{"id":357071,"date":"2025-12-19T01:02:11","date_gmt":"2025-12-19T01:02:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/357071\/"},"modified":"2025-12-19T01:02:11","modified_gmt":"2025-12-19T01:02:11","slug":"yotam-ottolenghi-on-diet-trends-ozempic-and-why-food-can-be-a-tool-for-reconciliation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/357071\/","title":{"rendered":"Yotam Ottolenghi on diet trends, Ozempic and why food can be a tool for reconciliation"},"content":{"rendered":"

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

Yotam Ottolenghi\u2019s most recent cookbook, Comfort, came out last year.Jonathan Lovekin\/Supplied<\/p>\n

Through his bestselling cookbooks, British-Israeli chef Yotam Ottolenghi prompted a generation of home cooks to stock their pantries with tahini, za\u2019atar and bulgur wheat. But now, in the age of proteinmaxxing and self-optimization, it\u2019s a bit harder to sell people on a 17-ingredient fregola and artichoke pilaf. Since the pandemic, Ottolenghi has simplified his style of cooking, as captured in his latest cookbook, 2024\u2019s Comfort. <\/p>\n

The chef spoke to The Globe and Mail about Ozempic, trendy diets and why he thinks food can be a tool for reconciliation in the Middle East. <\/p>\n

You have published, at this point, thousands of recipes. Do you ever feel creatively stumped? <\/p>\n

I look at cooking a bit like music. There\u2019s an endless combination of notes and beats that you can put together. With food, every little iteration, every substitution, makes a completely different recipe.<\/p>\n

Nowadays, you see a lot of things that I\u2019ve had as a child in the 1970s coming back big time. These waves and these recurrences of particular dishes are reassuring. It means there\u2019s always room for a new take on an old idea. <\/p>\n

Much of the conversation around food today is about restriction, optimization. You tried intermittent fasting last year. Tell me about how that went. <\/p>\n

It didn\u2019t go well at all, because what I\u2019ve realized is that I\u2019ve got good instincts, and I don\u2019t need someone else\u2019s regime to tell me how to eat. <\/p>\n

I think I had a pretty good rhythm of eating breakfast, lunch and dinner \u2013 it\u2019s as old as history and I never questioned it. Once you start breaking your routines, a lot of new questions arise. If I skip the meal, what does it mean about the next meal? Can I eat a bit more? I think this is the problem with diets. It\u2019s very, very, very confusing. We do need to find what\u2019s good for us and for that, listening less to the outside world and listening more to yourself is, for me, the only way.<\/p>\n

People have responded to that confusion with weight-loss drugs like Ozempic. How do you think the rise of these drugs is going to change our culture\u2019s relationship with food?<\/p>\n

It\u2019s too early to tell. I think Ozempic and its likes are symptoms of our very unhealthy relationship with food. We eat in a rush. We cook less. Many of us have lost our knowledge of ingredients and how to cook. I don\u2019t really think that weight-loss drugs are going to fix the problem. They\u2019re just yet another incarnation of the problem. <\/p>\n

Earlier this year, I interviewed<\/a> your longtime collaborator and friend, Palestinian chef Sami Tamimi. He said when working on your co-authored 2012 cookbook Jerusalem, he felt like his concerns about the origins of some of these recipes were not heard, and he regrets not talking to you more about politics in the Middle East. How do you think about that time?<\/p>\n

I think that we talked about the situation in the Middle East quite a lot. I\u2019ve always been a very political person and very aware of what\u2019s going on. What we did in Jerusalem was an attempt to tell a big story of different communities that live around the same area. And I think we did the best possible job at telling a very difficult, painful story. I think we tried to say \u2013 without saying it \u2013 look, this is what people cook. And when you look deep down inside, there\u2019s a lot of affinities, there\u2019s a lot of similarities, but also there\u2019s still conflict. We tried to portray that. <\/p>\n

What do you make of all of the discussions around food and appropriation in the Middle East? Who gets to claim hummus as their own? <\/p>\n

I think food is in many ways borderless \u2013 things move from one culture to another, and that\u2019s one of the reasons why humanity has such a rich culinary culture. I think we need to preserve that ability to borrow, to be influenced, to be impressed by other people\u2019s food. <\/p>\n

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is one of those places where this is difficult, because claiming a dish is also a way of claiming your national identity. <\/p>\n

I have acknowledged that in Jerusalem and then I did a TV show for the BBC on Jerusalem and trying to find the commonality around food with Palestinians. I met many Palestinians, I went to a Palestinian home and we cooked together. Reconciliation, whenever it happens, needs to start somewhere. Yes, there is appropriation going on. Yes, there are terrible things happening. I wouldn\u2019t want to say that cooking together and cooking each other\u2019s food is a bad thing. I think it\u2019s the only hope we have.<\/p>\n

Sami has been really outspoken over the last two years about the man-made hunger crisis<\/a> in Gaza. In May this year, on Instagram<\/a>, he was calling out his colleagues in the food world who had been silent. And you posted<\/a> something that day about Gaza. Did you feel like he was calling you out?<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know. Whatever I\u2019ve done over the last couple of years has been because I felt compelled to talk and to say what I feel. I\u2019m terribly conflicted, because I really feel pain. I feel the pain of both sides, and I feel the pain because I think both sides are reeling in different ways. I genuinely felt that what was going on and happening in Gaza was absolutely terrible. And I said that, and I thought that was the time and the place.<\/p>\n

This interview has been condensed and edited.<\/p>\n