Michael Pollan: Food Shows vs. Home Cooking

By Tara Parker-Pope
Author Michael Pollan.Alia Malley Author Michael Pollan.

In this week’s New York Times Magazine, writer Michael Pollan explores the public’s growing love of televised cooking shows, even as people lose interest in cooking for themselves. Mr. Pollan writes:

“How is it that we are so eager to watch other people browning beef cubes on screen but so much less eager to brown them ourselves? For the rise of Julia Child as a figure of cultural consequence — along with Alice Waters and Mario Batali and Martha Stewart and Emeril Lagasse and whoever is crowned the next Food Network star — has, paradoxically, coincided with the rise of fast food, home-meal replacements and the decline and fall of everyday home cooking.”

Read the full story, “Out of the Kitchen, Onto the Couch,” and then please join the discussion below. Are you watching other people cook?

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Nancy, California July 31, 2009 · 11:48 am

I am of the generation that has always cooked and now in my late 60s find myself amazed that so many of my friends eat at fast food joints. Kids, teens, those I understand, but elders like myself? I don’t get it.

Eating a mainly vegetarian diet, we shop twice a week for veggies and spend a goodly amount of time cooking them. Our food plan is basically simple: one big salad with raw and cooked veg, little oil but lots of seasoning (oregano, thyme) and herbs fresh from the garden (basil, oregano, thyme) adding tuna or meat occasionally (twice a month) and a veggie based soup with legumes. These are our standard meals. The main offerings are the same but different every day as the variety of veggies changes.

I have also taken to making soup stock from the clean veggie peelings, saving them until I have a bowlful, then boiling for 30 minutes … this is the broth I use for legumes and rice and so on.

I freeze portions of veggie soup for later, freeze cooked legumes ditto. Retired, I have lots of time. But I did these things even as a working mother.

I get tired of cooking. Then we haul out the pbj.

Mary, Baltimore July 31, 2009 · 11:50 am

I am a “from scratch” kind of person who also sews, knits and cleans my own house, however, with 3 kids, a full-time job and a husband in residency, it is hard! It takes a lot of fortitude and commitment not to succumb to the call of “fast food” after a long day’s work. However, when my family expresses their pleasure at a meal well-made, baked goods coming fresh from the oven or jams and canned goods capturing the essence of the season, the effort is all worth it!

Mark Weaver, NYC July 31, 2009 · 11:51 am

Cooking shows, once educational, have indeed taken on the form of food pornography. You can learn much from watching a professional operate in the environment in which they are most proficient, but it seems to me that the movement away from education and in favor of pure titillation has been going on for some years.
Verily, yesteryear’s cooking show and today’s are as different as ‘The Joy of Sex’ and an orgy.

Pluto July 31, 2009 · 11:52 am

No big mystery here. Just like sports: watching others do it is more fun than doing it oneself.

Pluto, NYC July 31, 2009 · 11:52 am

Remind me why this is a great country?

Nichole, Pennsylvania July 31, 2009 · 11:53 am

I love this article. And I love cooking! I’m 24 and growing up, my mom didn’t really cook… She heated. She knew how to bake, but usually made brownies from a box. I myself am trying to live a healthy lifestyle, so cooking my food myself is key. I do take shortcuts, but it’s better than it would be if we were eating out all the time. There is a lot of joy in watching your own pizza dough rise and baking cookies from scratch, not those horrible break-and-bakes. I don’t feel oppressed because while I cook, my husband washes the dishes, he does the laundry, and more. If I had to do it all, maybe I would hate cooking. But as it is, I find it to be truly satisfying on so many levels.

A. Zamindar July 31, 2009 · 11:53 am

Its about time we stop going to McDonald’s/BurgerKing,et al, and spend time in the kitchen to see and know what exactly we are eating. Try Italian or Indian dishes, which are pretty easy to cook, and are very healthy. Go vegetarian. Cheers

Mother Nature, Oregon July 31, 2009 · 11:53 am

Until you have worked a full-time job, taken 3 children to music lessons and athletic practice and then cooked a 3 course meal from scratch with healthy ingredients (not that chunk of butter dripping inside a fried chicken breast you mention) for 20 yrs running, you haven’t a clue what it means to leave off cooking for whatever time I have left.

