I already blogged about the first study claiming that celebrity chefs are fuelling the obesity epidemic with their calorie and saturated fat laden cookbooks. Now that another study, supporting these findings, has been published I felt compelled to add a little bit more ranting.
Yes, many recipes in celebrity chefs’ cookbooks are not exactly healthy. Does that mean that they’re driving the obesity epidemic, no. How many people do you think are regularly consuming meals that they’ve prepared using recipes in these cookbooks? Probably not many. And, how many of these people are obese? We don’t know the answer to this question. It’s foolish to extrapolate from the findings to state that celebrity chefs’ cookbooks are making people fat. It’s far more likely that a lack of home-cooked meals is contributing to the obesity epidemic.
I’d also like to point out that people do have the ability, and sometimes the wherewithal, to modify recipes that they prepare from cookbooks. Yes, we are capable of using less oil and butter, of not adding salt, of bumping-up the vegetable content, etc. Go ahead, use Jamie Oliver’s cookbook and just tweak the recipe to optimize its nutrition.
