Calorific Celebrity Chefs: Jamie & Nigella’s Recipes Are “Less Healthy” Than Ready-Meals!

Are you a fan of Nigella Lawson? Do you swoon every time Jamie Oliver shows you how to make a meal in 15minutes? If so, you’ll be unhappy to hear the following news. Doctors have said that cookery programmes like Jamie’s and Nigella’s should not be shown before 9pm because their meals are so unhealthy.

According to some new research from Newcastle University, most celebrity recipes contain more calories and fat (and less fibre) than supermarket ready meals. Shocking or what?

In order to come to this conclusion, researchers studied the nutrient content of 100 recipes randomly selected from five cookery books by famed celebrity chefs (including Jamie and Nigella) and compared them to 100 pre-made meals from supermarket shelves.

The researchers discovered that the chefs’ meals contained a whopping 605 calories while the supermarket meals only contained an average of 494 calories. The chefs’ meals also contained 50 per cent more fat and half the fibre of ready-made meals.

“In the United Kingdom advertisements of foods classified as high in fat, salt, or sugar are prohibited during programming likely to appeal to children, and a 9pm watershed for advertising such foods has been advocated,” wrote the researchers in the noted British Medical Journal.

“No restrictions apply to the content of programmes with television chefs. For consistency, the nutritional content of all food portrayed on television, including that in programmes with television chefs, should be considered,” they added.

Not-so-healthy: Jamie's recipes are more unhealthy than a ready-meal say researchers

For years Jamie Oliver has been on a crusade against unhealthy food, so it’s pretty surprising that researchers have now put a red flag beside his recipes.

Profession Martin White from Newcastle University admitted that himself and his team of researchers were “a little surprised” at the results of their study.

“The Government says that processed ready-meals should not be eaten too often and meals should preferably be cooked from scratch. So we thought it would be interesting to see what the evidence actually showed,” said Professor White.

Speaking about celebrity chefs, Professor White said it was important that these chefs made their meals healthier.

“They have become immensely popular over the years. I can’t help but believe that, with millions of viewers, they don’t have some sort of influence over our eating habits,” Professor White added.

The researchers suggested that chefs should also include nutritional information in their cookery books so readers could decide how healthy they were for themselves.