Cooking shows are entertaining because some of them offer a novelty dish. Trying to please the different appetites of three small humans is beyond challenging. At one point, the only meal they could all agree on was kosher, low fat hot dogs and baked beans. We ate it for 10 days before the three of them cried uncle. Cooking is an exhausting ultimately self-defeating way to express yourself if your goal is a modicum of appreciation for your effort. Unlike their friends, my kids all cook from scratch and have a working knowledge of healthy eating. That is my reward. Now let me eat my dinner of a honeydew melon and scoop of cottage cheese in peace.

Hans July 31, 2009 · 11:54 am

According to Harry Balzer, the food marketing researcher, cooking is something “people used to do” and we should all “get over it”. What about the cost of medical care associated with the obesity epidemic, the cost we all share regardless of our individual cooking and eating habits? Should we get over that, too?

Tim July 31, 2009 · 12:09 pm

I think Pollan’s article is interesting, but overly pessimistic. I’m young, and I know a lot of people who love to cook, and love to watch cooking shows. I have a group of friends that gather weekly to eat dinner together, cooked by a different one of us each week.

Sure, you may not learn a lot from cooking shows, besides style and vocabulary, but the glamour and respect conveyed by having food stars at the top makes all sort of room for people in the middle, as well. Self-filmed cooking demos on youtube, food blogs, or more instructional videos from places like Cook’s Illustrated — all of these valuable, substantive, and growing troves of information would be much less likely to exist if it weren’t for the stardom and fame TV cooks have acquired.

Agnes July 31, 2009 · 12:09 pm

I don’t think that our nation of people eating out and not cooking has anything to do with being lazy, or, cheap. It has a lot more to do with people working, everyone out of the house “doing something”…sports, music lessons, etc….it also has to do with the fact that we are a nation based on “invidious consumption”…if we consider the root of the term in Veblem’s Theory of the Leisure Class, we can easily see how the American Dream has undergone many transformations…mostly, the deisire to have leisure time, and the most expensive and most observable amount of material posessions…people no longer want to be involved in the yard, let the gardeners do it, they have house cleaners, bring in food and take part in leisure activities like health spas, and tanning salons…isn’t it curious that it was once fashionable and most desired to be pure white without a tan…because that only proved that you
did manual labor…

mary July 31, 2009 · 12:10 pm

I don’t watch cooking shows b.c they rarely prepare food and use ingredients that I have in my kitchen. I am all for home cooking, but I do not think preparing a meal should require special trips to the grocery store (my least favorite chore).

I make all our baked goods (pies, quiche, cookies, cakes, bread) from scratch, b.c we always have have butter, eggs, flour, sugar, yeast, and baking soda & powder on hand.

I and my husband both work 50+ hour weeks. When we lived in a rural community, I cooked all our dinners b.c there was a dearth of decent food available. Now that we are back in the city, we can easily eat out or take out in our neighborhood (Thai, Ecuadorean, Peruvian, Colombian, Polish) and know that the food is homemade and contains recognizable ingredients.

Working women can easily give up cooking and not be relegated to eating fast food – one just has to be savvy about where and what you eat.

Andrew July 31, 2009 · 12:11 pm

I have been Michael Pollan for several years. Now, I’m starting to ask my myself whether it’s still worth it. He keeps going over and over the same ground, and as one might expect, with repetition his ideas become more pretentious and elitist.

So he thinks America doesn’t cook anymore? Well, most of also no longer sew, build things, make our own music in the home, or pursue other domestic tasks like we did in the past. So if his thesis isn’t particularly original, his identification of one the causes, the new crop of Food Shows, strikes me as a bit forced. Agreed — many of the shows are more about dining than cooking, but I for one at least have learned quite a few techniques from watching, and partly because of this, I cook more often and more competently.

Then again, how different is the Food Network’s approach to cooking than HGTV’s is to home improvement? Cable TV by its nature has to feed a niche market, and to keep costs reasonable, the programming has to be repetitive.

Eric July 31, 2009 · 12:13 pm

Hats off to Mark Weaver, who rightly identifies cooking shows as gastroporn. But, the trend is not limited to TV – cookbooks, usually heavily larded with impossibly good looking food in difficult to achieve positions, are the mainstay of bookstores while people stop cooking. I regularly take out and cook from cookbooks from the library and very seldom find the pages stuck together by spatters. What good is that?
And it can be done. My wife and I work fulltime, have kids that must be hauled to lessons and yet we might have a non-scratch dinner once a month. Ingredients do what they’re told and the result is a chance to share time with your family in the making and eating of a meal. That’s the perfect antidote for dealing with the day to day strains of dealing with challenging people.

