Celebrity Chef Sean Brock curates recipes with his rare disease community
TV personality and James Beard Award-Winning chef Sean Brock is a leader in the trend to preserve and restore traditional Southern cooking. Indeed, his renowned restaurants, which have garnered national praise, “preach and teach” Southern ingredients and traditions that are influenced by his Appalachian upbring.
Sean is currently chef and restaurateur of his new flagship restaurant, Audrey, in addition to The Continental and Joyland, all in Nashville. He is also the former chef of McCrady’s and the founding chef of Husk, both located in Charleston, SC. He has written two New York Times best-selling cookbooks and been featured in television cooking programs such as Chef’s Table and Mind of a Chef.
Being a professional chef, Sean fully understands the sensory experience of food and how it can affect the body and mind. He also knows what can happen when the mind, the body, and the senses are overloaded to the point where they stop functioning properly.
Here’s his inspirational story:
In 2014 Sean, who at the time was in Charleston working long hours and on the rapid rise to success, began to experience mysterious symptoms. And the slight impairments, such as double vision and exhaustion, seemed to intensify each day. However, visit after visit to different specialists, that included invasive procedures and surgeries, left him with multiple possibilities, yet no definitive answers. Over time, he even had trouble controlling his hands. These issues made it nearly impossible to do his job. But it wasn’t until 2016, after two challenging years of dashed hopes and frustrations, that he finally got a proper diagnosis: Myasthenia gravis (MG). “I remember thinking to myself,” he recalls, “that I wasn’t a chef anymore, I was a patient—and that was terrifying.”
The name myasthenia gravis, which is Latin and Greek in origin, means “grave, or serious, muscle weakness.” It is a rare, chronic autoimmune disease that can be difficult to diagnose due to the waxing and waning of symptoms. Causing the immune system to attack the junction where the nerve meets the muscle, it often leading to debilitating and potentially life-threatening muscle weakness and fatigue. Patients frequently have trouble performing daily tasks such as speaking, chewing or swallowing food, moving their eyes, and even breathing.
Sean wasn’t going to let MG stop him from pursuing his life’s passion and purpose. To that end, he has added yet another dimension to his storied career. In 2021, he teamed up with argenx, a global immunology company, to create a cookbook centered around recipes specifically tailored to people living with MG. The delectable denouement is Cooking Together and is available on MG.United.com, a resource site for the MG community.
Cooking Together is packed with mouthwatering dishes and flavors. In addition, Sean personally created three recipes with foods meant to be easy to chew and swallow—a major lifestyle obstacle that people with MG often face. It also includes recipes submitted by people within the MG community and tips from a nutritionist, specifically crafted for people with MG, to help manage an inflammatory condition. All in all, it’s full of practical, insightful, and delicious ideas from both Sean himself and others who have found their own techniques for coping with their disease, enabling them to eat and subsequently feel Better Than Before.
To learn more about Sean’s MG experience and to download the cookbook, please visit www.MG-United.com.
