Gordon Ramsay says the expression 'never trust a skinny chef' is bulls--t, and he has a good reason

pulse

November 5, 2018 6:19 PM

Rather than implying a chef's cooking is bad, not being overweight signals that a chef hasn't 'eaten all the good bits,' according to Ramsay.

"Never trust a skinny chef" is an often-heard saying, the thinking of course being that if a chef's cooking was half decent, how could they possibly resist stuffing themselves silly on a daily basis?

However, according to Gordon Ramsay, the expression is in fact "BS."

Speaking at the UK Michelin Star Revelation for 2019 in London last month, the celebrity chef explained how he believes that in order to be consistently excellent, a chef must "stay fit."

"Chefs, as you know, don’t have the world’s best eating habits," Ramsay said. "Any chef will tell you that they're lying if they say they sit down and eat dinner before cooking dinner. So, you stay nimble. You don’t eat before service and you taste everything."

Ramsay pointed out that the role of a chef today is different to what it was 20 years ago — nowadays, chefs are public figures whose services are often rewarded with honours such as knighthoods.

"It's BS when they say, 'Never trust a skinny chef,'" Ramsay continued. "I always say, ‘Never trust a fat chef' because they’ve eaten all the good bits!

"Trust a skinny chef because you know they haven’t indulged and eaten everything. It’s the customers that should be eating, you should be tasting, staying fit and in front of your brigade, to set an example."

He added: "Also, I love desserts, so if I was 25 stone, I don’t think it’s a great advert for my customers [who would] say, 'I'm not going to eat that dessert, look at the size of your stomach!'"

Eating little and often

Earlier this year, Ramsay revealed that he'd lost four stone (56 lbs) by changing his eating habits. Speaking on the Today show, he explained that he'd taken to eating little and often, and subsequently dropped the pounds.

There's nothing worse than eating dinner at 5.30 p.m. and then having to get up and cook for three hours," he said.

"So I like to keep on my toes, and eat small bits. Almost like in Hong Kong — four or five times a day, small bowls of food."

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