File - Chef Jamie Oliver arrives for a taping of the "Late Show with David Letterman," in this Nov. 10, 2008 file photo taken in New York. (AP2008)
Okay, so it wasn't surprising to hear that Paula Deen's butter laden concoctions weren't recipes of health. Even dishes prepared by chefs like Mario Batali have, at times, given us pause.
But now researchers in the U.K. say that celebrity chefs --almost across the board--are "exacerbating" health problems such as obesity in Britain by encouraging people to eat fatty dishes.
Reuters reports that a paper published in the Food and Public Health journal by University of Coventry on Wednesday stated that health professions found that 87 percent of the 904 recipes from the 26 cooks they tested fell substantially short of the British government's healthy eating recommendations.
"If people regularly use the recipes found in these cookbooks, it could be that celebrity chefs are exacerbating public health nutrition issues in the UK," study author and Coventry senior lecturer Ricardo Costa said.
The researchers didn't name names, but did note that they used a random sample of recipes from best-selling books and websites.
That this comes just months after British Medical Journal survey found that recipes by TV chefs, including Jamie Oliver and Nigella Lawson, were less healthy than ready meals, Reuters reports.
U.K. celebrity chef Annabel Karmel told Sky News that some recipes in celebrity books were bound to be indulgent, but people were smart enough to make healthy choices.
Wasn't that Paula Deen's line when she said, 'I'm not your doctor, I'm your cook'?
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