Gregg Wallace Slams Mary Berry's Comments About Deep-Fat Fryers
By Ed Biggs in Movies / TV / Theatre on 28 August 2016
Berry said in an interview that "no household should have a deep-fat fryer" - which 'MasterChef's Gregg Wallace described as an "attack on our British way of life".
‘MasterChef’ judge Gregg Wallace has hit back at comments made by ‘Great British Bake Off’s Mary Berry this week about deep-fat fryers, calling them an “attack on our British way of life”.
The seventh series of the perennial BBC favourite ‘GBBO’ kicked off on Wednesday this week (August 24th) with 10.4 million tuning in, but the comments in question came in an interview that 81 year old Berry gave to Good Housekeeping later in the week about the correct nutrition for children. She said that there was no reason for any family to own a deep-fat fryer, and spoke out against fizzy drinks for kids.
Mary Berry's comments drew sharp criticism from Gregg Wallace
“We need to teach parents about the right foods to give children. It's very difficult,” Berry said. “Many people think children must have chips. I don't think any household should have a deep fat fryer.”
Writing in The Sun on Saturday (August 27th), celebrity chef Wallace said that calling for a ban on deep-fat fryers was un-British, and that cooking in this way “brought family and friends together”.
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“To suggest getting rid of it isn’t just an assault on the deep-fat fryer but on the traditional British psyche. I love Mary dearly but this is an attack on our British way of life. We fry things, that’s what we do. It’s like banning the wok in China or outlawing the pizza oven in Italy. It’s ludicrous,” Wallace wrote.
Remembering his own childhood, the 51 year old chef continued: “Just thinking about it takes me back to happy times when what we call dinner now was known as ‘tea’ and we ate it around five o’clock. Dinner was what you had at school at midday. The smell of deep-fat frying was universal back then, wasn’t it? It brought families and friends together.”
He admitted that, while “we probably did use the fryer a little bit too much”, fatty food was fine in moderation, adding: “Our nation was built on chips and Spam fritters.”
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