When foodies lose it

I have to laugh at the excessive sturm und drang unleashed by an Italian chef.

A well-known Italian chef and television presenter has described vegans as a “sect”, declaring “I would kill them all.”

The comments by Gianfranco Vissani were made on an Italian television programme.

The high-profile chef, who often appears on television in Italy and has written numerous books, said: “Vegans? They’re like the members of a sect. They’re like Jehovah’s Witnesses. I’d kill them all.”

. . .

There was a swift reaction to the remarks on social media, even though they seemed to be made largely in jest.  “Vissani has been possessed by mad cow disease! Put him into isolation!” said one woman on Twitter.

“We can discuss whether or not they should be killed, but on the fact that they have become a sect, there’s no doubt, it seems to me,” another Twitter user wrote. A third wrote: “Even famous cooks make stupid jokes.”

. . .

Mr Vissani is by no means the first celebrity chef to be rude about vegans and vegetarians.

Anthony Bourdain, the American chef who wrote Kitchen Confidential and A Cook’s Tour before forging a career as a TV celebrity, wrote in one of his books:

“Vegetarians, and their Hezbollah-like splinter-faction, the vegans, are a persistent irritant to any chef worth a damn.

“To me, life without veal stock, pork fat, sausage, organ meat, demi-glace, or even stinky cheese is a life not worth living.

“Oh, I'll accommodate them, I'll rummage around for something to feed them, for a 'vegetarian plate', if called on to do so. Fourteen dollars for a few slices of grilled eggplant and zucchini suits my food cost fine.”

There's more at the link.

What can one say?

• Clearly, there's more to this than meats the eye.
• Vegetarians would as leaf not hear that sort of thing.
• I don't know about vegetarians being a sect.  After all, if they cut their food with a knife before eating it, isn't that dis-sect-tion?
• I suppose Italian chefs think that vegetarians are im-pastas.

I would say that Signore Vissani's remarks have set the cat amongst the pigeons, but I don't know if there are vegetarian equivalents to pigeons . . .




Peter