There have been more than a few students I’ve taught with a nutrition background, whether classical or holistic.  They don’t teach nutrition students how to cook when they’re in nutrition school, and likewise most cooking schools do a superficial job teaching their cooking students about nutrition.  Furthermore, the food industry, from fast food to fine dining, focuses mainly on food to look and taste good and not necessarily be good for your health.

So should food first and foremost to be good for our health, and should it please our senses?  Why can’t it, and generally doesn’t, do both?  The old saying “never trust a skinny chef” seems odd because the counter means you shouldn’t trust your health to a fat chef.   When I look at the cooking techniques schools teach their students, they are translatable into any cuisine or style of cooking, even any attitude towards nutrition.  All culinary instructors will transmit their own style and cultural/ingredient affinities.  Some love their butter, are generous with salt and pepper, are liberal with their olive oil, can’t do without bacon and bacon drippings, rely on spices, are turned on by the hot flame and very loyal to their grill, salamander, deep-fryer, or a screaming hot pan; whereas some are very light-handed with fat, salt, spices, heat, and tend to manipulate and transform ingredients as little as possible.  In other words, some cooks are more devoted to technical transformation and manipulation of flavours and visual appeal on the plate, whereas some cooks are more devoted to consciously let choice ingredients do more of its thing and putting forth food that tries to achieve balance.  The former type of cook cares more about what happens in your mouth and what appeals to your eyes before eating the food;  the latter cares more about an overall experience, including what happens in your body after having eaten the food.  Another way of putting this, the former style of cooking is more about the chef and his/her artistry; the latter is more about the food and its bigger picture.  This begs the question “what is the role of the chef?”  Many are taking on the role as an educator for a public desperate for guidance, as the voice about our food system, influencing issues such as sustainability, supporting local farmers, seasonality, transparency.  Well done.   And it’s working.  As a whole we are flocking the farmer’s market for better and healthier ingredients.  So shouldn’t professional chefs be devoting more of their work to cooking healthier dishes with these better-for-you ingredients?  Perhaps this is the next “trend”.

This is why our attitude at our school towards nutrition is continually evolving.  Also, our students demand this.  By simply flashing the latest government nutrition guide to our students is not good enough – in fact, the guide itself needs a lot of work.  We will still teach our students the fundamentals, the classics such as a hollandaise/bearnaise sauce or a beurre blanc; but we will bring to their attention little details like finishing a risotto with cream and butter is a cop-out technique, adding unnecessary fat and calories to justify creaminess that should be achieved by reaching for a wooden spoon and not the fridge.  Our excitement and focus on grains and vegetarian cooking is as devoted to that of charcuterie.  In fact, we now purposely teach grain and vegetarian week AFTER charcuterie week so the students will appreciate well-balanced dishes that much more after a week of pork belly, confit, rillette, galantines, terrines, sausages, bacon, and duck fat.