October, 2006 

Do you need a food coach? They go shopping with you to help you decipher ingredient labels, help you build a repertoire of nutritious meals that you like, and stock your fridge and pantry accordingly. It's like getting nutritional advice, cooking lessons and motivational training in one fell swoop. 

Food coaches are quite new on the foodie scene, but in recent years, our obsession with process rather than product has not only spawned new food related professions, but has also redefined old ones. Food stylists are not new, and there's too many of them in my opinion, so like the picture to the right, don't we get too much overstyled food? But nowadays, everyone seems to know their professional tricks, undermining in a way, their professionalism. 

We all know don't we, that that just-cooked-steamy look of a dish in a magazine is achieved by a hidden tampon dipped in water and microwaved, or that the best way to make a chicken look perfectly roasted is to cover a raw chook with a brown sauce and dishwashing liquid. And what of the celebrity chef? You can't just be a great chef anymore, you have to be dripping in good humour and personality (and nutritional civic mindedness) like Jamie Oliver or be oozing with breeding and sex appeal like Nigella Lawson, or be deliciously cantankerous like Gordon Ramsay. You've got to sell books, TV programs, magazines, pots, pans, aprons and a line of gourmet sauces. Of the new foodie professions, John Harrison has the best job I reckon. He is the official ice cream taster at U.S. ice cream giant Dreyers. His tongue is insured for U.S.$1 million.

In Japan, food sommeliers have begun to appear in supermarkets. We've heard of cheese sommeliers, and we have a few of those in specialist cheese rooms in Sydney, but it gets a bit much when you have carrot and tomato sommeliers. Are these signs of our post-consumerist society, where we are obsessed with knowledge about the product than the product itself? The problem is that this obsession is taking us further and further away from the heart of food--the simplicity of just enjoying cooking and eating.The nicely cooked meal that you share with friends and family, that comes from the generosity of your heart rather than a need use the newest trendiest tomatoes or a recipe plucked from the book of the celebrity chef de jour is facing extinction.So we are trying to encourage a revolution.

First, let's reinvent tradition by rekindling our mum, dad or grandmother's recipes. What's wrong with grandma's meatloaf recipe? Secondly, let's forget the latest fads and trends and rediscover the simplicity of enjoying food. Ox heart tomatoes and hiramasa kingfish are nice, but so are tomatoes that inadvertently sprout from the compost heap or freshly grilled sardines. Third, let's keep our obsession with food porn to a minimum. Nigella is fine, but you don't want to get addicted.

a rampantantly bold and opinionated editorial by Masako Fukui, Kei's Kitchen

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