Celebrity chef Antony Worrall Thompson has apologised after he recommended use of a poisonous plant in recipes.In a magazine interview about watercress and other wild foods, Mr Worrall Thompson said the weed henbane was "great in salads".
Healthy & Organic Living magazine's website has now issued an urgent warning that "henbane is a very toxic plant and should never be eaten".
The chef had meant to recommend fat hen, which is a wild herb.
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He is unsure how the mistake happened.
I'll tell you how the mistake happened: it's one of two things, or maybe both.
1) It could be that Thompson is a bullshit artist who doesn't know the first thing about herbs or cooking or things you should or should not put in your mouth, and just picked the name of a cool-sounding plant out of his ass to add an exotic tidbit to his interview.
2) It could be that the editors of Healthy & Organic Living don't know everything about the subject of their magazine, which isn't absolutely terrible, but also don't a) employ factcheckers who do their jobs right, and b) don't know words, which is an absolute crime for people for whom words are their stock in trade: everyone who knows words knows that bane means "really bad shit that might kill you." That should have sent up a red flag for the editors.
More from the BBC:
Healthy & Organic Living magazine's editor Kate Collyns has written to subscribers to apologise.Her publication's website gives this advice: "As always, check with an expert when foraging or collecting wild plants."
Actually, the magazine's Web site is down at the moment. Perhaps someone fed it some web bane.
(Technorati tags: Antony Worrall Thompson, henbane, words, editors)
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