A review by n_nazir
The Angry Chef: Bad Science and the Truth about Healthy Eating by Anthony Warner

2.0

I agree with so much of this book and am in complete favour of anything which aims to debunk nonsensical pseudoscience. I think the problems I had with the book were firstly, the angry, shouty style and 'cute' tics of having 'Science Columbo' probably work better in a blog format, in a full length book it becomes repetitive and annoying quite quickly. Another thing I found grating was the constant 'celeb' bashing (one in particular); now, I never thought there would come a day when I would feel compelled to defend this person; and that day has still not arrived, but after a while, the bashing stops being comedic or useful and just becomes mean. The person he discusses so much, is a symptom, not the cause of a lot of this nonsense. Take her out of the equation, another insipid 'celeb' will take her place. I think making her the central baddie as it were, rings hollow. The chapter on eating disorders. Oy vey. That was heavy handed and not particularly well written; apologising for stupid comments you've made in the past about eating disorders does not absolve you of responsibility for the cack handed mess this chapter was. Finally, the chapter on processed food was just...bad. He discloses that he works for a food manufacturer, fair enough. But to have this uneven, 'not all processed food is bad and actually, telling people to cook is like, totally sexist' is reductionist and about as un-nuanced as you can get.
I am all for debunking nonsense, especially nonsense that poses as science and whilst I genuinely applaud the effort of this book, the execution is somewhat flawed. And that is a shame because some good quality debunking is very clearly needed in this subject area.