Experts at Department of Nutrition Forum Debate Good Eating
Boston Chef Todd English told tales of being educated in the liberal uses of heavy cream and butter as an apprentice chef in a French restaurant. "Food is about flavor," he said.
"Forget about fat free; forget about salt free," said Victor Gielisse, dean of culinary, baking, and pastry studies at the Culinary Institute of America. "Food without these two components is nothing more than cardboard."
Best-selling
cookbook author Mollie Katzen and Eric Rimm, associate professor in the
departments of nutrition and epidemiology, attended the forum.
While stating an interest in good nutrition, cooks and food writers grappled with how to translate health research into good meals at the Culinary Arts and Nutrition Forum last Monday sponsored by the school's Department of Nutrition.
The forum, which attracted food critics, writers and chefs from around Boston and across the nation, created a dialogue about healthy eating between researchers and those who present food and ideas about food to the public. Walter Willett, Fredrick Stare professor of epidemiology and nutrition, served as host of the event at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in Cambridge. He outlined the latest knowledge about carbohydrates in the diet, including the blood sugar effects of simple carbohydrates.
Meir Stampfer, professor of nutrition and epidemiology, described the risks and benefits of various categories of fat and the problems with the government's food pyramid. Eric Rimm, associate professor in the departments of nutrition and epidemiology, surveyed the major findings about alcohol and its benefits against heart disease.
Among the panelists was Mollie Katzen, best-selling cookbook author, whose works include The Moosewood Cookbook and Pretend Soup, an award-winning children's cookbook. She explained that food writers "are at the service of our audience, but we need to lead our audience. My readers want recipes that are fast, healthy and taste good...and they don't want to have to make it." That insight brought laughter from the crowd. Katzen warned against what she called "cerebral eating."
"You can learn a lot about nutrition, but don't take out that little calculator at the restaurant," she said. People should eat from "genuine physiologic clues like: I'm hungry. It looks good. I want to eat it."
Gielisse described efforts at his school to educate students in nutrition analysis. But, he said, "while most chefs feel responsible for the nutritional content of food they serve, they will not sacrifice flavor or quality of ingredients."
Jeffrey Steingarten, who is food critic for Vogue magazine and author of The Man Who Ate Everything. called HSPH researchers "fearless" and "extremely contrary" for challenging the paradigms that all fat is bad and that high carbohydrates are good. He called the government's food pyramid "a fad diet." "It's why the public by and large is not eating correctly," he said.
Roger Berkowitz, president and CEO of Legal Sea Foods, Inc. has taken to heart warnings about trans fat from Willett and colleagues. He has eliminated this detrimental category of fat from cooking at his 20 restaurants, substituting healthier kinds of unsaturated fat. "I was concerned it would change the flavor profile; you know how 'healthy' never tastes good," he told the audience. But a blind tasting in his restaurant revealed that people thought trans fat-free seafood had better flavor. Now Berkowitz is trying to eliminate trans fat elsewhere in his menu--in the oyster crackers. He is working with Nabisco, the crackers' manufacturer.
Berkowitz is a longtime member of HSPH's Nutrition Roundtable, a group of people with personal and professional interests in nutrition. It was announced at the forum that Berkowitz will be supporting a research fellowship here next year in public health practice in nutrition. It will be called the Berkowitz Family Legal Sea Foods fellowship.
After the forum, Paul O'Connell, chef and owner of Chez Henri in Cambridge,
served up a Cuban-inspired dinner to panelists. While it's good that leading
restaurateurs are talking about nutrition, O'Connell said, improvements
that will really affect the general public must take place "at the
'McDonald's' of the world."
