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Delia Smith, Castigated by the Foodie Faithful

by Zoe Strimpel
Tue, 8 Apr 2008

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Poor Delia Smith. The iconic chef, whom many have seen as the shining, classic embodiment of the happy British kitchen for a generation, has caused such a catastrophic backlash with her latest TV series, "How To Cheat at Cooking," that she might never recover. Alas, Ms. Smith, who suggests using ready-made foods, such as frozen mashed potatoes and packaged grated cheese, has angered pretty much every member of the food police in Britain, from yuppie to medical charity. The campaign group Consensus Action of Salt and Health (CASH) has collected figures showing that Ms. Smith uses far too much salt in her recipes; her Carbonara Real Quick, with its bacon bits and lots of Pecorino, contains 7 grams per serving. The recommended daily salt intake is 6 grams. CASH accuses her of putting people's health at risk with the recipes in this series — as if Delia is single-handedly going over to people's houses and poisoning them, or forcing their hand at the stove. Some reports have even had her responsible for potentially "killing" people with her recipes.

Heart Research UK warned that the recipes on "How To Cheat at Cooking" should be taken with a pinch of — well, not salt — and only used occasionally. The group's lifestyle manager, Denis Armstrong, said: "It's a shame that Delia hasn't used her good reputation to encourage people to eat a healthier diet by demonstrating the many ways to make quick and easy meals, using healthy ingredients, without resorting to high salt, high fat foods." Evidently in these days of food-obsessed, organic-mad, locally sourced, environmentally crazed uprightness, Delia has done just about the worst thing possible.

Rather than pretending that your average Joe — and Delia lover — is suddenly going to up and out to the local farmers' market and spend four times more than usual on the purest of ingredients, Ms. Smith has just decided to work with reality. Writing in the Times of London last week, Caitlin Moran said it absolutely perfectly: "The most upsetting aspect of the ongoing Delia-ruination, however, is that — much like Christ before her — she is actually being punished for the greater crimes of mankind. Delia's tragedy is that she is the first and, indeed, only TV chef to acknowledge how awful our diet is. All she has done is be realistic about the pitiful hydrogenated spaff we live off, and suggest that, if we are going to have oven chips, that we at least serve it with some (frozen) green beans on the side. But this, of course, punctures our fantasy that we all live off sorrel leaves and spatchcock chicken, eaten off some 'funky' plates in Jamie's dovecote. And so, unable to deal with the truth, we must exile her." Hear, hear.

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