THE JOY OF FOOD
A chef, a dietitian and a food writer on cutting through the fads to eat for nourishment and with joy.
Does eating well really have to mean restriction and deprivation? Here at dish we know food is more than fuel or an energy equation and healthy eating doesn't have to be hard work. We've taken some time to debunk the myths around dieting – it's time to get back to focusing on the joy of food
Irecently came across my late mum’s copy of The Hamlyn All-colour Cookbook from the 70s. Flicking through its buttersmeared pages, a blurry home movie whirred inside my head; my mother serving sangria and platters of food to a laughter-filled room.
The dishes – mostly taken from the aforementioned (all colour!) book – were meat-centric and rich, cheese sauces aplenty, coronation chicken de rigueur, the desserts heavy on sugar and whipped cream. And there was almost certainly more greenery in the flower arrangements than in the dishes themselves.
Many of the meal components were unsophisticated by today’s standards
– tinned fruit, canned fish, white rice, curries made from powder, very little made from scratch – but I mused that there was one ingredient in plentiful supply that these days is harder to come by. Joy.
The abandoned and unquestioning pleasure in food. Not a clean-eating requirement in sight. Perhaps a fleeting and jovial mention of ‘oh I’ll go back on my diet next week’, but for the most part just the sheer thrill of an evening well spent with people you love.
Nostalgia is a blinkered beast… and as the sentimentality faded like cigar smoke, I realised that of course the way we eat now is far better. We have an infinitely greater selection of foods, especially fresh produce; we have the benefit of 50 years of studies and research to guide us to better nutritional choices; we’re aware of the effects of certain foods on conditions such as coeliac disease and diabetes. And yet…
A recent analysis of Google data trends by the website Chef’s Pencil shows Kiwis are the fourth most diet-obsessed population in the world – with ‘keto' (low carb, high fat) the most researched topic. Medically prescribed diet plans aside, has our obsession with ‘the right way to eat’ tainted our enjoyment of food? Is it even possible to retain the unbridled joy of eating ‘in ignorance’ while being mindful of nourishing our bodies?
And, this is the big question, can we stop leaping onto every passing fad like it’s the last bus to Healthy Town and instead eat in a way that provides both joy and nutrition – and which is sustainable for life?
Some people have done more than wonder about our current food obsessions. British chef Anthony Warner is so angry, he’s made that anger part of the title of his book: The Angry Chef: Bad Science and the Truth about Healthy Eating.
In it, he vents his frustration with our willingness to blindly follow clean-eating fads, and favours the media with an extra-generous serving of ire for parroting what he sees as wildly unfounded claims.
“For sensible voices such as medical doctors, dietitians and pseudoscience debunkers, this makes engaging with clean eating as hard as nailing gluten-free jelly to a wall. It is little more than a loose conglomeration of social media-savvy, self-appointed gurus, each with a different interpretation, each with a different doctrine, all hiding diets of restriction behind veils of holistic wellness.”
I’ll lay my cards on the table right now. I’m vegetarian – with the occasional salmon fillet thrown in. I’m well used to comments like
“of course you’re tired; you need some meat”, or “but you eat chicken, eh?” from confirmed carnivores. On the other side of the coin,
Have we become so polarised that others' dietary foibles leave a sour taste in our mouth?
meat-eaters are often accused of sabotaging their health and helping destroy the planet’s too (now there’s a can of worms… nutritional value unknown).
So where is the truth? Have we buried it under a container-load of protein powder? Have we become so polarised that others’ food choices and dietary foibles leave a sour taste in our mouth? Have we ceased to enjoy food for the sake of it, in our rush to gain a degree in pseudo nutrition from the University of Google?
Here we’ve talked to three New Zealanders immersed in the world of food and – don’t worry, Anthony – each well qualified to offer an unbiased opinion. We ask a high-profile chef, a prominent dietitian and our own editor Sarah Tuck how they personally eat and view food, and how we – omnivore, carnivore or plant-based – can nourish ourselves well. For life. Enjoy.