The healthy cookbook explosion
"This month's new release cookbooks are all about helping you to maximise your time and health, while serving up meals that are still delicious! " Booktopia
As you know I love cookbooks. You can never have too many, as they say. So when today's email from Booktopia came in, headed: "These new cookbooks will give you major food inspiration!" I opened it up, hoping to see something that I could anticipate buying at some time. (Mostly I just delete them without even looking at them.) But no - it was all healthy, vegan and all that stuff - except for the coda on the bottom - several books on how to cook over the top cakes and things. Ironic isn't it that these two trends go hand in hand? There are some rather more tempting vegetarian cookbooks around - Jamie Oliver, Nigel Slater, Matt Preston for example but on the whole they are by people I just don't know. Oops - I guess this just shows my age and my limited grasp of the health food scene. Maybe the names on the books on offer here are household names to the rest of the world.
But It do find it depressing to see, mostly, a huge number of books about keto and vegan diets, and if I see the words 'fresh' and 'healthy' in a book title again I'll scream. Well not really but you know what I mean.
"This year’s hottest and most hunger-stoking food writing has been in vegetarian and vegan books. Food writers have dedicated more time than ever into transforming everyday vegetables into centrepieces for dinner." Meera Sohda - The Guardian
It's not just Booktopia of course. Aldi, both last week and this week have had cookery books in the special buys section. Last week's lot were completely health fixated. This week it's Women's Weekly - not quite as healthy but almost, and actually covering three of the current bases I think - slow cooking, vegetarian and baking. From observing the bookshelves I think the other base is sustainability and the environment. If you go into any bookshop these days and you look at the cookbook shelves you will find by far and away the largest number of titles fit into the diet, health, vegetarian, sustainability and yes, baking, categories.
For example if you look at the Readings book site you will see their recommendations for cookbooks in their general category being at least two thirds in one or other of those categories I mentioned above, and then they have a few more 'special' recommendation categories which are:
Cookbooks for preserving and fermenting
Recommended vegetarian and vegan cookbooks
Recommended baking books
Recommended gluten-free and allergy friendly cookbooks.
At the beginning of 2019 they predicted what would be big in the coming year:
"There will be cookbooks on creating the perfect sauerkraut; there will be books on food options for mending your gut. There will also be pages and pages dedicated to cauliflowers (the new wonder food), Hawaiian food, and an extraordinary range of grains. It will be the year we hanker to create and share our locally grown food. It will be in those shared moments that the outside world will seem far away" Chris Gordon - Readings
I'm not sure that the prediction about Hawaiian food was correct but I reckon the rest was. And as for the ethics and sustainability of it all:
"As world politics bring more despair to us all, our yearning for the simple things in life like meals with family and friends will increase. We will look for ways to make our life easier and more considerate. Consequently, the food we prepare will be kind to the environment and nurturing to our souls. This year the flavours will be unpretentious, the ingredients will be local and you will be using cooking techniques that your great, great grandparents used." Chris Gordon Readings
So I checked out Amazon.com.au for their bestselling cookbook titles - updated all the time apparently and here is the list. There is not a single 'normal' cookbook on that list. They are all mostly about how to lose weight and improve your health. Michael Mosely and James Smith must be making a fortune.
I know I should be applauding this and I certainly do really but look - one of those bestsellers is called Sweet Vegan Treats and is all about making cookies and cakes, etc. There is an immense double standard thing going on here. On the one hand we are being educated in what we should eat, both from an ethical/sustainable and a health point of view, and yet at the same time the other most popular category is cake. Check out your gluten free aisle in the supermarket some time. It's all about cake and snacks.
I realise I am sounding a bit anti-health but look at those book covers - boring, boring, boring. Surely we can make these things look more tempting? Although these are the best sellers so I am obviously wrong. Readings lists are recommendations really, Amazon's are actual best sellers. Do people read them and follow the advice? It would be really good if they did. Because, as I have said before along with this major movement towards what can only be called a somewhat puritan mindset we have a major obesity epidemic.
it's not that I wouldn't buy a vegetarian cookbook. I have several and will probably buy more. But I don't see myself buying a vegan one, or any of those keto, paleo, clever guts, fast 800 or anything else diet book. Though I do have a Women's Weekly one on the 5/2 diet. Much more attractively packaged and truly delicious looking things in that. So really I'm a sucker for packaging. I admit it. But then aren't we all? Who is buying these best sellers and where do they learn about them? Morning television, Oprah?
I read a delicious magazine article in which various chefs were asked what they thought the 2020 trends would be. Still overwhelmingly sustainable, vegetable based, indigenous, healthy it seems. With the chef at Oakridge Winery - out here in the Yarra valley saying:
"she expects meat to take second billing on a lot of menus – the approach at Oakridge is to use it as more of a garnish."
Which is a complete reversal from the past is it not? Oakridge is not a cheap restaurant, so that's the other aspect of these trends - the fact that it's probably a trend in the middle to upper levels of society. Who is buying these books? What are the poor doing about all of this? Someone should write a cookbook aimed squarely at the people who frequent the takeaway stores and buy huge amounts of processed foods in the supermarket. But then I guess the free supermarket magazines do that. I just hope they are successful, because they do sort of try. If only they wouldn't push their processed and pre-prepared foods so much. Although I do understand, of course, that this is the whole 'raison d'être' of the magazines.
So it was sort of nice to read in that same article:
"I really resent trends so this is purely a wish - a hark back to cultural dishes attached to heritage and stories. Cooking from the heart rather than with the ego." Poh Ling Yeow
Please don't get me wrong. I think we should all eat healthily and exercise, more vegetables, more fish, etc., etc. but does the message have to be delivered in such a messianic fashion? And can't they at least improve the covers of those books?
