We have written a post in this category answering what is the average life expectancy of a chef. by that we know that chefs have 8-10 years of lower life expectancy than people working in other industries. in this post we will give you detailed answers about why do chefs die young.
while finding the answer to this question, We found three main reasons why do chefs die young. and those three main reasons are:
- long working shifts
- kitchen (their workplace environments),
- their personal bad habits including smoking, drinking, and drugs.
let’s dive deep into these reasons and discover how it results in the premature death of our brothers and sisters working in the culinary industry. we’ll also discuss what you can do to increase your chances of living a long good life.
Long working shifts – why we believe that it’s the #1 reason why do chefs die young?
on average chefs at top restaurants work about 70 hours per week. some work seven days per week. or else other works with 2-3 days off. which results in chefs working 10-14 hours work shifts. and as we know that working as a chef is hard and requires you to get the job done.
chefs are paid for fulfilling their responsibility and not for the hours they have worked. in today’s industry, most chefs have to work long hours. we can’t do anything about it. working long hours don’t allow people to get enough rest or have a life outside of the kitchen. This creates lots of stress.
Many of the chefs can’t handle that much stress. stress is a silent killer brother. due to long tiring shifts generally, most chefs have unbalanced life. many chefs don’t have a life outside of the kitchen. as a reason they opt out for some bad habits like smoking, drinking, and many more that we’ll talk about later in the post.
if you look for the reasons why young guys get heart attacks you’ll find out it’s mostly a result of the following:
- Poor diet and lack of exercise
- Type2 diabetes
- High Blood pressure
- High cholesterol
- Obesity
- Smoking
- Family history of cardiovascular disease
you’ll examine closely, you’ll find out all of these reasons have a lot to do with long working shifts that we have and the stress that come from it.
Have you heard about Top chef contestant Chef Howie Kleinberg? He died a couple of months ago on July 25 of a heart attack at the age of 46. May God gives peace to his soul. We have included a link to the new article in the webliography section in case you want to read about that news story.
Working long shifts are the norm in the culinary industry. we can’t do anything about it. but you can make some habits and rules around your life that helps you manage the stress well. below are some tips to help you cope with stress.
Instead of smoking and drinking to get rid of stress try deep breathing or physical exercise.
Getting your heart rate up in the morning will help you get rid of stress. Try meditation that will help too.
brother you spend crazy long hours in the kitchen. Make sure that you don’t spend your entire life in the kitchen. when your shift is over go out and spend your time out there in the world. Have a life outside of the kitchen that will help you avoid burnout. and it will make your life better. take proper rest and relax.
we don’t have control over our working shifts but we can have control over what we do when we are not working. Incorporate some of the above-mentioned tips in your life. Becoming better at something almost always comes with being a better person and being kind to the self (sometimes we need to become rude to ourselves for ourselves and our team – pls don’t be a p**ssy at work) and others.
Now that we’ve talked about the #1 reason why do chefs die young let’s get to the second most important reason why do chefs die young.
Kitchen – A workplace environment a.k.a our second home
You might be surprised that the kitchen that we work in is the number two reason why do chefs die young. There are two factors that make our kitchen dangerous for us. first, one being it’s filled with food that we can snack on any time we want. and second, cooking fumes.
you might be wondering how could being around food is unhealthy. it’s not unhealthy to be around food all day but snacking on a little bit of food here and there, all day is damn unhealthy.
It affects your metabolic health and energy level throughout the day. If you have to taste it as part of your job then spit it out instead of swallowing it. we have talked about this matter in our previous post.
Another major factor affecting your health is the time you spend cooking flames. spending more time at cooking flames can result in several cardio-vuscular diseases. It could increase your chances of getting problems with your lungs. we have discussed more on how cooking flume reduces the life expectancy of chefs in our previous post.
We work in the kitchen so we can’t avoid cooking flames unless you’re making ice creams. lol! that’s part of our job responsibility. but what we can do is take some precautions like we have a good cooking chimney in the kitchen and some air purifiers or masks.
now let’s get to the last of the top 3 reasons why do chefs die young.
Our Personal Bad habits
Instead of building some good habits to relieve stress, the devil makes many of our brothers take up bad habits to cope with the stress that comes with living the chef life. here we are talking about smoking, drinking, drugs, and many more. almost every bad habit that does not serve you in the long run.
Just think about it if a person smokes every day that’s bad for his lungs and the people around him too. do you think a man who smokes is going to live longer than a person who doesn’t smoke? the same thing is there with alcohol affecting your liver and drugs fucking up your head. If you consult any doctor he would say that liver, lungs are very important organs of your body. take care of them this world needs good chefs don’t get away from this world early.
develop good habits like exercising, meditation/prayers, learning to take naps, going for long walks, going traveling, and making more friends outside the kitchen. have some other hobbies apart from cooking. be a better person be a better chef.
If you are about building good habits and breaking bad ones. I highly recommend getting the book: Atomic Habits by James Clear and studying it and applying the methods and tips given in the book.
Summarizing the post…
We have talked about 3 top reasons why do chefs die young and things that you can do to increase your chances of not dying prematurely. In the below table, we summarize it all.
| Top 3 Reasons Why do chefs die young | Things you can do to increase your chances of not dying prematurely |
| Long working shifts and the stress that comes with it | exercising, meditation/ prayers, spending time outside of the kitchen |
| Cooking Flames | make sure you have a good kitchen chimney, and air purifiers, or use a mask. |
| Personal bad habits like smoking, drinking, drugs, etc… | read and use Atomic Habits by James Clear. Be a better person be a better chef. |
Webliography:
https://www.today.com/food/news/top-chef-howie-kleinberg-dies-at-46-rcna40252
https://health.clevelandclinic.org/why-are-heart-attacks-on-the-rise-in-young-people/