Jamie Oliver has faced backlash after claiming he cooks best when he “thinks like a woman”.
In a recent interview with The Times, the TV chef said that women were more instinctive cooks in the kitchen, rather than men who focus their energy on “perfecting a method” and sticking to a formula.
While promoting his latest recipe book One, the 47-year-old chef explained that he taps into “more feminine traits” when cooking.
“As a young boy, getting a craft and this energy about Michelin stars and measurement and how you control nature as opposed to how you react to nature, which I think are more feminine traits like nourishment and more maternal feelings,” Oliver said. “If I’m ever good, I have to try and think like a woman.”
However, Oliver’s comments drew criticism online when social media users insisted that style of cooking should not be based on sex, claiming that there is no one way a woman cooks.
“How does one ‘think like a woman?’ Do all women think the same? How does Jamie activate woman brain? And are there really two ways to cook – like a woman and like a man? How do I know what way I’m thinking or cooking? Help!” said screenwriter Fran Harris.
“Jamie is being unfair to male chefs!” tweeted someone else.
“How does a woman cook Jamie?” another person chimed in.
While many people called out Oliver for his comments, the TV chef did however credit women for helping launch his career when he rose to fame with the BBC series The Naked Chef in 1999.
“My fame was driven by female journalists,” he told The Times. “You have to remember what it was like then. Men and women were going off to work together but men were [coming home and saying], ‘What’s for dinner, love?’ That would be very different now.”
The restaurateur also found that male-dominated kitchens have been “bad places to work” in his experience, and insisted that women are “needed” to “balance” professional kitchens.
Earlier this week, Jamie Oliver called upon the UK government to provide free school lunches for children. While appearing on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Tuesday, Oliver said around 800,000 children in the UK should be qualified for free school lunches, adding that saying the issue is centred around “the most vulnerable kids” in society.
“We are talking about how bad is bad, the most vulnerable in society,” he said. “So you could be on benefits and still not get those free school meals.”
“If you can create an environment where every child has the ability to thrive at school, we know in every way shape and form that kids who have a lunch and breakfast learn better,” Oliver added. “Their educational attainment is better. They do better, they get paid better, and they’re more productive. But no one’s taken it serious[ly] yet.”
