Oh please.

Of course it’s very possible that they have been ‘set up’ by the producers, have been encouraged to emote and edited to that effect.  But a problem for me remains.  Many of the finalists are still young – some a little older, yes. But the route normally to the inside of a professional kitchen is open to all, unless one is too old or too decrepit to see it through. Not winning Master Chef does not preclude a life in cooking. I suppose most believe that at least getting into the quarter finals (do I imagine that there seem to be rather a large number of these?) will ensure a modicum of media interest and could be viewed as being a short cut to culinary fame and (naturally) fortune.

A.A. Gill reckons that no-one should go into the professional kitchen because they have ‘an absolute passion for food’ or who want to ‘give people pleasure doing what they themselves adore to do’. No, he says, going into the food business is just that – a business. It should be viewed as such, without the rose-coloured (with a pistachio foam) spectacles. (My parenthesis.) My cynicism.

More people go bust in the restaurant field than probably most other new enterprises. There is money to be made, obviously. As well as egos to be massaged. Food, though, like any other enterprise, should be viewed as a business and not romanticised. That’s not to say that one shouldn’t have ethics – and standards. Jamie did so much good with his rubbishing of ‘turkey twizzlers’ and other revolting industrial reclaimed ‘food’. I question today Marco Pierre White, with his (potential, I think) endorsement of Bernard Matthews industrial turkey meat and his absolute endorsement of ‘Real stock pots’. Really? Do we believe him? Do we trust him? Or do we think that he’s ‘sold his good reputation?’ I know what I think.

The business of food has never had, historically, an exactly exemplary reputation – certainly not since the last war, when ‘digging for victory’ and rationing made sure we all ate, by necessity  boring but nutritious food. Then came the likes of the Chorleywood bread industrialisation initiative – and still today, most bread made in Britain (and increasingly in Europe) is by this factory method (with added vitamins – so that’s alright then..). It heralded the beginning of factory produced food. Oh crickey I must stop now. I could go on of course – and another time I most surely will.

Let’s get back to a proper relationship with the food that we eat. We are too spoiled by choice and too rich to realise it.

Talk again….