Maggie's Good Medicine

Maggie Beer fiercely believes that good food can dramatically improve our quality of life – particularly as we age. Now, writes Genevieve Gannon, TV’s favourite cook is teaming up with a leading expert to combat Alzheimer’s disease.

- Genevieve Gannon

The name Maggie Beer conjures up visions of fat, blushing tomatoes, rich vanilla bean ice-cream and golden pheasant pie. The Barossa Valley cook’s personal food philosophy is that nothing should be left off the table and food must bring pleasure. She loves to indulge and confides she can’t keep peanut butter in the house. “I love it. I’m as weak as a kitten with it,” she says.

So when you think of Maggie Beer’s culinary legacy, health food doesn’t exactly spring to mind. Yet that’s just what the 72-year-old’s latest book is: 200 recipes geared to support brain health and fight Alzheimer’s with a battery of nutrient-rich ingredients.

Of course, when Maggie does health, she does it the Maggie Beer way. “There’s room for everything,” she says. The importance is balance.

Even though her culinary career is far from over, Maggie feels she is coming full circle. With her latest endeavour she is galvanising everything she has always intuited about food, but didn’t really think about until a chance meeting with leading health expert Professor Ralph Martins in 2010.

“When I grew up in Sydney, it was a time when there was no such thing as processed foods. I came from a food family where it was all about cooking and using every part of the animal,” she says.

“I’d certainly never thought about it. Yet I’ve been lucky enough to live it to a great extent.”

She first contemplated the connection between food and brain health in the 1970s while trying to wrangle a “severely hyperactive child”.