“If you only cost society money because you ate yourself ill, then society has the right to sanction you”: Tim Raue clearly calls for more government regulation of food – even if the star chef himself is only partially suitable as a role model .
Tim Raue is also known for his outspoken manner for his excellent cuisine. If the Berlin star chef looks at the prevailing eating habits in Germany, his anger is apparently about to boil over.
An interview that the 48-year-old recently gave to “Spiegel” suggests that impression. The chef is particularly upset about the excessive sugar consumption.
Germany is an “overly bureaucratized country,” Raue scolds at the beginning of the conversation. “There’s a regulation for every piece of shit here. Drugs are forbidden, alcohol and nicotine consumption is regulated, as is medication. Just not sugar.”
Anyone who deals with food even a little bit knows that nothing gets into the blood as quickly and directly as sugar.
Since the 1970s, Raue explains, more and more industrially processed foods have found their way onto Germans’ plates. Cooking freshly is now the exception. As a child, he too had fresh food prepared “at most every six or seven weeks” instead of ready-made products.
As a result, he now has “everything: gluten intolerance, lactose intolerance, histaminosis”. Raue is certain: “If we were kept away from certain foods as children as well as from drugs, cigarettes and alcohol, then that would be a great contribution to the general public.”
When asked whether the state was more challenged here, the TV chef (“The Taste”, “Ready to Beef”) answered in the “Spiegel” interview: “Sure! A state that is responsible for the safety of its citizens should also be responsible for their health. We could drastically cut the billions we’re pumping into healthcare if we banned foods with five times the recommended daily intake of sugar.”
For a while, he himself suffered from being really “heavy overweight”: “I wasn’t able to change anything on my own because I wasn’t strong-willed enough.”
He “mercilessly ignored the realization that he was harming himself because I enjoyed gluttony. That was my form of self-love.”
He later realized that his severe depression in his 30s was probably due to poor nutrition.
Even today, he still indulges in many a culinary sin, including a “huge obsession with fried foods.” At 15 kilos over his ideal weight, he couldn’t “play the senior teacher with a raised index finger”. However, “packing each other in cotton wool” does not help either.
“Everyone has become so politically correct that you can no longer say: You shouldn’t eat that,” says Raue.
“But now it’s always said: You have to leave everyone as they are. Complete nonsense. As a society, we are not a charitable association, but committed to one another. And if you’re just costing society money because you ate yourself sick, then I think society has the right to sanction you.”
The original to this post “Star chef bursting with anger because sugar is not banned in Germany” comes from the Teleschau.
