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TV chef Jamie Oliver's nuggets of sense

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Susie O'Brien
July 30, 2008 12:00am

IT doesn't matter whether you like your celebrity chefs to be buxom, blaspheming or in the buff.
Nigella, Gordon and Jamie are doing their best to change the way we shop, cook and eat for the better.
Because let's face it, if you are what you eat, then most of us are total rubbish.
Think about everything you ate over the past 24 hours - how much of it was home-cooked or bought fresh?
How much came from a packet?
Like me, you might be doing the best you can, and this means picking basic foods such as cereals, margarine and bread, with as many added nutrients as possible.
But a new book hijacks the health claims of such products, arguing instead that any food that is so manipulated as to contain all those extras is bad, not good for you.
In In Defence of Food, Michael Pollan argues that most of what we eat these days is not actually food but "edible food-like substances" packed full of "nutrients", which have not even been proven to make us more healthy.
These days it's just about impossible to buy any item that isn't spruiking itself as having "Omega 3 added" or "7 vitamins and minerals" or "rich in antioxidants A and E".
But read the fine print and you'll see that the white bread with "twice the fibre" and "added vitamins and minerals" probably has up to 15 ingredients including emulsifiers, vegetable gum, hi-maize starch, ascorbic acid and the enzyme amylase.
Although I've bought such products for years, I'm totally clueless as to just what half these ingredients actually are, and what they might do to my body.
Try, for instance, to buy a tub of plain butter from the supermarket - it's a bit like trying to find an ex-boyfriend with a nice story to tell.
As a harried working mum of two young kids, I have spent years taking the quick and easy food options.
It took the Naked Chef, Jamie Oliver, to remind me that all this convenience comes at a great cost - the health of my kids.
A few years ago he was showing British school kids just how little chicken is actually in a nugget.
To do so, he stripped a chicken of its meat then put just about everything left except the bones in a blender.
This, he told the kids was what chicken nuggets were really made with.
With one TV special and an extra-large blender, Oliver changed overnight the way I fed my family.
In a brave move I've turned my back on the processed and the packaged, and now try to feed my family food I've actually cooked myself. It's more work and more mess.
But at least I know what I'm feeding my kids. And it is definitely cheaper.
My nuggets have just five ingredients: diced chicken thigh meat, and batter made with breadcrumbs, egg and flour.
They're doused with olive oil and baked in the oven.
But the frozen breast medallions I used to buy are made up of just 52 per cent chicken and have an astonishing 23 ingredients in total. So what should we eat?
I'm the first to admit I don't always get it right, but thanks to a handful of good celebrity chefs - not to mention mums - there's no shortage of good ideas out there.
Pollan also offers a few tips: don't eat food with more than five ingredients, or ingredients that are unfamiliar and unpronounceable. Or food that your great grandmother wouldn't recognise. It's not easy and I know my fridge often fails the Pollan test. But if we are what we eat, then we should at least know what we eat. It's all food for thought.
susie.obrien@bigpond.com