Speech I did on food, life & MS at the ms society 12/03/16

I was lucky as a kid, we lived mostly in the country, and mum was a great home cook. We tended to eat little processed food and were blessed with a vegetable plot, so we ate generally what we sowed.

Of course my favourite suppers were birds eye beef burgers or findus pancakes which my mother kept stocked in a freezer, but sitting down for a home cooked meal with family and friends, was what it was all about.

My mums influence in the kitchen, had a positive impact. Instead of choosing woodwork/metal work, as a course choice at school, like most lads of my age, I choose Home Economics. It helped me to learn the rudimentary elements of cooking.

I finished school with high expectations. I was going to run the Dorchester Hotel – so I signed up for a catering course at my local college in Exeter, but hated it, besides of the cooking and left after a year. Subsequently I never worked in a kitchen again and everything I’ve learnt since has been self taught.

Back then the food resaturant business was not very sexy or desirable – suffering long hours and low pay. The only TV chef I seem to remember was Fanny Craddock and to be honest, as a country we all had little access to culinary spices and flavours and a limited knowledge of food from other countries.

I remember my sister went to Spain and told us they fried their chips in olive oil – we all thought they were ‘crazy’ – copying Manuel out of Fawlty Towers and the closest I ever got to a curry before I went to Sheffield polytechnic in the mid eighties, was my dads efforts on Boxing day, or the ones with vespa printed on the packet.

It was a different time and a different world.

Obviously things have changed dramatically in the last 30 years and in many ways we’ve gone through a food revolution. Easier Travel has allowed us to visit new countries and try new cuisines.

Trying Octopus in Spain for the first time, I fell in love. Then there was the gorging of Mexican food when visiting family in California. Everything had cillantro in it, which I later found out was Spanish for corriander, so prevalent on our food counters nowadays but then I’d never heard of it. I thrived upon these new taste experiences.

The multi cultural landscape of the country has also changed dramatically in my lifetime. Diversity has added flavour, colour and taste to our cooking as we as as a nation have supposedly intergrated into world cooking.

When living in Bristol, a local cafe sold this amazing goat curry. It was hot but totally different to anything I’d tasted before. Asking the cook what was her magic ingrediant she retorted ‘a scotch bonnet darling’.

As I wandered home later, slightly wobbily from the Red Stripe I thought she was having a laugh, what’s a hat from Scotland, got to do with curry – I had so much to learn.

Of course the last 30 years and explosion of the mass media industry have educated us about food and made it so more accessible.

Any night of the week on TV will have some celebrity chef CONJURING up their magic, I’m not allowed to speak if Bake off is on by, Julie, my wife but we’re both engrossed and looking for ideas.

There then are the multitude of options online to get your teeth into. Infact cooking ideas and recipes and qualtative ingredients have never been so plentiful, yet we still seem to have a problem getting the right things into our bodies and knowing whats good and what is bad for us.

We face a constant bombardment of marketing about food and in this day and age, and a supermarket is never a stones throw away to further whet our appertite. However hectic lifestyles, adhesion to our mobile phones, means if anything we are cooking less and seeing the erosion of family meals so pivotal for helping steer our children in the right direction.

The change in lifestyles and increase in worlwide population has allowed many food manufacturers the opportunity to dictate their own playing field.

Constant pressure to produce cheaper food saw the emergence of High fructose corn syrup and trans fats in the 70’s both bad health choices, but widely used in the industry as cheaper alternatives to animal fats and sugar.

This branding of unhealthy food options, endorsed by the establishment, and our pecieved lack of time, means on average each of us can only cook 6 meals from scratch. Subsequently many of us have become reliant on fast food, takeaways and processed food.

This eyes wide shut approach to food consumtion, has had a disasterous impact on our long term well being and our over stretched health services.

A recent survey (should have said – Our survey says) Which diseases do you fear most. The answers surprised. MS which affects over 100k people was riding high above diabetes and heart disease, whose numbers dwarf it in comparism with over 3m/2.5m sufferers respectively.

Yes of course MS has an unpredictable outcome and there is the fear of the unknown, but that sobering statistic, means many of us are careering down a path oblivious to the dangers ahead, hoping that one day, they’ll be a pill to make it all go away.

