Jamie Oliver has revealed that on occasion he likes to punish his children through the medium of food, confessing that he once rubbed a scotch bonnet chilli on some apple slices before giving them to his daughter, in reprisal for some unspecified insubordination. “It worked a treat,” he said, implying that for him, revenge is a dish best served hot.  The Daily Mail tried to use science to make this punishment sound more like a form of torture (“Scotch bonnets have a rating of 100,000-350,000 on the Scoville scale”), but really, it’s more of an unpleasant prank. His wife told him never to do it again, so he’s probably learned a lesson, at least.  There are many obvious reasons why one shouldn’t use food to punish children, but the main one is this: it creates an atmosphere in which your cooking can be regarded as a form of child cruelty. I don’t want my kids to think there’s such a thing as “good food” and “bad food”, because sometimes I give them bad food.  Only the other day I presented my children with a meal that didn’t turn out as I had planned: undercooked, but also a little burnt – a failed experiment. But I didn’t apologise for it. I didn’t have to say: “It’s not a punishment, it just tastes like one.” I pretended it was supposed to smell like that, then I threw mine away when they weren’t looking.  I would never seek to influence behaviour through food. The meals I serve are meant to send one message and one message only to my children: life ain’t fair, and if you don’t like it, there’s cereal.  I actually think I might try to fob them off with apples rubbed in chilli tonight. It is simple and quick to prepare and it sounds pretty healthy. I can probably convince them it’s considered a delicacy somewhere on the planet. Who knows? Maybe it is. In any case, they won’t think it’s because they did something wrong.
The chef gave his daughter chilli-rubbed apple slices after bad behaviour – but it is unwise for non-professionals to make their cooking a form of child cruelty, says Tim Dowling