Spoof #cleaneating character Deliciously Stella (comedian Bella Younger IRL, btw) has been putting the funny back into food for a little while now and chances are, you're already pretty familiar with her Instagram page.
Most recently, though, Bella joined forces with the National Federation of Bakers (yes, it's a thing. A beautiful, beautiful bready thing that represents the UK baking industry) to make some of the videos for the #BetterWithBread campaign that basically does what it says on the tin - celebrates how great bread is, in a very lolz kinda way, obvs.
You see, bread has been given a bad rep over the years. And although most of us really bloody love the stuff, we can't deny that between Instagram, #cleaneating and those old school 'carbs are bad' diets of the 80s, bread has dropped pretty far down on the scale of things that are socially acceptable to eat and enjoy. So, we caught up with Bella to hear about the new campaign, talk all things bread and work out why we've got such a weird relationship it.
Hi, Bella! So, tells us about how you came up with material for the #BetterWithBread videos.
Well, I really wanted to show how ridiculous life would be if we didn’t have bread. Bread is one of my favourite foods. Like, nothing gets me going like a bread basket. Imagine the absolute lunacy of not having toast to spread stuff on in the morning! And so, I just wanted to put myself into an extremely bizarre situation where bread would obviously be the hero and then just do something really ridiculous.
Do you have a favourite bit in the video that was particularly funny to film?
I mean, there’s quite a lot of jam involved which at the time was kind of messy. I got home from the shoot and went straight to bed, woke up and was like ‘Bella, you have jam in your hair, there’s jam on your back, how did you get into your bed you’re disgusting.’ Totally concerning but really funny.
Where do you think our worry about bread has come from? It’s definitely not a new thing, it feels like it’s been lingering around for a while.
It’s just this gluten mess, isn’t it? This demonization of gluten. It’s sort of like a backlog from the Atkins I think - that idea carbs make you fat. And then there was the whole eat clean thing with ‘gluten is bad for your gut’, and all of its absolute rubbish. Bread’s a really great part of your diet. It’ s really good to include in your day to day food plan and also it’s like 80 calories for a slice of bread!
Yeah, I think there is a worrying perception of bread = bad. Maybe we need to just take a step back and remember that we were quite happy eating food once upon a time.
Those were the days. I grew up eating white sliced bread all the time and I mean, you wouldn’t have said that I was unhealthy as a child or even that I’m unhealthy now, eating the amount of toast that I do.
It feels like white bread is now really uncool because everywhere you go it’s all about sourdough. Do you think bread has become far more complicated than it used to be?
What we don’t realise is that a slice of toast and a loaf of sourdough has exactly the same ingredients. Like, it’s all bread. It’s all the same thing. You’re just buying an artisan loaf that costs six pounds and is probably the same as buying a 59p loaf of sliced bread.
It’s great how you contextualise our weird relationship with clean eating. What do you think needs to be done to make it less troubling?
I just think we need more people with actual expertise. I am not a nutritionist or a dietitian, I am just trying to be a bit of voice of reason and play devil’s advocate with this whole notion that gluten is bad and you should only eat spiralized vegetables and all that jazz.
I think people need to question it more. They need to go ‘okay, this is a very beautiful lovely woman telling me what I should or shouldn’t eat’. But you have to look beyond that and think actually, does she know what she’s talking about? Because, most of the time, nobody does.
Have you ever been tempted by these diets that promise that if you cut stuff out you’ll be a different woman?
OMG I did every diet. I did one plan but I only ate cheese omelette so I got really fat. I think you were only meant to eat chicken breast. I did the Special K diet but I thought it just meant that you could eat as much Special K as you want. That’s definitely not the diet. I’d just get everything wrong all the time.
Instagram definitely plays a huge role in our relationship with food these days
What I wonder is, does anyone actually eat the food that they’ve spent two hours arranging or if it just sits on the side and goes brown? And how long did it take them to arrange that into straight lines? When I get up in the morning I’m like how quickly can I get from my bed to my door? I’m not gonna sit around for two hours drizzling on my porridge.
I suppose that is the beauty of bread right.
Literally.
So, what would your life be like without bread?
My life without bread would be a very sad, sad place. I would miss out because entire meals of mine are basically devoted to bread. I wouldn’t have breakfast anymore!
My favourite bread-based meal is just the classic bread basket. There’s nothing better than being in a restaurant and a bread basket coming and it’s just like ‘yeah I’m going to ruin my dinner by eating all of the bread’. The worst thing, though, is when people are like ‘I’m being good today I’m not going to be eating the bread’ and I’m like, why are you doing this to yourself? Life is so short.
Deliciously Stella is supporting the nation’s bakers #BetterWithBread campaign, to find out more visit @WeHeartBread on Twitter
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.