Kim from Nebraska July 31, 2009 · 12:13 pm

I like food shows like Good Eats, Barefoot Contessa or the Cook’s Illustrated series on PBS — shows that you can learn technique and recipes. But I HATE HATE HATE the contests, the Next Food Network Star, Chopped, Top Chef, etc., so I don’t watch most of the evening programming on Food Network. I read once that this type of competitive show appeals more to men and the networks want to build that demographic.

As a 50-plus woman, I am getting used to, but still weary of, being outside of everyone’s desirable demographic.

July 29 July 31, 2009 · 12:17 pm

I just posted a lengthy comment about this article. When I refreshed the screen the entire comment section seemed to have disappeared.

If I wasted my time, I’m going to be extremely angry.

I can’t possibly rewrite it, but in short: The article was not convincing. It ignored a lot of obvious issues about our culture and lives, especially women’s lives and time.

FROM TPP — I’m sorry to say, I think it was lost. With long comments, always better to write them up in a word file and paste. I hope you’ll take the time to resubmit. Thanks.

Mels July 31, 2009 · 12:23 pm

Not to nit-pick, but after reading the article I was disappointed when Pollan insulted Diners, Drive-ins and Dives. Yes, the host is somewhat grating. But if you really watch the program, it highlights how many of these “dive” owners actually prepare things fresh, use local ingrediants, keep regional food customs alive etc.

In a world on chains, I can’t find any reason to fault a show that highlights mom-n-pop shops. The diners themselves might not be cooking from stratch, but the cook in the back is.

NM July 31, 2009 · 12:24 pm

For better or for worse, we cook less because we work more. By we, I mean us women, the original home cooks. We watch cooking on TV because the camera people know exactly how to zoom in on the food in a way that keeps us hooked. It’s an art. And yes, some of the chefs, especially the female ones, are very good looking – men like to look at attractive women, and women like to look at attractive women. Nuff said.

July 29 July 31, 2009 · 12:26 pm

And BTW, how many tie-in articles to Nora Ephron’s movie are you planning on doing? There was this, the article on the food used on the movie set, and the extremely obnoxious piece by Sam Sifton about the challenge of attending a potluck dinner hosted by Nora Ephron, or, WOULD THE MEATLOAF DO?

Enoughsky. This is precisely the club mentality that people complain about at the NYT.

FROM TPP — I have a Nora Ephron story for you. In college (1988), my teacher announced we had a special guest speaker the next day — Nora Ephron! The room twittered but all I was thinking was that a guest speaker meant I could skip class (it was an 8 a.m. class) and sleep in! How crazy is that? So guess I’m not part of the Nora Ephron club either….That said, I’m looking forward to the movie.

kim July 31, 2009 · 12:27 pm

I too have been disturbed by this trend. In my family we all cook together, discuss the menu together and even gather the ingredients together. We have found that grocery stores do not carry some of the basic ingredients that we require when cooking from scratch, like good quality flour in more than 10 lb packages, which does not go very far when making bread, baked goods and other types of bread products we may want. The same goes for bigger chunks of meat with a little fat or bones in them. This is because the store is full of pre prepared foods. I also think that one of the biggest issues in cooking at home, (obviously no one can just think about food all the time when we have to work, go to school, etc), is menu planning. It takes organization and imagination to plan an economical menu for the week or month. We have made eating home cooked foods a family project – we think it is very important for our health, and we all love and prefer the taste.but sometimes it does take effort and committment. It is worth it!

Austin abd July 31, 2009 · 12:28 pm

We cook less for the same reason we don’t beat our dirty clothes on rocks. Humans will always opt to save energy and today we have both more ways to save energy and less energy to spend.

I offer this as evidence that we don’t like fast food, but our schedules require it. — Since I left my job two years ago I have eaten 0 frozen meals and fast food maybe once every 60 days. I have bought 2 six packs of soft drinks and one half gallon of ice cream. I eat at normal hours and I eat normal food. Nothing fancy. This is the happiest change in my life since leaving a job that began at 8 a.m. and ended at heaven knows when in the evening.

