Australian dentist-chef fights for healthier eating
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- Published: Wednesday, 05 April 2017 07:45
- Written by News Editor
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Matthew Hopcraft, an Australian dentist who is not only a clinical associate professor at the Melbourne Dental School, he is also "Matt, the cooking dad", who reached No.6 in the 2015 season of their MasterChef. He is using his fame to attack the ‘often-pernicious’ effects of famous people who are paid large amounts of money to promote the tastiness and desirability of junk food and sugary drinks.
"The thing is," says Matthew Hopcraft, "we're not listened to as much as a celebrity who is not an expert." Celebrity endorsements – such as Beyonce plugging Pepsi, or entire football teams being sponsored by sports drink manufacturers – are, many experts suggest, key drivers in the rising tide of obesity, diabetes, heart disease, tooth decay and a host of other non-communicable diseases.
Many MasterChef finalists go on to careers of varying success as television presenters or magazine columnists, but a few months after his season ended Hopcraft was persuaded to leverage his household-name status for a different purpose. He became a diet activist, heading up an organisation called Sugar-free Smiles that campaigns to reduce sugar consumption in children. A 20 per cent tax on sugary drinks is top of the to-do list.
"A few months after the show I was approached by a colleague who spends three sessions a week pulling rotten teeth out of kids' mouths, which is really horrifying and traumatic," Hopcraft says. "She said to me, 'Matt, you're the highest-profile dentist in Australia now – we have to be doing something about this'. It made sense, because I had an unusual position that most people in the dental health space just don't have. So we started Sugar-free Smiles."
The messages of his organisation – that one in two children aged 12 already have decaying adult teeth, for instance – have been trumpeted by professional dental associations for years. Hopcraft's assumption, or hope, is that sprinkling them with a bit of celebrity fairy dust might help them cut through a bit.
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