Celebrity chef Michael Smith presses families to avoid factory-made foods
Michael Smith is fed up with consumers' reliance on processed food.
The P.E.I.-based chef, who has long advocated for healthy homemade meals, laments that many people accept it's OK for factories to do their cooking.
"The results are in—and they're horrific,'' says Smith, adding that even though people have long been told that processed foods are low in nutrients and high in sugar, sodium and fat, they continue to eat it.
The costs of eating poorly aren't just reflected in what Canadians pay at the grocery store, he adds.
"It's certainly what just came out of their pocket, but it's not the true cost. The true cost is being borne in health care. And this isn't surmising or guessing or tree-hugging or granola-eating or anything. This is straight-up, hard-core fact,'' Smith says."All the leading causes (of death) are directly related to food, to processed food. Salt, sugar. The greatest marketing opportunity in the history of food, the single biggest ever No. 1 was low fat.... Low fat became high-processed sugar. More people have been killed by low fat than anything else in history.''
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Smith's new cookbook, his tenth, is"Real Food, Real Good: Eat Well with Over 100 of My Simple, Wholesome Recipes'' (Penguin), and seeks to get people's attention with ``some pretty hard-hitting language that really calls out Big Food Inc.''
"The recipes serve as an example of once you get into that mind space it doesn't have to be complicated. It doesn't have to be obscure, just straightforward home cooking. No big deal. Just relax. Just cook.''
Smith encourages home cooks to become informed, clear their shelves of processed foods, change shopping habits and read labels, being especially wary of disguised sugars and long lists of chemical names.
He recommends stocking the kitchen with superfoods—kale, spinach, root vegetables, ancient grains, legumes, nuts, seeds like quinoa and chia, yogurt, eggs and fruits.
Smith catalogues "so-called foods'' to avoid, such as bacon bits that are devoid of real meat, sugar-laden breakfast cereals, pre-grated Parmesan cheese that doesn't require refrigeration, and cake mixes and frostings that can sit at room temperature for years.
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Smith suggests home cooks use natural animal fats like butter and lard, which have been "demonized for far too long,'' instead of vegetable oils that have been heated and processed into shortening or margarine.
Whatever one chooses to eat, the key is always moderation—unless it comes to plain old tap water, of which Smith encourages people to "drink lots.''
"Bottled water is just an expensive convenience,'' he writes. He emphasizes that fruit juice is simply a high-calorie liquid offering little nutrition, and soda pop, or "liquid sugar,'' is the "single worst'' way to consume calories.
Smith is a judge on "Chopped Canada'' but is devoting most of his time to his newest venture, the Inn at Bay Fortune in Prince Edward Island. He's published seven cookbooks in seven years but says the next one might not be strictly focused on home cooking. It may be a few years in the making, as he plans to write about his new world at the inn, where he hosts an interactive dining experience called FireWorks.
"It's not simple to build a fire and let it die down to coals and bury onions in the ashes and wait maybe half an hour, or if they're bigger, maybe 45 minutes. How do you write that recipe for home cooks?''