Says Candy Wallace, personal chefs are not a fad, indulged in by over-monied Americans who want a week's worth of Tupperware meals in their freezers. To prove it, beginning in January, the American Personal Chef Association will award professional certification to eligible chefs through the American Culinary Federation, Inc. At the ACF's convention in Las Vegas in July, Wallace, executive director and founder of the San Diego-based APCA, signed a charter that earns official recognition from ACF of her organization's certification program. Next year, P.C.C. (personal certified chef) and P.C.E.C. (personal certified executive chef) will join the ranks of ACF's C.E.P.C. and C.M.C. as possible initials to go after a chef's name.

"By working with ACF, the personal-chef career path is validated, and that will help grow our industry a lot faster," Wallace says. Not that the personal-chef movement needs much incentive to grow, she adds.

"It's going to be enormous," Wallace predicts. "People don't have time to take care of themselves, and people who have jobs are working long hours to hang onto them. Five- and six-year-olds are getting adult-onset diabetes, because once we feed them all these stabilizers and fillers, we poison them. Then we drug them at school. By the time they're 10, they're going to glow in the dark." Indeed, says Wallace, personal chefs are in greater demand than ever, not only to assist busy families, but to bring proper nutrition into the home, benefiting both young couples with children and the elderly.

Personal-chef certification will be on the agenda of the 5th Annual Personal Chef Summit in Orlando, Fla. this month (Sept.19-21). For more info, call (800) 644-8389 or visit www.personalchef.com.

Story by Dawn Simons
August 1, 2002