Why Are We Afraid of Nutritionists?
Becoming a nutritionist after working as a line cook is not a common career path. Because cooking for special requests is very difficult behind the scenes, it’s not something most chefs take kindly to. And as a whole, chefs are a pretty judgmental group of people. It’s hard to work in the service industry and not be somewhat jaded, particularly when you are cooking in the trenches and not having direct contact with the people you are serving. When I started cooking professionally in my 20’s, I had so many misguided thoughts on special diets, people who wanted to eat healthy, and especially nutritionists.
Nutritionists were mostly former aerobic instructors, obsessed with their body image and willing to go to any length to maintain it. They were type A perfectionists, happy to forego pleasure for these pursuits, and often wore their depravity as a badge. No one said it better than the waif model Kate Moss, “Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels.”
Now to a chef, these are practically fighting words. They say there are three types of people. Some people go into a party and look around to see who is there, some walk into a party and find the corner, and some immediately scan the food situation. Chefs tend to fall into the latter groups.
Food is life, food is creativity, food is one of our greatest pleasures, and while most of us want to drop of few pounds, I for one was not willing to give up all of this pleasure for the singular goal of looking hot in a dress.
Now these are characterizations and over simplifications, as we are prone to having in our youth. But many of us still have some buried, outdated beliefs of our youth stored in our body. Nutritionists are going to tell us to forego pleasure in favor of health. They are cheery wheatgrass touting smoothie evangelists. Thank you very much, I’m happy for you, but I will carry on over here with my red wine and medium rare ribeye.
I think part of the reason nutritionists still get a bad rap, is that too many people in the health industry are touting rigid protocols and miraculous health cures, and teaching from the front of the room. In this age of social media influencers, it’s gotten even worse. Do this and you can look like me! Do this and you can be like me!
Over the decades of my cooking career, some cracks starting appearing in my theories about the pursuit of pleasure being paramount to the pursuit of good health. My confusion began while waiting tables at a Vegetarian restaurant in an upscale California beach town. I saw so much crazy behavior around food, from customers choosing their menu items with crystals, to those who had laminated cards to give to the kitchen explaining the two dozen foods they couldn’t eat. So much of it was clearly irrational, but there were also lovely customers with legitimate health concerns. Later, when I opened a bakery, I started to interact with customers who wanted gluten free and vegan baked goods. From my perspective, moral beliefs and health concerns were being conflated, confused, and often misguided. It was hard to tell what the real issues were and what were neurosis.
This continued at each of my businesses. Swaths of customers at my food truck who couldn’t eat our hearth-baked pita. Customers of my food delivery business that had a family member with food intolerances or severe allergies. Each year, as I got to know my clients better, I saw that there was something legitimate going on. It wasn’t just new age wackadoodle.
I’ve made it decade long study to try and understand the root causes of these troubles, to separate the truth from my appealing beliefs. But I suspect you may still be harboring some judgements about nutritionists. I’d love to hear what they are!
The truth is you can have both pleasure and health. It does require discipline, and some short term restrictions for the sake of understanding your body. But once it becomes clear what your body needs and how you should be eating , creativity and joy should absolutely be a part of the equation. If you are feeling unwell and suspect food to be a cause, or otherwise motivated enough to work with some type of health coach, make sure they are holding all this nuance, including the essential ingredients of enjoyment in the center of your health story.
