Anthony Warner alias blogger turned author the Angry Chef is on a mission to confront the alternative realities surrounding nutritional fads and myths
A few minutes into my encounter with the Angry Chef, I begin to wonder if his moniker are liable to be ironic, like the big guy whose friends call him Tiny. On the basis of his excoriating blog which exposes lies, pretensions and idiocy in the world of meat I had been expecting a bilious, splenetic boy with wild eyes, his scalp covered in tattoos. Instead, Im sat across from a mild-mannered nerdy form with a straighten beard and black-framed sights. Unlike his writing, which is rained with profanities, he hasnt sworn once. In reality, he picks his terms very deliberately, as if theres a legal and fact-checking team working overtime in his brain.
I expected you to be a bit more furious, I finally say. Do you have a temper?
The Angry Chef, aka 44 -year-old Anthony Warner, considers this, shakes his head. Not at all, he says. People who know me and ensure the blog say, Youre not angry at all! No, I was never one of the shouty, scary chefs. Perhaps slightly frightening sometimes, but simply in a quiet, I-dont-know-what-hes-going-to-do sort of way.
What about the swearing? I ask.
I can if you crave, Warner responds. But no, I dont rant, I dont swear nearly as much in real life as I do on my blog.
The Angry Chefs first post on 30 December 2015 consisted of a few pointed thoughts on going sugar-free. He was anonymous back then and there were a couple of reasons for that. Warner liked the idea of writing in character: while he stands by everything he writes, the Angry Chef persona allows him to be more confrontational and unhinged. The other reason was that he wasnt sure what his foremen would think of his new creation. After a decade as a decent but unremarkable cook in professional kitchens, Warner became a development cook for Premier Foods, a large commercial food manufacturer. He has invested the last 10 years making recipes for the likes of Oxo, Mr Kipling, Loyd Grossman and Ambrosia.
This anonymity did not last long. The Angry Chefs railing against the trend for clean-eating and wellness bloggers, his annoyance at the miraculous properties assigned to kale and coconut oil speedily discovered an audience. The Sun asked Warner aimed at contributing to an article about Insta-gurus diet advice, and Ben Goldacre, one of his anti-pseudoscience heroes, tweeted his approval. New Scientist commissioned Warner to write for them, a gratifying nod for a self-described science geek who has a degree in biochemistry from Manchester University.
Now a book, The Angry Chef: Bad Science and the Fact About Healthy Eating , is out next month. It is a systematic, densely footnoted, and often very funny takedown of pretty much every food fad that has taken hold in recent years: detox, alkaline, ash and paleo diets among other issues. If you believe superfoods exist, then Warner will have some strong terms to construct you reconsider. Likewise, if youre persuaded theres no possible defense for sugar or processed food, then he wants you to take another look at the evidence.
In an age of Gwyneth Paltrows Goop, of Deliciously Ella Mills, and Hemsley and Hemsley, these somehow seem quite revolutionary suggestions. A plenty of the clean-eating people, I just think they have a shattered relationship with the truth, tells Warner. Theyre selling something that is impossible to justify in the context of evidence-based medicine.
I dont think any of them are lying, he goes on, they are just stuck in this strange world of false belief, which is fascinating. How are you able look at NHS guidelines on how to eat healthily and go, Well, I know better than that? Perhaps if only we a professor of dietetics or nutrition, you might does not agree with some stuff. But how as a 19 -year-old blogger you are able to look at it and move, No, thats wrong. This is right, I dont know.
How did we arrive at a place where avocados outsell oranges, where coconut oil, a once-cheap saturated fat, is reborn as a super-ingredient with miraculous, health-giving properties?( Paltrows website Goop likewise proposes using it as a mouthwash and sexual lubricant, prompting Warner to joke, Separately, I hope .)
For Warner, the members of the explain is an adaptation of psychologist Daniel Kahnemans assumption that people are brilliant at creating a narrative from minimal indication. Kahneman calls the brain a machine for jumping to conclusions.
We really struggle with uncertainty, explains Warner. We genuinely want to be able to say: Is coffee good or bad for us? Well, its not good or bad for you, it only is. And we have to accept that; thats what science tells. So your brain moves, I dont like that degree of uncertainty. Certainty is actually is calling for a lot of people and thats what a lot of these individuals are selling surely at the darker end.
Warner accepts he faces a tough challenge persuading people with his boring message. We live in the so-called post-truth world: a time of Brexit, Trump and alternative realities. Guardian columnist Hadley Freeman has even written that Deliciously Ella is the precursor to Donald Trump. In the book, Warner admits that he sometimes feel like a drunk in a pub car park, raging and swinging at the world.
