Lifestyle advice – Dangers of TV chefs

1. Lifestyle advice – Dangers of TV chefs In the UK, Australia and the US cooking programmes are very popular and many celebrity chefs promote home cooking. Many of these celebrity chefs also design alternative cooking meals commonly known as TV dinners. A cause for concern however arose from a 2012 research study published in the British Medical Journal by Simon Howard.

2. This study revealed that these supermarket ready meals or ‘TV dinners’ have higher fat, sugar and salt than the recommended nutritional guidelines and thus contributes to the obesity epidemic in the UK. To make matters even worse, Simon Brown concluded, ‘Meals based on television chef recipes were less healthy than ready meals, as significantly fewer were within the recommended ranges for fibre density and percentage of energy derived from carbohydrate and fat, and per portion they contained significantly more energy, protein, fat, and saturated fat and significantly less fibre.’ 

4. Thus the study concluded that the best food and nutrition advice is to exercise caution when following the recipes of these celebrity chefs and /or buying their supermarket meals. As consumers we also need to evaluate the nutritional content of these recipes. This issue also begs the question regarding the ‘Duty of Care’ of these chefs; is their vision about financial gain or is it really about promoting healthy lifestyle?

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