Some great chefs are in Dublin today to launch the 2026 Michelin Guide. It’s the first time that the event will be held here, reflecting the much vaunted vibrancy of the Irish food scene. Anyone who likes fine dining will take an interest. And why not? There is nothing wrong with eating well. Indeed, who could possibly object to the Oscars of the restaurant world?
In addition to being a big employer – 220,000 people work in the sector – Ireland’s restaurants provide a valuable public service. The razzmatazz in Dublin today is surely good for morale at a time when many restaurateurs are struggling with a business proposition that no longer makes sense, and prize-winning institutions like The Tannery in Dungarvan, Co Waterford, are deciding to close down. How could anyone lament a focus on exceptional hospitality?
As a recovering restaurant critic – here and elsewhere – I have come to realise that there are several good reasons to feel queasy about the Michelin hullabaloo.
The first is that most of the time, Michelin-starred food is not what people eat. It is very far out of reach for the majority of us. All of this attention on elite cuisine glazes over the unedifying reality of how we actually eat. A lot of the food consumed in this country is ultra-processed and cheap, if only in the short term, because that’s all many people can afford.
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We are fascinated by Michelin and completely bored by food poverty. Last Christmas, more than 3,000 people queued – many of them overnight – for food parcels from the Capuchin Centre, but we don’t want to hear too much about that.
Even when food appears to be abundant, it discriminates against the poor. Did you know that obesity is overtaking smoking as a predictor of premature death? In Ireland, six in every 10 adults are overweight or obese. Class is the signal here: the phrase “fat cat” emerged because great weight was thought to equal great wealth. No more.
According to the Irish Heart Foundation, junk food brands target children online with three ads every 10 minutes. If someone stood outside your house all day, screaming at your children to buy rubbish that makes them sick in the long term, you would call the police. When that same creep is yelling at your kids online, there is almost nothing you can do about it.
As a result, six-year-olds across the globe are presenting to doctors with high blood pressure, according to an Oxford University study. Ireland is not immune: nearly 18 per cent of Irish children live with overweight and obesity. In Deis schools, the rate is one in four.
Great chefs spend their lives thinking about what we eat. They are qualified to talk about the impact of ultra-processed food and the way it’s marketed to children. Yet they rarely do so.
Indeed, experts on the subject of food regularly choose silence – or else repeat talking points from the tobacco and alcohol industries. “If you eat junk food,” a famous chef once told me, “you deserve your fate.” The “personal responsibility” mantra comes from industries which pioneered the art of victim-blaming. Meanwhile, the childhood obesity rate remains steady but persistently high, and it’s far more prevalent in children from disadvantaged backgrounds. The language of choice and personal responsibility is supersize drivel.
Let’s not be too pessimistic. Societal norms are always changing. One day, it will become obvious that the cost of treating the diseases of obesity far outweighs the so-called freedom to peddle sugary drinks. At that point, we will tell the creeps to leave our kids alone, and junk food marketing will be banned, just as tobacco advertising is outlawed today. Until then, there is an opportunity for anyone who claims to care about good food to show us they mean it.
As the giants of the restaurant world descend on Dublin, the finishing touches are being put to our national children’s hospital. Near the entrance, Ronald McDonald House will accommodate the families of sick children. Perhaps you imagine that anyone who puts up families of sick kids must have a big heart? Sadly, it’s not that simple, because many of the patients in that new hospital will be treated for the diseases of obesity, such as diabetes and hypertension, and Ronald McDonald is a fictional frontman for McDonald’s. Who do these clowns think we are?
In 2024, Professor Donal O’Shea said he was “angry” about Ronald McDonald House. Our leading expert on obesity told The Irish Times: “We have an obesity epidemic that is driven by ultra-processed foods and this is advertising.”
Yet Ronald McDonald looks set to have his way. Historians of the future will wonder how we spent so much time discussing the composition of an amuse bouche and the perfect cheese soufflé, and how we got caught up in arguments about voluntary codes, changing recipes and active lifestyles, instead of just banning the marketing of junk food.
As some great chefs arrive into Dublin to celebrate another year of star-chasing and moral equivocation, I don’t expect food poverty to be on the menu. The omission is unworthy of people whose vocation in life is to nourish the stranger.
I refuse to believe that the politics of food production can be ignored for much longer. I have to imagine that Jamie Oliver is not the only hero in this story and that before too long, a few more culinary giants might help to focus attention on a public-health crisis, by backing campaigns to tackle obesity with the same warm welcome they currently give to the men from Michelin.
Because chefs are good people. This may be the year when they learn to digest the facts.
Trevor White is a writer and founder of the Little Museum of Dublin
