London - His simple recipes and no-nonsense approach to food have made him one of the UK’s favourite chefs.
And now Nigel Slater has called for food lovers to return to the basics of cooking, claiming our “obsession” with complicated recipes has ruined our love for toiling away in the kitchen.
The TV chef said food is now “worshipped” and “fetishized” to the point where it is no longer enjoyed.
And he claimed the trend for “victimising” certain ingredients, such as sugar and gluten, means our diet is being driven by “guilt and shame” – and has seen him receive hysterical emails from fans saying they cannot cook his food because of its unhealthy ingredients.
The 57-year-old said people should remember how to enjoy simple food, adding: “The very notion of someone being a ‘foodie’ makes me shudder”.
Speaking on Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour, he said: “I love the idea that in the course of a day we take a little bit of time to make ourselves and those we share our lives with just something nice to eat?...?rather than [it] becoming something that we can become obsessed with because I don’t think that’s particularly healthy and?...?it attaches a kind of scariness to food. It should be very simple.”
His comments follow fears expressed in his latest book, A Year Of Good Eating. “I am concerned about the current victimisation of food. The apparent need to divide the contents of our plates into heroes and villains,” he wrote. “We risk having the life sucked out of our eating.”
Daily Mail