Chickpea water meringues? You can stuff madcap diets by posh, pretty food bloggers
India Knight says we’re now actively celebrating disordered eating thanks to bonkers advice from holistic eating experts
THE idea that eating normal food is fraught with terrible dangers has taken hold.
Sales of sliced bread were down by £100million in 2015 and sales of sandwiches are at an all-time low.
Pret A Manger is opening a trial vegetarian-only outlet in central London.
None of these things is bad in isolation.
But obsessing about “clean” foods, with the unspoken assumption that some foods are “dirty”, has got way out of hand.
Thanks to “wellness” bloggers and their books and Instagram accounts, we’re now actively celebrating disordered eating.
It is lunacy.
Fetishising some foods while vilifying others is how people become ill.
It is also behaviour that will be observed with interest by any teenage girls around you.
I’ve been annoyed by the madder reaches of foodyism for a while now, and was recently tipped over the edge by an article in The New York Times that contained this sentence: “Chickpea water has become a sensation.”
Chickpea water — the gloopy stuff you throw down the drain, pausing only to note its gross texture and unpleasant smell — is, apparently, the next big thing.
The new “bone broth”, aka beef stock.
The new kale (kale is passé, actually, they’re on to cauliflower).
Aquafaba (chickpea water) can be used by vegans in place of whipped cream or egg whites.
This means they could make a chickpea-water meringue base then whip up some more chickpea water into cream, to make a pavlova.
Who wouldn’t break down the door to get at that?
I am so sick of people eating in a mad way, having been encouraged to do so by pretty, upper-middle-class bloggers who make utterly spurious claims about health and nutrition.
Spreading disordered eating to the masses via blogs, books and TV shows is not a laughing matter.
It is dangerous.
It starts from the point of view that food is your enemy (mad), and that with care and instruction you can wrest control of it (mad) and make yourself well (mad, unless you were ill in the first place, in which case see a doctor, not a posh bird who has never had a job).
The constituents of those blogs, books and shows are too-thin, too-blonde women with too-rich, too-absent husbands
Also, in the real world, the majority of people who are unwell for dietary reasons tend to be that way because they are poor and eat a bad diet, as Jamie Oliver has identified.
They couldn’t care less for chickpea water.
The constituents of those blogs, books and shows are too-thin, too-blonde women with too-rich, too-absent husbands.
Whether they’re in London or New York they’ve always looked like brittle, nervy, big-eyed skeletons, fuelled by black coffee and neuroses.
If people are unwell and this is the only way they can eat, they have my sympathies.
But an increasing number of young people are adopting restricted ways of eating for no other reason than fashion.
If you look at what normal people eat, a chasm opens.
The highest-rated recipes on the popular allrecipes.com are for barbecued pork, cheesecake, lasagna, chilli, pies and a slew of breads, cakes and biscuits.
BBC Food’s all-time favourite recipes are for chicken curry, tagine, pizza, soup, salad and ice cream.
But you don’t need websites to show you how foodyism is like the crazier extremes of fashion: Seriously niche and only for nutters.
Just go to a shop or supermarket and see what people buy - normal, everyday food that tastes good and is easy to cook.
Thank God for normal people and their normal children.
- India Knight is an author and Sunday Times columnist. The Sunday Times Magazine/News Syndication.
Faddy foodies
ON their Channel 4 show, Eating Well With Hemsley and Hemsley, sisters MELISSA and JASMINE HEMSLEY (main pic above), used “astrologically farmed” eggs.
Health issues, including eczema, caused by their hectic lifestyles had led Jasmine, 36, right, then a model and Melissa, 30, a footwear brand manager, to change their diets.
HAVING hurt her back, NATASHA CORRETT visited a holistic doctor who told her she was “very acidic and needed to alkalise”.
Natasha, 31, put together a nutritional alkaline plan with the help of her nutritionist godmother and created Honestly Healthy, an alkaline cuisine delivery business.
Her three books have all been bestsellers and her app topped iTunes.
A MYSTERY illness left ELLA WOODWARD bed-bound while studying history of art at uni.
A neurologist diagnosed rare postural tachycardia syndrome and Ella, 24, bounced back after adopting a plant-based diet.
Her Deliciously Ella blog, on which she posts recipes, gets 2.5million hits a month and her book is the fastest selling debut cookbook ever.
TESS WARD, 25, wrote The Naked Diet featuring “pure”, “raw”, “clean”, “stripped” and “detox” recipes.
She changed her diet to combat cramps after picking up a parasite while travelling in India aged 18.
She studied history of art then took an online course with US “movement” the Institute for Integrative Nutrition and trained as a chef.
MADELEINE SHAW, 25, was eating solely ricecakes and fruit at 18, which caused digestive issues.
As a uni student she began eating meats and good fats and enjoying food again.
Now she is a “holistic nutritional health coach” who believes in “enlivening the hottest, happiest and healthiest you”.
Followed up her 2015 bestseller Get The Glow with Ready Steady Glow.