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Celebrity Chefs: The New Demagogues? - Keith Taylor, Porter Novelli
INSIGHT ARTICLE
Gordon, Jamie, Marco, Nigella, Rick, Hugh - in the UK there are so many celebrity chefs they‟ve practically become a celebrity sub-culture. But recently, TV chefs have moved on from being the well loved guardians of the nation‟s palates to a new role - defenders of the British food industry. Programmes like „The Great British Food Fight‟ on Channel 4 have seen Jamie Oliver, Gordon Ramsey and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall et al taking on crusades from saving the British pig industry to promoting chicken welfare - filling quite a few column inches in the process.
The programmes have been a big hit with the public and changed the nature of the debate about the food industry, but the series has also raised two bigger issues for me. Firstly, who is your average British consumer looking to now for trusted guidance on diet and „responsible food purchasing‟? Secondly, there are now strongly contradictory messages about food being propagated both these chefs and by the media.
The high profile persona of the TV chef is, of course, nothing new, but the scope of their influence seems to be ever-broadening. Increasingly, they are assuming the role of „moral guardians‟ - “you must buy British, check that label carefully, buy free range”. Now I am not saying that calling for clearer labelling, buying local and caring about animal welfare is wrong - in fact, quite the contrary. However, it is the relative power that these „celebrities‟ have that I think should be a concern. It indicates an erosion of trust in more traditional sources of advice on food and food issues: government and its agencies.
More troubling, however, is what I perceive to be a significant dip in the credibility of scientific experts. It is not so much that the findings of scientific research are wrong, it is more that the sheer weight of food and health and nutrition-related reports often contradict one another. There is too much unsorted information out there. Add that to consumers‟ suspicions around the self-interest of communications coming from producers and manufacturers and what you are left with is a vacuum of trust which Jamie Oliver, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and their colleagues are filling.
This brings me to my second point. There is a growing relationship between the exultation of food and fear. The chefs generally celebrate the indulgence in and accessibility of delicious and exotic food. Meanwhile, every time we open a newspaper or go online, we are reading about obesity, cancer, food prices or the latest food safety scare. This creates a feeling of being part of a „risk society‟. The consumer doesn‟t have the time or inclination to see the wood for the trees. Many of us end up overwhelmed and paralysed into lethargy, while still feeling that food is something to be feared.
Strangely, the two opposite forces of exultation and fear fuel each other. And who is it that tries to make sense of it all? You‟ve guessed it - the celebrity chef. In a sea of information, they are easy to understand and create the simplicity of instruction most of us crave. The more we heed their words, the more these entertainers will fill that vacuum of trust left by politicians, scientists and other authority figures.
Clearly, the days of activist celebrity chefs are with us. Good luck to them, but for those of us charged with the challenge of communicating on behalf of the rest of the food industry, let‟s try that bit harder. I do enjoy watching Jamie and his friends, but you can get a bit too much of a good - or bad - thing. Let‟s not put the entire onus on their shoulders to make sense of food. As professional communicators, we could learn a lot from their direct, simple approach. You never know, if we do this consumers might just listen to us a bit more.
