My bad diet.. by the chef who told us to eat more healthily!
HE has long campaigned to change the way we eat and improve Scotland’s ‘dreadful national diet’ – but celebrity chef Nick Nairn now admits he has failed to practise what he preaches.
A busy life with too much fast food from petrol stations and airport snack bars has resulted in high blood pressure for the first time in the 57-year-old’s life.
Nairn now admits he allowed himself to fall into the ‘oldest Scottish trap’ of too much stress, work and alcohol, and not enough nutritious food.
The married father-of-two may be Michelin-starred for his gourmet cuisine but when it came to feeding himself he started grabbing food on the go, with too much salt and too few fruit and veg.
And it was only when his doctor told him he had high blood pressure, doubling the risk of dying from a heart attack or stroke, that he realised how much his lifestyle had changed.
Nairn began with the best intentions, challenging the national diet at the start of 2013 by producing a healthy eating supplement full of recipes encouraging Scots to ‘turn their backs on food high in fat, sugar and salt before it’s too late’. But at the weekend he confessed to a Sunday newspaper: ‘Three years on, I know I should have practised what I preached.
‘Instead I threw myself into the launch of my new Cook School in Aberdeen and a packed schedule of corporate and media work. My recipe guide was full of healthy ideas, but my own diet started to suffer.’
The chef, from Port of Menteith in Stirlingshire, found it hard to accept that he had started eating badly: ‘It was a problem I believed belonged to others, not to the chef who brought Scotland Wild Harvest, mountain-biked through the glens and foraged for my food.’
Now he says: ‘My fridge is full of fruit and vegetables, and my freezer is packed with meals I cook in preparation for the week ahead.
‘I’ve done Dry January and have no intention of stopping in February – and my exercise gear has never been worn so often.’