The Angry Chef

by Anthony Warner

[wyvernfriend]

He made me cry. Honestly when I read the quote from page 245 "'A hospice patient admitted for end-of-life care said that one thing she really wanted before the end was to eat a few slices of French baguette with butter, but refused the ofer from the hospice chef as she was fearful of taking carbs that would "feed her cancer cells"' Catherine Collins RD, fellow of the British Dietetic Association." any diet that demands a terminally ill person is wrong to have something they really want to have is evil. Now I'm not in that situation, but I am someone who has to deal with dietary restrictions day in and day out, I'm technically gluten sensitive because I had to give up gluten before a formal diagnosis (gastroenterologist: there's healing damage there, whatever you're doing, keep at it), but I respond quickly and upsettingly to gluten present in my foodstuffs (and this has been verified but an accident or two), so on one level I'm quite happy with the fashion for gluten-free but dammit I would love good French bread, or even one dinner out where I had freedom to explore the menu more. Another quote that hit more for truth is "Cancer is a complex, shapeshifting disease that has staggered and confounded the best researchers for a hundred years. (p.247) and I would love to shake it in the face of the people who tell me that I asked for, ate for, lived for, the Hodgkins Lymphoma science threw into remission 15 years ago. This book is a mildly sweary, angry with bad science, rant about how our diets seem to have become the latest battleground for morality, how what we eat has become a heavily charged moral issue with some claiming that only by following their creed will we be purfied from this "too, too solid flesh" and achieve some sort of living purity or sainthood, freed from illness and pain, having learned the lessons of purity and wellness from the chosen few.Yes it's a bit more sweary than some people are comfortable with but I'd say it's no more sweary than I would be if I was talking to people on the topic. There are some citations and it could do with a suggested reading list but overall I found it one of the best books on eating that I've read in a long time.