Hong Kong, 22 November 2017

TOTAL ABSENCE OF EDUCATIONAL SCHOOLS

The very first impression I receive overtime I arrive in Hong Kong is regarding food, the most frequent act of life, the action of eating. No wonder. A dynamic and busy life requires calories and nutrients. Restaurants, food shops and food vendors are located at every corner and everywhere, in every floor and every building. Toilets should obviously be at least as important and frequent, but unfortunately they are not. Good educational schools about eating should also be an absolute priority, but actually they do not exist. At the end there is no proportion between putting in and putting out, and there is no difference between eating right and eating wrong, between eating wise and eating silly.

TEACHING ILLUSIVE FLAVOURS INSTEAD OF REAL INNER FRAGRANCE

Big question. Where does it come from the food education of today’s Hongkongers? It comes from old habits and old prejudices some times, but from television and media instruction most of the times, or from wrong examples given by the majority, or from standard and economic solutions offered by McDonalds., her even by spectacular and misleading schools as Masterchef. Everything based on the taste of food and nothing on the their internal cleaness. Everything based on details about the right cooking and the proportion among salt, sugar and aromas, and nothing on the selection, on the basic values of simplicity, innocebce, digestion and vitality. No surprise if at the end people is taking antibiotics as they were candies. No surprise if prostate cancer for males and breast cancer for females are in rapid and inexplicable expansion.

GORDON RAMSAY INTERNATIONAL HERO AND EMPEROR

The image of Gordon Ramsay is in every corner, appears in any supermarket, in any accessible space to human eyes, as the cash-point of bar and restaurants. A real hero of our times, born, proposed and used by the big butchers of the planet as main agent and promoter to their projects of expansion and survival. The Masterchef idea is the fruit of a well planned project under a high level cinematographic direction, typical of the serial televisive stories as Beautiful. A formula which includes not only the ability to create new recipes, but also the emotion of competing with others, do be promoted or send back home, to be prised and exalted or to be brutally blamed. Seems a genuine happening while everything is prepared according to a pre-ordinated scheme. Hollywood in full action.

PROMOTION OF A SPECIAL IDEOLOGY

At the end, the real scope, the function and the real target of Masterchef is not the game itself, and even less the criteria on how to cook and evaluate the new chefs, but rather the promotion and the diffusion of a particular ideology about food. Here the food is seen as a material empty of any cultural content, as something anonymous and without any provenience, something void in terms of ethic-aesthetic-spiritual relevance.

A TEAM ULTRA-PAID FOR DEFENDING THE BIG BUTCHERS INTERESTS

No surprise that Ramsay plays a strategic role and makes 60 million dollars per year or maybe even much more. Also his colleagues are highly rewarded. Also the competitors, winners and losers are probably paid. The real games behind the scenic stage are more shady and sly than what appears externally, and they go much beyond of the pure and simple entertainment. Here it’s a matter of installing a barrage to the increasing loss of image and results of the world meat affairs. A matter of raising a Maginot line against the progressive and dangerous expansion of vegetarism and nutritional sciences based on health, on cultural and spiritual values which are totally foreign to the planners and the directors of Masterchef, and that heavily clash against the interests of the modern killing fields and extermination camps, besides the dominating triad composed by McDonalds, BurgerKing and KFC Kentucky Fried Chicken.

SCHOOL OF CYNISM AND OF NUTRITIONAL INDIFFERENCE

The important is the people receive a message telling that it does not exist a clean and a dirty food, a healthy and a pathologic food for the body, a pleasant and a revolting food for the soul. What matters is the consistency of cooking, the equilibrium between sweet and salty, and the idea that anything goes, as long as it has got a nice taste. Chewing something simple and genuine, something without the flavour of sufferance and blood, should have no more meaning and value, according to your point of view. Chewing brain, testicles, heart, liver and abdominal organs without any sign of discouragement and embarrassment, without unblinking, that seems o be the real mission of Masterchef, and all that is performed in professional and impeccable way. Have the vegetables got any role? Surely they have: they act as ornament to the central and fundamental plate called meat.

THIS PEOPLE DESERVE SOME COMMENT

A message to Gordon Ramsay and his colleagues? Compliments for all the success and for the fortunes you are accumulating. On the other hand you are teaching the people to go on with old errors and prejudices. You are teaching the world that in all plates there is the sweet, the dessert and even the vegetables, but always as ornament and completion of the steak, of the sliced meat, and of all the fruits which are not pendant from the branches of trees but from the blood-dirty hooks of the butching places.

MAKING MONEY ON OTHER PEOPLE’S SUFFERING IS NOT THE RIGHT SOLUTION

The critical aspect of the entire matter is that accumulating richness and forgetting all other values in a world dominated by our impermanence and temporariness is unworthy and risky. Nothing convenient exist in the world if based on the sufferance caused to others, warned a great teacher as Cicero.

WHAT KIND OF TEACHING ARE YOU PRACTISING?

The question that I pose to Ramsay and his colleagues is about his purpose and his prospects. I wonder if he is offering to the world knowledge, progress and innovation, or if he is instead generating confusion, ignorance and backwardness about a fundamental matter as eating well for the health of the body, of the mind, of the spirit, and for a minimal impact on the planet. This is the crucial point requiring transparent and sincere answers. Teaching bad and wrong things is not the best thing to do. Teaching tolerance and cynicism towards torture, towards the barbarism of mass killing in not without consequences. Also teaching indifference towards diseases caused by wrong foods is not acceptable. Being in the wrong track means assuming heavy responsibilities.

IN HONGKONG PEOPLE HAS URGENT NEED TO IMPROVE LIFE-STYLE AND DIET

Hong Kong people is lucky under many aspects. Having at disposal 12 months a year a very wide amount of fresh food resources at acceptable prices is a rare privilege. Oranges from South Africa, cherries from Australia, guava from Taiwan, mangoes, coconuts, pineapples, watermelons, sweet potatoes, fresh bananas from the Philippines, durian from Thailand, dragon fruits from Vietnam. Restaurants preparing favolous fried rice with vegetables in Vietnamese, Thai and Indonesian version, at a price of 5 Euros, and sweets with water chestnuts and coconut milk. What else can Masterchef add and teach in terms of improvement?

Valdo Vaccaro (technical assistance of Francesco and William)