'World's best chef' Benoît Violier found dead

[closeupready]

7. To reply to myself with new info about Violier's suicide: he apparently mentioned

that:

He claimed to have never heard of the La Liste, set up by the French department of foreign affairs as a counterweight to the British-based World's 50 Best Restaurants guide, until AFP contacted him to tell him he that was top of their ranking...

The 44-year-old chef, whose life-long passion for hunting had led him write a 1,000-page encyclopaedia of European game birds, said he was even considering putting his rifle away and taking up photography.

Violier, who had a 12-year-old son, and ran the restaurant with his wife, Brigitte, said he was also toying with idea of teaching cookery.

"The starification of our profession has gone too far. Television has made kids believe that in three months you can be a star. But to be a cook its takes a whole life," he said.

http://www.ctvnews.ca/world/chef-who-died-in-apparent-suicide-had-worried-his-success-would-not-last-1.2761187

As I said yesterday, given that the bar to entering the food industry is nonexistent, how capable should we expect its workers to be in handling the media spotlight? On some of these shows, like Chopped or Masterchef, the contestants come from disadvantage - poverty, mental illness, or even lives of crime - and get scrutinized on a national level (or even international); it's not surprising that some of them crack, literally, upon losing.