When you go back 20 times it was Gillian McKeith, says Warner. Now its harder to fight. Theres not specific people, theres a swarm of them in so many different places, on Instagram, on social media, things I dont even understand as a middle-aged man.
Facts are important, he continues. The rhetoric of a lot of politics at the moment is that there was this once-great world we need to return to. And its actually absolutely no truth to the rumors. In almost every single measure, were better off than we were 100 years ago, or even 50 years ago. Weve wiped out smallpox and throw person on the moon with science, if “youre starting” spurning that
Warner roads off, the most significant hes come to living up to his angry label. Would he be interested in debating this subject with Ella Mills or the Hemsleys?
From what I understand theyll avoid me at all costs, mentions Warner. Id find it fascinating, but people will perhaps be surprised. If Im asked, Is a specific meat good or bad for you? Im not going to give an answer. I dont feeling I have superior knowledge, I actually had recognized that I dont. Thats discrepancies between me and them. So it might be a strange debate.
This is true. Warners advice, boiled down, amounts to: eat a reasonable and varied diet , not too much nor too little. If you have junk food every so often, dont feel guilty; if youre going full Morgan Spurlock, youre likely overdoing it. Eat fish, specially oily ones such as salmon and mackerel, when you are able to. Dont consume too much carbohydrate, but equally dont believe people who tell you its toxic and has no nutritional value.
The rhetoric that carbohydrate is poison, its killing us, has become altogether accepted, says Warner. Were told its just empty calories. Well, we kind of need calories to live. But a lot of people will read that and mention, He would say that. He works for a big cake manufacturer.
How would he respond to that then?
Well, demonstrate me incorrect then you cant! Warner killed back. Im ever going to be accused of has become a shill for the food manufacturing industry. Within the job I do, you get very exposed to racism that people have against the producers of food. And also you get very exposed to whats involved in making fabricated meat, and what you can and cant say about something to its implementation of its health benefits. If I made a food product and I wanted to say it detoxes you, I perfectly couldnt. There are really clear laws: I cant say it in the advertising, I cant say it on the pack, I cant making such a sort of allegation that isnt enormously backed in evidence.
But if I wrote a recipe book, I can say what I crave, Warner continues. If I went on telly, I could say, This recipe is genuinely detoxing. You can stimulate material up, it doesnt thing. But then you get to the ad break, people advertising cant mention those things because theyre are covered under law. So why arent the people stimulating the programmes are covered under law?
To be fair, Warner is pretty angry now. And hes not exactly optimistic that what he tells will induce much difference to acolytes of clean eating. I think fads will continue, often just a recycling of the low-carb Atkins-style dieting under different epithets like those ketogenic diets, high-fat diets, he sighs.
Theyll only change the name and the pseudoscientific justifications for it. So yeah, there will probably always be something to write about. Warner smiles, And that they are able to induce me angry.
The Angry Chef on five meat myths
Detoxing
When “theyre saying”, Im detoxing, what theyre saying is, Im not feeing for two days. Its merely an extreme weight-loss diet, but you make up toxins that arent there and say, Im doing this to get rid of these toxins which your body will do naturally anyway. It makes panic around food.
Eat like a caveman
The paleo diet is just a low-carb diet given a pseudoscientific justification.Weve been feeing carbohydrates for a very long time, but theyll just go, Well, a caveman feed meat. They have this idea from The Flintstones , but anyone who works in anthropology will say, No, theyre patently wrong.
Home-cooked meat is always best
Its linked to wanting women to get back into the kitchen: Natural home-cooked snacks are the only way to be healthy Things were better before females went to work. Underlying the demonisation of convenience food, there is a lot of misogyny. Things were better in our grandmothers period were they?
Sugar is toxic
Sugar has an enormous amount of energy and is one of the biggest building block for life. But they say, It has no nutritional value. That makes absolutely no sense.
Dont feed processed food
People will have a ready-meal from Waitrose and mention, Im busy. Then theyll tell poor people should just stop buying fishfingers: But I can go to M& S and buy my haddock goujons, thats not bad for me, is it?
The Angry Chef: Bad Science and the Fact About Healthy Eating( Oneworld, 12.99) is published on 6 July. To ordering a transcript for 11.04, go to bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846 . Free UK p& p over 10, online orderings only. Phone orders min. p& p of 1.99.
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