Julie & Julia reminds us that cooking used to be about taste not calories, says Joanna Blythman


Do they have staff development days at the Food Standards Agency ? If so, I'd like to send the team along to see Julie & Julia, the new film about the American food writer Julia Child and her fan Julie Powell, who set herself the challenge of cooking every one of the 524 recipes from the seminal book Mastering the Art of French Cooking, written by Child and her French collaborators, Simone Beck and Louisette Bertholle.

It's not that Julie & Julia is a great film US film directors habitually treat any subject that involves cooking and Paris with as much sophistication as Disney's Ratatouille but I'd like to see the FSA team's reaction to the food. Julie & Julia is positively dripping with fat; it's one long celebration of the delights of butter (Child believed that you could never use too much), fatty roasted duck, plump chicken stuffed with pork sausage meat, and cheese boards decked with oozing Brie. This film contains enough calories to cause palpitations in the entire FSA nutrition team.

Food safety boffins will also be stirred to boiling point at any number of hygiene no-nos; fingers stuck in mixtures with raw eggs, food held at room temperature, wooden chopping boards. As for the HACCP analysis of opening an oyster or splicing a live lobster in two... well, that won't be featuring in school food technology classes any time soon.

What is so refreshing about Julie & Julia is that it takes us back to a time when we could see a recipe for boeuf Bourguignon and think, "Yum" not "But isn't red meat bad for me?"; a time when we looked at Roquefort and thought, "How delicious" not "Is it contaminated with listeria?" or "Is the salt level within FSA guidelines?"

I sometimes wonder if our public health gurus have ever truly experienced the pleasure of cutting into a buttery, caramelised tarte Tatin or felt compelled to nibble that crisp, golden chicken skin or tidy up the gaping innards of a creamy, ripe cheese. If so, I might be more inclined to follow their ordinances. But all they seem to be doing is turning us into a nation of neurotic calorie counters who, ironically, get fatter by the minute.

A rethink is necessary so why not start with the film followed by a discussion over a meal of Child's recipes ? If that doesn't loosen some stays, then nothing will.n

Joanne Blythman is a food journalist and author of Bad Food Britain