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A review by fictionesque
The Angry Chef: Bad Science and the Truth about Healthy Eating by Anthony Warner
5.0
I have to admit, I was a little bit skeptical when I found this book for three pounds, sitting outside a local bookshop on the discount table. After all, why should I take a chef's word on something like dieting and nutrition? What could he know?
Well, regardless of skepticism, I ended up buying it...and finishing it in two days. As someone who used to struggle with an eating disorder, this book offered me a catharsis that I wish had been available to me in the deepest days of my disease. It shined a light on why precisely I am so intrigued by all of these 'pure', 'clean eating' movements that are so popular on social media nowadays. Spoiler alert: it's a need for control, a need for order, and a need to feel more disciplined than the next guy down who indulges in potato chips while watching the newest episode of Last Week Tonight and contemplating the state of the Western world (yes, sometimes that guy is you, last week. But you're purer and better now! You ate an apple instead!)
This book debunks everything. It debunks the myth that gluten free is inherently healthier, that the paleo diet will unlock some ancient, primal power within you (previously suppressed by the soft modern lives we all lead), and that putting honey in your brownies is better than using good old fashioned sugar.
Not only does this book debunk these myths using logic and well sourced facts, but it examines the real world harm that they do. While there are extreme and tragic cases of people using 'clean eating' instead of cancer treatment, most of it was...stuff I could really relate to. Thinking you are less 'pure' for eating something you didn't make from scratch. Believing that a painful relationship with food (in which you stare longingly at freshly baked croissants in the bakery window and silently verbally abuse yourself for even being tempted in the first place) is a healthy one. Striving for the effortless happiness and purity that so many of these online health gurus seem to have, wondering why your hair is still dull and your skin is still oily when you've been doing everything they said to do.
Attaching your self worth to the things that you consume. Creating rules for yourself so that you may demonstrate your abstinence to those around you and feel in some way superior, because you refuse to eat potatoes.
I think that is what hit me the hardest. Because while I became vegetarian as a way to cultivate empathy in myself and to help the environment, I do tend to fall down the rabbit hole every now and again. That is, the rabbit hole of agave syrup instead of sugar, of all-raw meals of cold broccoli and baby carrots, of pH testing your food (alright, I admit, I never did that one).
The Angry Chef hits the nail on the head when he says that food isn't meant to be all that complicated. It is, in fact, one of the simplest pleasures that life has to offer.
Because it is so deeply unsatisfying to accept that there is no secret formula, that moderation is key, we are eager to listen to enthusiastic health gurus telling us to eat spoonfuls of coconut oil and deprive ourselves of carbs. We like concrete rules. I like concrete rules.
This book is one with a freeing message: everything in moderation, try new things, and don't listen to the pseudoscience. This thing needs to be an international bestseller. But of course it won't be. It feels good to be the health nut with the weird food rules, toxic though it may be. I suppose if nothing else, it was enlightening to see how my occasional renewed obsession with food rules, even though it surfaces as rabid veganism or 'I only eat foods you can find at Whole Foods that most people have never heard of'-ism, is actually likely a manifestation of my former eating disorder's need for control. And that enlightenment has given me leave to ignore all those rules and live my life.
If you find yourself perplexed by all this new age, gluten free, hippie bullshit, then I would advise you to read The Angry Chef. It is the one shining ray of hope in a post truth, quinoa obsessed world.
Well, regardless of skepticism, I ended up buying it...and finishing it in two days. As someone who used to struggle with an eating disorder, this book offered me a catharsis that I wish had been available to me in the deepest days of my disease. It shined a light on why precisely I am so intrigued by all of these 'pure', 'clean eating' movements that are so popular on social media nowadays. Spoiler alert: it's a need for control, a need for order, and a need to feel more disciplined than the next guy down who indulges in potato chips while watching the newest episode of Last Week Tonight and contemplating the state of the Western world (yes, sometimes that guy is you, last week. But you're purer and better now! You ate an apple instead!)
This book debunks everything. It debunks the myth that gluten free is inherently healthier, that the paleo diet will unlock some ancient, primal power within you (previously suppressed by the soft modern lives we all lead), and that putting honey in your brownies is better than using good old fashioned sugar.
Not only does this book debunk these myths using logic and well sourced facts, but it examines the real world harm that they do. While there are extreme and tragic cases of people using 'clean eating' instead of cancer treatment, most of it was...stuff I could really relate to. Thinking you are less 'pure' for eating something you didn't make from scratch. Believing that a painful relationship with food (in which you stare longingly at freshly baked croissants in the bakery window and silently verbally abuse yourself for even being tempted in the first place) is a healthy one. Striving for the effortless happiness and purity that so many of these online health gurus seem to have, wondering why your hair is still dull and your skin is still oily when you've been doing everything they said to do.
Attaching your self worth to the things that you consume. Creating rules for yourself so that you may demonstrate your abstinence to those around you and feel in some way superior, because you refuse to eat potatoes.
I think that is what hit me the hardest. Because while I became vegetarian as a way to cultivate empathy in myself and to help the environment, I do tend to fall down the rabbit hole every now and again. That is, the rabbit hole of agave syrup instead of sugar, of all-raw meals of cold broccoli and baby carrots, of pH testing your food (alright, I admit, I never did that one).
The Angry Chef hits the nail on the head when he says that food isn't meant to be all that complicated. It is, in fact, one of the simplest pleasures that life has to offer.
Because it is so deeply unsatisfying to accept that there is no secret formula, that moderation is key, we are eager to listen to enthusiastic health gurus telling us to eat spoonfuls of coconut oil and deprive ourselves of carbs. We like concrete rules. I like concrete rules.
This book is one with a freeing message: everything in moderation, try new things, and don't listen to the pseudoscience. This thing needs to be an international bestseller. But of course it won't be. It feels good to be the health nut with the weird food rules, toxic though it may be. I suppose if nothing else, it was enlightening to see how my occasional renewed obsession with food rules, even though it surfaces as rabid veganism or 'I only eat foods you can find at Whole Foods that most people have never heard of'-ism, is actually likely a manifestation of my former eating disorder's need for control. And that enlightenment has given me leave to ignore all those rules and live my life.
If you find yourself perplexed by all this new age, gluten free, hippie bullshit, then I would advise you to read The Angry Chef. It is the one shining ray of hope in a post truth, quinoa obsessed world.