to be extremely ‘evidence insensitive’. Some recent studies from researchers at the University of Pennsylvania, looking at why so many non-coeliacs adopt gluten free diets, showed that most people are completely unbothered then they are shown evidence that shows gluten-free diets are of no health benefit to them. They are far more inclined to believe sales people, advocates and story tellers. In fact, most of them did not even know what gluten was and were just following the diet for social reasons.”
WHAT INTERESTING FEEDBACK HAVE YOU HAD FROM THE BLOG?
“It perhaps surprises me the most how popular I am with scientists, researchers and dieticians. I am just a chef, so I am presumably not telling them anything they don’t already know about science, so I guess they are just there for the swearing. I do receive a lot of messages of support from people who really struggle with food, saying how I have helped them have a more balanced approach and loose some of the fear and anxiety around eating. More than anything, that gives me the energy to keep on writing.
“The most surprising discovery of all however has been that some people really like kale. Personally I can’t abide the stuff, but whenever I say bad things about it I am inundated with responses from pro and anti kale camps. Interestingly, when I say bad things about Chia Seed Pudding no one complains at all – I think everyone agrees that it is not really food.”
ARE CLEAN EATING AND WELLNESS INDUSTRIES DANGEROUS? WHY?
“Although it is easy to frame things like ‘clean eating’ as just trying to get people to eat a few more vegetables, the reality is that they sell pseudo-scientific messages in order to justify exclusion diets. The key to understanding clean eating is that it is desperate to hide that fact that it is actually all about weight loss and does so by wrongly claiming that whole food groups are somehow dangerous, harmful to health and so unclean. The language that it uses, classifying different foods as clean and dirty is particularly emotive and as we are all a bit too inclined to believe that ‘we are what we eat’, it could easily lead followers to think that they are somehow more pure and virtuous by excluding perfectly healthy foods. You don’t have to look to far into it to see worrying parallels to religious bigotry, with those not following the regimes being seen as dirty and unclean.
“These are dangerous associations to make and although they might be likely to make people more inclined to stick to the rules, I believe that they can damage people’s relationships with food. Rule driven exclusion diets for weight loss are never a good idea and making such powerful clean/dirty links could easily lead to people needlessly cutting out a large number of foods. This sort of exclusion would almost certainly be considered a disordered pattern of eating and is very likely to end up with people not getting adequate nutrition from their diet.”
WHY ARE WE SO OBSESSED WITH THE RIGHT WAY TO EAT?
“Health and longevity is such a huge priority these days and for aspirational middle class people, making healthy choices is seen as what we should be doing as a good citizen. In the main, these choices are pretty straightforward – don’t smoke, exercise a bit, don’t drink too much, but with diet things are a lot more complex. People want to get it right, but there are so many conflicting messages. We all want simple solutions and rules to follow for health, but the reality is that for food these rules don’t really exist.
“I am frequently asked ‘Is this particular food healthy?’, but there is never a good answer to that question. In fact, I am not even sure what the question means. Are people asking ‘Is it safe to eat this food?’. If that’s the case then the answer is yes, of course it is. No food will kill you if you eat a reasonable portion of it. Or are they asking ‘Should I only eat this food at the exclusion of everything else?’ then the answer is of course no, eating any food in that way will kill you. Or perhaps they are really asking ‘Is this food healthy as part of a varied and balanced diet?’ in which case the answer is yes, because every food is healthy as part of a balanced diet. From kale to Jaffa Cakes, no matter what the food is, the answers to all those questions are the same.”
WHY IS OBESITY AT AN ALL-TIME HIGH?
“The reasons for the rise in obesity is complex and multi-factored and something that is beyond many of the best minds in the world. Although it is something I think about and research a great deal, it is unlikely that a chef writing a blog will have the definitive answer. There have been many changes to our food environment in the past fifty years that have played a part, and many changes to our society. I do believe that it is largely culturally driven, with new norms of behaviour being created. It is highly unlikely that there will be one scientific discovery that will provide a solution to the problem. It more likely will needs a sustained, multi factored approach. I think that ‘clean eating’ is a diet by another name and generally diets do not work for sustained weight loss. Studies have shown that the act of starting on a diet makes you more likely to have increased in weight in five years time.
“And let’s be honest. ‘Clean Eating’ has a particular target demographic, with a message that appeals to the people in society who are perhaps least likely to be affected by obesity. Obesity related health problems affect socially and economically deprived groups far more than it does the affluent middle classes who might be inspired by such food blogs.”
ARE POLITICIANS DOING ENOUGH TO IMPART ACCURATE INFORMATION?
“It is very hard to do. Sensible messages about diet tend to be along the lines of balance, variety and moderation, without many easy to follow rules. To try and make that message exciting when it is playing against a number of high profile, media savvy campaigners keen to spread a different doctrine is tough.
“There is sensible advice on food out there from the likes of the NHS or Public Health England, but I think a lot of thought needs to go into how that message can be turned into effective intervention capable of wide reach. I don’t think saying ‘Sugar is Bad’, ‘Salt is Bad’ or ‘Fat is Bad’ helps at all. I think people need to be taught positive messages like embracing variety and eating many different things, thinking a little about choices and getting pleasure from a variety of foods. We should stop presenting foods as either toxic or medicinal and try to create a positive relationship with what we eat.
“Thinking about the longer term, I would like children to be taught in schools about how science works, about the need for evidence and to encourage more critical thinking. At the moment, science tends to be presented as a list of facts rather than something dynamic and changeable.”
WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE TO SEE FOR THE FUTURE OF THE FOOD INDUSTRY?
“The food industry is completely essential for sustaining the population and it is important to remember that the supply of food has never been as safe as it is currently. I strongly hope that the health lobbies will engage fully with the food industry to try and tackle diet related health issues together. No industry has more potential to positively influence things and yet they are increasingly sidelined by people who want to demonise anything they see as processed and unnatural.
“I hope the food industry will work to improve the nutritional quality of all the products they sell rather than hiding behind the common rhetoric that they are ‘giving the consumer a choice’. I also hope that supermarkets continue to improve the way their stores are organised (especially the way items are promoted) to make it easier for consumers make better choices. Legislation in this area is likely to be incredibly difficult to design, so I hope that things progress by sustained collaboration. Rightly or wrongly the food industry is developing a bad reputation for its attitude to the health agenda and it needs to be seen to be making a difference.”
CAN WEBSITES SUCH AS NOT PLANT BASED HELP TO RID US OF THE FEAR ASSOCIATED WITH FOOD?
“I hope so. There is too much fear around food. No food should create fear. The fact that it does is crazy when you think about it. We need to build communities that share the true facts, that nothing needs to be excluded, that embracing variety is key and that there is so much joy to be had in eating every day. For me, if I can help just one or two people have a better relationship with food, then it is worth doing.”
IN A SENTENCE, WHAT DOES FOOD MEAN TO YOU?
“Once you embrace everything that the world of food has to offer, it will bring a little bit of joy into your life every day.”