An analysis of British based celebrity chefs published in Scientific & Academic Publishing (SAP), an Open-Access publisher of journals, revealed that most British celebrity chefs’ recipes contained excessive amounts of fat, saturated fatty acids, sugars and salt.
“The majority of recipes analysed had unhealthy nutritional compositions in accordance with national healthy eating benchmark recommendations, and therefore Celebrity Chefs could potentially be a hidden contributory factor to current public health nutrition issues, through exacerbating Britain’s already unbalanced dietary intake.”
The researchers covered a wide range of meal types from 26 dominant British based Celebrity Chefs who were randomly sampled from literature and web sources.
Recipes were blindly analysed through dietary analysis software by three trained dietetic researchers, and then the nutritional value of each recipe was compared against national healthy eating benchmark guidelines using a healthy eating index.
The report points out that 79% of test subjects acknowledged watching Celebrity Chef television programs frequently, and 74% acknowledged owning Celebrity Chef cookery books and/or accessing websites. Moreover, 60% reported using recipes from these sources frequently.
The report adds that consumers respect and are widely accepting of information regarding nutrition and healthy eating messages from Celebrity Chefs.
Researchers claim 75% of a general population cohort believe Celebrity Chefs promote healthy eating and that their recipes are healthy.
“Not only does this highlight the potential influence Celebrity Chefs have on consumers food choices and subsequent nutritional intake of the respective population, but also the capability to influence nutrition related public health issues; such as obesity and associated cardiometabolic risk factors linked with the pathophysiology of cardiovascular diseases and type 2 diabetes.”
The report warns that most Celebrity Chefs are not trained or qualified in dietetics or nutrition, nor do they recruit qualified nutritional professionals.
Additionally, there are no regulations on what Celebrity Chefs can present in regards to nutrition. “Similar attitudes are seen with food and beverage advertising on television, with aggressive promotion of sales material without giving consumers informed choice.”
The report concludes that celebrity chefs may promote healthy policies, and thus, have even attained the public’s trust and confidence in regard to adhering to healthy eating behaviors; but their recipes portray an entirely different story.
In fact, the report suggests the nutritional composition of celebrity chefs’ recipes is comparable to the nutritional composition of fast food outlets and ready-made meals, implicated as contributing factors for Britain’s obesity epidemic.
The researchers believe celebrity chefs should work with qualified and registered dietetic and nutritional professionals to improve the nutritional quality of their recipes and promote healthier eating habits. By following their suggestions, they believe celebrity chefs could easily reverse their current negative impact.
Good luck with that because it’s never going to happen. A savorless low-fat Mediterranean diet may be healthy, but a hard sell compared to tantalizing recipes high in fat, sugars and salt.