It’s hardly surprising then that disease has increased five fold since the 70’s. Off course we have to take into account environmental factors such as pollution and sadly the mental health curse that afflicts our society,but we all, whatever our circumstances owe a responsibility to future generations, to teach them to help themselves.

It’s important as the direction there getting at the moment isn’t working, certainly when it comes to food.

In many ways then The Disabled Chef was born out of this frustration. A play on words really if you want, aimed at the countless ‘disabled’chefs, across our country.

It’s a project that has helped give me direction living with and attempting to manage a chronic disease, in my case Primary progressive multiple sclerosis.

When diagnosed back in ’97, the best advice the neurologist offered on diet was to ingest lots of star flower oil -it was a pretty depressing and barren lanscape.

I took some heart though from Sun Tzu (a famous Chinese general) who wrote – The art of war, which can be interpretated to every day life. His teachings said to win a battle, one has to know ones enemy and one has to know yourself.

Like most of us newly diagnosed I immersed myself in my enemy, trying to find the best ways of fighting it. I tried many alternative therapies like hyper-barbic oxygen, acupuncture searching for a miracle cure but as we all know it’s not as easy as that.

Much of what I was reading pointed towards a link between diet and prevalance of the disease.

At the time Prof Swank and Judith Graham were the big news. They proposed the eating of lean meats, cutting out of glutten and eating organic produce.

Needless to say it was expensive, beyond my means and likely to result in a total overhaul of my life.

The problem with me, as I suspect others, is I’m often open to temptation. I have my own way of doing things and cutting out the simple pleasures in life, didn’t make me very happy. Infact the search for redemption probably made me feel sicker.

It was my Dad who set me on the right path. He’d lived with type 1 diabetes for over 30 years and never bowed to it. He often said ‘If he’d followed every doctor, dietician or do gooder, he’d have died a sad man years before’.

This philosophy saw him well, he still loved a good gin & tonic to the end and lived a long and happy life, all be it with a few mad hypos thrown in.

In many ways I found myself through my father. After our chat, I stopped chasing shadows, drew a line in the sand and decided to play the hand that I’d been drawn – my way.

Subsequently I’ve just gone on with my life,if anything embracing the battle ahead – and cooking has become a vital weapon. I try to avoid processed food and refined products, eat a varied diet but try to do everything in moderation.

Most of my cooking includes a variety of spices and herbs, used for centuries by different cutures for medicines. All right they might not cure you of MS, but they do add alot of taste and colour to your cooking.

To remember what I was cooking, I started recording everything onto a spreadsheet and started developing The Disabled Chef online, testing the recipes on my mates who subsequently made my flat their restaurant of choice.

What was important though besides some great food, was I was engaging with people, enjoying life and feeling better for it.
That’s the point of the site in many ways – bringing people together, sharing, having an enriched time. The home cooking is the catalyst – it’s the elixir of life in many ways.

Its been a work in process though and was delayed for a number of years because of other commitments. However an appearance on the BBC One show last year, cooking my lancashire hot pot, soon sent the old grey matter into overdrive.

Since then I have rebranded and launched www.thedisabledchef.com. I’ve still got to add a price list for the ingredients but once that’s achieved, you’ll be able to select any number of dishes to a shopping list, which will be exact with no wastage, saving on average 35% of your food bill.

Importanty it will allow you to eat stonking food, prepared and cooked by yourself, famiy or friends. The great thing is  you don’t need to be an expert either, as the recipes are easy to follow.

The sites also important for the health reasons I’ve raised. As a nation we need to get back to basics, educate ourselves about food consumption and look after our own.

If 1 person (i hope more) find salvation in my recipes and share them then it will be a success.

Finally besides of the cooking, the Disabled Chef helps give me a voice. Through my blogs and writings, I can raise awareness of disabilty and the trials and triumphs people face.

It’s also a long over due opportunity to get Primary Progressive MS on peoples radars. It’s 20 years since my diagnosis, a period which has seen no breakthrough on treatments – admittidly we only make up 15% of the MS population, but at times I feel we have been forgotten.

I’ve always held the line in those 20 years but now I’ve got the bug to take it forward. Everyone in our community should have a fair crack at the whip. If its going to take a pair of oven gloves to try and help achieve that – then so be it.