The Food Network: Porn for Fat People

by Fat Daddy, Esq. on June 24, 2011

I follow Michael Pollan on Twitter (@michaelpollan) and after seeing a new tweet ended up exploring his website. I came across an article titled Out of the Kitchen, Onto the Couch in which he discusses the decline of home cooking and the popularity of food television programming.

Pollan states that the average American spends only 27 minutes a day on food preparation, which is less than half of the time spent in the early 1960s and he notes it is also less than half of the time it takes to watch a single episode of many popular food television shows.

Pollan went on to ask:

So what are we doing with the time we save by outsourcing our food preparation to corporations and 16-year-old burger flippers? Working, commuting to work, surfing the Internet and, perhaps most curiously of all, watching other people cook on television.

But this may not be quite the paradox it seems. Maybe the reason we like to watch cooking on TV is that there are things about cooking we miss. We might not feel we have the time or the energy to do it ourselves every day, yet we’re not prepared to see it disappear from our lives entirely. Why? Perhaps because cooking — unlike sewing or darning socks — is an activity that strikes a deep emotional chord in us, one that might even go to the heart of our identity as human beings.

Deep emotional chord? Heart of our identity as human beings? It seems that Pollan acknowledges that food is often used for more than just subsistence, much like sex is often used for more than just procreation.

That reminded me of one of my favorite South Park episodes of all time, the Season 14 finale Creme Fraiche. Below are a few of the clips from the episode. I think it goes without saying, but, these are not kid friendly and most likely NSFW. Enjoy.

I, much like Randy, enjoy watching the Food Network and using any information I learn there to cook fancy schmancy meals.  I have not, however, found myself enjoying that level of “me time” while watching. (2:09)

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I love this clip because the Network does feature certain techniques repeatedly and in a some could say sexy manner. (1:34)

Randy starts his own cooking show in kids’ school cafeteria. Who doesn’t want to be a celebrity chef? I have told people before that if I were not practicing law, culinary school would be a likely spot for me.(1:21)

The appearance of Jamie Oliver whining that no one will listen to him is quite appropriate given his recent season of the Food Revolution in which he struggles to get the LAUSD to let him in to its schools. I still believe that his message is an idea worth spreading. (1:17)

I am in conflict because I can totally relate to the emotional eating stories of Edward Ugel in his book I’m With Fatty: Losing Fifty Pounds in Fifty Miserable Weeks but I’m on board with the idea of whole food clean eating that Pollan champions. What is the future of food in America? To Pollan, it appears that cooking at home will play an important role:

Once it has been destroyed, can a culture of everyday cooking be rebuilt? One in which men share equally in the work? One in which the cooking shows on television once again teach people how to cook from scratch and, as Julia Child once did, actually empower them to do it?

Let us hope so. Because it’s hard to imagine ever reforming the American way of eating or, for that matter, the American food system unless millions of Americans — women and men — are willing to make cooking a part of daily life. The path to a diet of fresher, unprocessed food, not to mention to a revitalized local-food economy, passes straight through the home kitchen.

There are not any healthy outlets for food in my small town except at home. I have been cooking most of our meals lately and I thoroughly enjoy it. But it would be nice if our culture experienced a paradigm shift where fast food was not the enemy.

Is it crazy to envision a day where tasty, healthy food is readily available from a drive-thru?

Here is the link to see the entire South Park Creme Fraiche episode.

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