America: Land of the Eaters

Today the average American spends a mere 27 minutes a day on food preparation (another four minutes cleaning up); that’s less than half the time that we spent cooking and cleaning up when Julia arrived on our television screens. It’s also less than half the time it takes to watch a single episode of “Top Chef” or “Chopped” or “The Next Food Network Star.” What this suggests is that a great many Americans are spending considerably more time watching images of cooking on television than they are cooking themselves — an increasingly archaic activity they will tell you they no longer have the time for.

Brilliant article by Michael Pollan examining the American attitude towards preparing and eating food in the New York Times Magazine: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/02/magazine/02cooking-t.html?pagewanted=1



The Food Network has helped to transform cooking from something you do into something you watch

What I wonder - how much of our attraction to food and cooking shows has to do with a nostalgia for a home we don't have the time for anymore? For the comforting clang of a lid on a pot of stew, the fragrance of garlic wafting upstairs, the sizzle of meat on a hot pan. There is meaning to these motions in which our daily tasks seem lacking.

I suspect we’re drawn to the textures and rhythms of kitchen work, too, which seem so much more direct and satisfying than the more abstract and formless tasks most of us perform in our jobs nowadays. The chefs on TV get to put their hands on real stuff, not keyboards and screens but fundamental things like plants and animals and fungi; they get to work with fire and ice and perform feats of alchemy.

Fascinating stats too:

The more time a nation devotes to food preparation at home, the lower its rate of obesity. In fact, the amount of time spent cooking predicts obesity rates more reliably than female participation in the labor force or income. Other research supports the idea that cooking is a better predictor of a healthful diet than social class: a 1992 study in The Journal of the American Dietetic Association found that poor women who routinely cooked were more likely to eat a more healthful diet than well-to-do women who did not.

So the take home message: turn off the TV, put down the take-out menu, and take pleasure in the tactile and sensory pleasure of cooking your own meals!