Seamus Mullen Trumpets the Secret Power of Good Food

By Tori Okner

One of the most compelling sessions of the James Beard Foundation Annual Food Conference was a dialogue between doctors and chefs, entitled “Allies for Health.” The session featured Seamus Mullen, the chef/owner of Tertulia, author of "Hero Food" and a 2014 JBF Award Chef Semi-Finalist.

As moderator Kim Kessler observed, “Health messages are regularly delivered from chefs, without saying so, in the form of a meal.” At the conference, chef Seamus Mullen frankly discussed the reason he “blames food for all the good stuff” in his life and how making health the framework for his diet has impacted his growing business.

Mullen spoke openly about his antagonistic relationship with food, prolonged illness and the diagnosis of rheumatoid arthritis that precipitated his commitment to healthful eating. With a family history in food, and a childhood spent on a small farm in Vermont, Mullen was only introduced to institutional food when he went to boarding school (where he suffered from salmonella). Today he is the chef/owner of three restaurants in New York City and London, and he'll open a fourth later this year. He recently published a cookbook, "Hero Food," and regularly speaks on the healing power of food.

TriplePundit: How has the trajectory of your career evolved?

Seamus Mullen: I had a relationship with food for about 15 years that wasn’t all that positive, even though I became a professional cook and a chef. Chefs tend to be really good at taking care of people, but we're not that good at taking care of ourselves. For me, it got to a point that my health was so critical; I didn’t have a choice. Something had to give. I realized food could be a driving factor in my health. I’ve had some wonderful teachers and great guidance, and I’ve also taken this as a personal issue. I’ve taken a lot of my own time investigating and experimenting on myself essentially. The past three or four years, it’s become hugely important to me to dive deeply into the relationship between food and our health.

3p: What intentional changes have you made to align your business with your personal journey?

SM: I’ve made lots of changes. For instance, we only serve bread from ancient grains that are made with natural leaveners, and we only serve it when a customer asks for it. If someone wants bread, we will give him or her the best quality we can offer. We have almost entirely removed refined sugar from our menus. We don’t make statements about these changes and no one is complaining.

We’ve been able to tweak our recipes. We don’t use any more all-purpose flour. If we’re using flour, it's whole grain, stone-ground flour from non-GMO wheat. We source all of our proteins locally, within the eastern seaboard from Pennsylvania, New York state, Vermont [and] Massachusetts. We only use pastured poultry, pork, eggs, etc. Those are all the base decisions that are just accepted if you come into our restaurants. I also try to treat meat as an ingredient; the overwhelming component is vegetables. That is something we’ve shifted to in the restaurant.

3p: You mentioned that you’ve done this surreptitiously. Why?

SM: I don’t want to market myself as a healthy restaurateur. I think it’s dangerous. I think there is a stigma attached to so called 'healthy food.' What we’ve called healthy food, for a very long time, is often laden with soy and corn product, carbohydrates, oftentimes a lot of sugar. I know a lot of vegetarians who are fat and unhealthy, because they have a sugar addiction. Oftentimes vegetarianism is ethically motivated, it's not a health-based decision.

3p: What do you say to people working in the food industry who feel they can’t afford to be as intentional with their ingredients or their sourcing?

SM: It’s all about compromise and decisions. People who eat poorly say, “I don’t have time to cook." Well, you may not have time to cook because you’re making other choices with your time. It’s all about choices. The same thing is true from a financial standpoint at a restaurant.

As an entrepreneur you need to look at the whole picture. In a restaurant, if you can create a balance in your menu structure so that you have items that are high sellers and high margin, it allows you to ensure your ingredients are the highest quality and highest caliber. We get as many whole animals as possible, and one day it may be pork belly, the next pork loin, pork chop, pork cheeks … and we will go through the whole animal.

You can’t set it and forget it. It requires daily maintenance.

3p: Are you also thinking about environmental impacts in our business strategy?

SM: I think it's really telling that if you make good choices around food, you have a positive impact on the community at large and a positive impact on the internal community of your own body. To eat the food that is best for you, try to eat food that is produced closest to you, that is harvested in peak season, that is as unadulterated as possible. The further food is shipped, the more it needs to be preserved, which leads to degradation of nutrients. So, if you can eat something seasonal, that’s close to you, you’re eating something that not only is better for you – more nutrient dense -- but you’re also eating something that doesn’t require nearly as many fossil fuels to get to you and that food is much less stressful on our environment and ecosystem.

When you make the right environmental choices around food, 99 percent of the time you’re also making the best health decision.

3p: You mentioned the mentorship of important teachers and discussed your commitment to the health of your employees – beyond being active in the James Beard Foundation, how do you foster your commitment to health in the culinary and entrepreneurial community?

SM: I mentor lots of people, but the best things I can do is to lead by example. Wellness is a growing sector of the food industry -- and the lifestyle industry. There is a lot of money to be made. The conversation is happening, but not always for the right reason. For me, the choices I make are fundamental, and I am very strict about it. If you want results you have to do hard work.

3p: You’ve really educated yourself on nutrition and health impacts. Any resources you would recommend?

There are a couple of books I would recommend that have been very helpful to me:

1. "Why we Get Fat" by Gary Taubes


2. "The Big Fat Surprise" by Nina Teicholz

To learn more about Seamus Mullen and his wild journey to health and success, follow him on Twitter @Seamusmullen.

Image credit Seamus Mullen