The problem with Heston Blumenthal

Every few seconds, someone dies of hunger. That means that after reading this article, up to a hundred people in the world will have died from a lack of food. The World Heath Organisation estimates that two-thirds of the entire world are underfed or starving. I wonder what the starving would make of Heston Blumenthal’s “culinary alchemy”?

Blumenthal has risen to fame as a ‘molecular gastronomist’ since his first appearance on television in 2005. Whilst Gordon Ramsay is famed for his excessive swearing and Jamie Oliver for his “nudity”, Blumenthal is celebrated for his ‘liquid nitrogen’ or ‘egg and bacon’ ice cream. Is this pioneering and unique or an extravagant and absurd gimmick?

True, Blumenthal’s flagship restaurant “The Fat Duck” has won countless awards, not to mention its infamous three Michelin stars, so his unlikely combinations of ‘snail porridge’ and ‘vanilla mayonnaise’ can’t surely be as bad as they sound. Nonetheless, what ever happened to good old-fashioned cooking that tastes and looks good without the wastefulness, the cost to the environment or indeed the one hundred and sixty pound price tag?

A recent repeat of Blumenthal’s Heston’s Fairytale Feast on Channel 4 features an attempt at his most ‘ambitious dessert to date’ by bringing the fairytale of Hansel and Gretel to life through the construction of an ‘edible house’. Using marshmallow bricks and aerated chocolate doors, the “wicked witch” succeeds in luring a team of gormless celebrities through a fallacious forest to devour the house; a recipe for TV entertainment but also unnecessary opulence and excess. Blumenthal fails to realise that the 21st century is an era of Western immoderation and starvation.

I’m no Christian, but the line “Give us this day our daily bread” is a rather fitting reminder of the need to show gratitude for our sustenance. Blumenthal is symptomatic of the often-emphasised statistic that whilst there is enough food for the world’s population to live on, the rich minority world dominates the food supply at the expense of the poor.

Heston Blumenthal shows us that “fairytales” are possible in the culinary world. However, by the end of the day, thousands in the developing world will have died from hunger-related causes. This is one fairytale which does not have a happy ending.