The Lifespan of a Chef

I want the people cooking my food to hold nutrition in the highest regard

Each week the past month has brought news of another chef dying at the top of their game, and for the most part way too young. Having worked in the food industry before crossing over to nutrition, the culprits are now so clear. We can all learn from the details. And for the chefs out there who worry about how to stay in their profession and stay healthy, it’s a matter of choosing your workplace as carefully as possible. The jobs where I felt the healthiest had good team social dynamics, time to sit and eat, genuinely nice managers, and healthy food options on the menu.

Stress.

When cooking on a busy line Saturday night, I would often imagine the parallels of restaurant life to theatre. The show must go on. Regardless of how well your equipment is behaving, of who showed up to work (or called in sick last minute), or of how many customers walk through the door, it’s your job to deliver. Well, consistently, and in a timely manner.

Being a line cook is stressful. When our cortisol runs high, our digestion become greatly impaired. Human physiology has evolved with the understanding that life is mostly happening at a relaxed pace, and only occasionally do we need to run from a tiger or fight an enemy. When we are in a fight or flight state, our digestive systems shut down to allow the body to focus on what it needs to do, namely, GTFO. Nowadays, work and life pressures, as well as a life lived rigidly by the clock, create prolonged states of stress that can, by themselves, launch our bodies into disease states.

Limited choice.

You might imagine kitchen work affords delicious meals. While this is sometimes true, “family dinners”, ie staff meals, are a way to use up excess ingredients or. As we tell our kids sometimes at patience end, “You get what you get, and you don’t get upset.” Any staff with special requests is considered a PITA by the cooks and put on an invisible shit list. So doing a good job means zipping it, eating what is offered and not being a special snowflake.

How chef’s eat, if they are lucky enough to get a break

Eating quickly.

I have a vision of myself, crouched behind the low fridges, out of sight, scarfing some quick meal down in between orders. This is unbelievable common position for chefs to eat. I can remember living with another friend in cooking school who would come home from her late shift creating beautiful food for others, and have a crappy grocery store cupcake with sprinkles for dinner, or go to bed hungry. Often we forget our own appetite being around food for hours, it’s not until we leave the kitchen that we realize.

I have struggled to eat slowly my whole life. As long as I can remember I ate meals like a kid who grows up in a big family without enough food (that’s not how I grew up). I think it has something to do my sensitive nature amidst a life spent rushing and often living by the clock, and these tendencies allowed me to quickly acclimate to restaurant life.

But sometimes the simpliest things are the most impactful. When we chew slowly, thoroughly, thoughfully, our digestion improves. What does that even mean? It means that enough digestive enzymes are released to break down food properly by chemical means. It means that by the time food gets to our stomach, it’s in small enough pieces for our stomach acide to further break it down. It means that by the time it gets to our small intestine, it is properly broken down. When food arrives to the small intestine not fully digested, that is where things start to go really wrong. So the micro actions we take to counter this can add up to having a big impact on our overall health.

Crappy Oils

Given the tight cost margins in the food business, cheap oil is one place that many chefs cut corners.

Never ever have I seen a restaurant with a deep fryer using good oil meant for high heat cooking. And even in the high end restaurants that use good ingredients, olive oil is often mistakenly used for cooking. While the spoke point of each olive oil varies, it is generally below 350 and inadequate for any cooking except extremely low heat. What this means is that when you use an oil like olive oil over 300 degrees, the oil oxidizes. When cells use this oxidized oil to make energy, a byproduct of the process creates free radicals. If we eat a lot of bad oil over time, these free radicals can get numerous enough to damage DNA and mutate cells, and eventually lead to diseases like cancer.

There’s more to say about health as a chef, like the ways constantly tasting impair the hormones that signal hunger, and how the night shifts throw off our circadian rhythms, and how lack of hydration impacts the functioning of all our systems.

Suffice to say that these seemingly small thing like chewing slowly, eating while relaxed, eating good fat and eating lots of non-starchy vegetables,—all these micro decisions many of us have agency over, when addressed, slowly and systematically, can add up to huge health changes over time.