Recently, I binged the new Netflix docuseries Being Gordon Ramsay. And damn, it was good.
You see the man behind the screaming—raw glimpses of life with Tana and the kids, the grind of building an empire, the pressure-cooker chaos of opening multiple restaurants at once in one of London’s tallest towers. It humanized him. I loved the family bits, the honest strain of fame on a marriage, and the pride when Tilly pulls on her first chef whites. When Gordon plucks out his camera to take a photo to send to his wife, I sniffed harder than you would expect.
And yeah, I’ll admit it: I got properly jelly watching him hop on and off helicopters like it’s Sky Uber. That’s what real money buys you—speed, freedom, the ability to slice through traffic and time like a hot knife through actual butter. Respect. (Also: note to self—get Helicopter Rich without losing your damn soul.)
But then I started watching Next Level Chef.
And Gordon—the Gordon Ramsay—is shilling I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter.
You know, that tub of ultra-processed, soybean-oil-and-water sludge they’ve rebranded as “NutriRich” and GLP-1-friendly. Any self-respecting chef would look at that tub and immediately call what it is: the spread for a fucking turd sandwich.
Remember his greatest hits? “That looks like a dehydrated camel’s turd.” Or the classic: “It tastes like a stuffing you’d stick in the ass end of a turkey.”
He’s built an entire brand—hell, an entire empire—on brutal honesty about crap food. He’s screamed at contestants for serving frozen garbage, for using cheap shortcuts, for anything that wasn’t fresh, real, and honest.
Yet here he is, on national television, in his own show, pushing a product whose first three ingredients after water are industrial seed oils — soybean oil, palm kernel oil, emulsifiers — fortified with synthetic vitamins so it can pretend to be “nutrient-dense” for people on Ozempic who can’t stomach real food anymore.
The tragedy of the commons: a modern food court of plastic food for plastic people. White lab coats, cheered on by a brand ambassador in chef’s whites.
This product is shit. Real butter is cream and salt—full stop. As every chef worth their salt knows. It nourishes, it carries flavor, it delivers the kind of reaction you actually want when chasing that Maillard magic.
This? This is engineered yellow paste pretending to be food.
It’s the culinary equivalent of telling people to take a shot of industrial lubricant and calling it a superfood. And Gordon Ramsay—Gordon bloody Ramsay—is out here pretending it’s “next level”?
Look, I get it. The man is worth hundreds of millions. He can hop helicopters because he monetized every inch of himself. A fat endorsement check from a giant CPG company? Worth it. But thematically? Disgusting.
It’s hard to swallow because his choice to promote this fake food is exactly what’s wrong with the world right now. There is no accountability left. Not from governments. Not from corporations. And apparently not from the people we want to admire. Turns out, the ones who are supposed to stand for something—excellence, integrity, real food, uncompromised standards—will still sell their souls for more money.
The love of money is the root of all evil. And seed oils have become the root of so much modern unhealth.
We’re living in an era where even the chefs who made their names on authenticity are now quietly (or loudly) spreading the gospel of ultra-processed seed oils to the masses who are already metabolically broken. Instead of using his massive platform to push grass-fed butter, ancestral fats, or at least real ingredients, he’s helping normalize the very junk that’s made half the population obese and sick.
Money over mission. Cash over conscience.
What stings most is the complete lack of coherence. The man who built his empire demanding fresh, high-quality ingredients now stands behind a product he almost certainly doesn’t keep in his own fridge. We all know it. In his actual home kitchen — the one we glimpsed in the documentary, full of real butter, fresh herbs, and uncompromising standards — this yellow goo has no place. That’s not alignment. That’s not integrity. And we should judge his promotion of this shit-sandwich spread harshly precisely because we know better. When the people we admire compartmentalize their integrity for more and more money—especially the already rich—it broadcasts that compromise is always inevitable.
I wanted to believe the man who built his career on calling out bullshit actually lived it. But is selling out—shilling something you wouldn’t put in your own mouth—really worth the extra shillings?
Watching Gordon Ramsay, the guy who makes his signature scrambled eggs with the words, “Use good butter. It makes all the difference,” promoting tubs of ultra-processed seed oils, makes my stomach churn.
And that has left a bitter taste in my mouth. Not burned butter. Burned loyalty.