We watch these shows because, unlike dirty clothes, food is primordial. We may watch these shows in lieu of spending the same time in the kitchen cooking because our primordial relationships are deteriorated or missing (and yes, our energy flags). We watch these shows for the same reasons we read fashion magazines – we like imagining ourselves surrounded by the desirable and unattainable.

It is only after the cultural change that we come to realize we’ve discarded the less tanglible rewards of those efforts, and the price of shortcuts. I am waiting for someone to wake up and write the story of the end of fashion and sewing. Wardrobes are vastly simplified (no hats, no gloves, no “Sunday go to meeting clothes”, and “casual Friday” Monday through Friday). A lot of women under 40 daily wear something I would describe as “teeshirt plus two pieces.” On campus, the most casual environment for any generation, it is teeshirts, gym shorts and flip flops as far as the eye can see. My mother and her dsorority sisters wore tweed skirt, silk shirts and dressed down with saddle shoes. Still, fashion magazines sell and the girls iron their teeshirts and short and paint their toenails.

V Ogle July 31, 2009 · 12:32 pm

I have a whole list of nice meals that can be on a table in 20-30 minutes TOPS! Onions carmelize while the pasta is coming to al dente. Meat can be pre-cooked and frozen the quickly thawed to flavor a meal. A can of tomatoes or real ones chopped and tossed in. A little oregano (I LOVE how Julia pronounced that) and olive oil and voila! Does it count as home cooking if I’ve taken a purchased french bread slathered in garlic, olive oil and a touch of butter then toss it under the broiler?

I was a single mom, worked long hours and spent time on the road ferrying my son to and from. We ate out once a week due to economics. The rest of our intake was SCRATCH COOKING for real!

Arlyn July 31, 2009 · 12:33 pm

Mr. Pollan mentioned some of the worst cooking shows on the Food Network rather than the best. I watch Ina Garten (The Barefoot Contessa) on the Food Network to get new recipes for dishes that are simpler than Julia’s but healthy and full of flavor. OK, OK, I skip the recipes that start out with a stick of butter….

Watching Ina and Alton Brown is also a great way to learn cooking techniques — sauteeing, searing, knife skills, etc. — and food chemistry, skills that many people don’t learn anymore at home but are essential to good, creative cooking.

Yes, it does take more shopping and planning to deliver a healthy, delicious dinner six nights a week than buying fast food, but the results are so worthwhile and the process is one I really enjoy.

islandgirl July 31, 2009 · 12:40 pm

I am a fan of Michael Pollan and enjoyed this column. I laughed, though, at the thought of my mother in the same picture as Julia Child. Perhaps because of my father, who was a meat and potatoes kinda guy through and through, my mother’s cooking was mostly bland and uninspired. She was more adventurous than my father, but I recall my dad’s barbs when she went outside the lines in her coloring cookbook. And a few years later I suffered the same fate as a young wife when I had by then learned to enjoy steak that was not brown allll the way through. I served my dad a lovely rib roast, medium rare, and was ordered to take it back to the kitchen and “cook the damned thing!”

Not all our mothers, especially outside New York and other metropolitan areas, took to Julia Child or had even heard of her. I was in my mid-30s before I discovered French cooking and learned a handful of recipes that I served to guests and family. As I watched my kitchen become cluttered with used dishes and pots and smaller pots as I worked through a recipe, I also learned the basic rule of French cooking: You can do French cooking or you can be neat. But you can’t have it both ways.

Thank you, Michael Pollan and thank you, dear Julia. I’m inspired!

Molly Cook
Whidbey Island, Washington

Laurel962 July 31, 2009 · 12:40 pm

This was a good article, and easily the best thing I have read by Michael Pollan…I don’t always agree with him, and I have taken issue with his much quoted “Eat food…mostly vegetables…and not too much”, with it’s emphasis on dieting (“not too much!”) and food demonization (god forbid you eat some meat).

I don’t think he emphasizes enough, however, the role that the death of “housewifery” has played in the changes in the American diet. Many factors, especially but not only employment, have led to at least 3 generations now of women fleeing the kitchen, and yet we wonder how we ended up eating fast food and manufactured junk! If women were not complicit in allowing this — in encouraging the family to eat fast food or pizza or takeout several times a week — then THEY would have to be the ones who schlepped home groceries and put them away, and cleaned and chopped and cooked…and then (THE WORST PART, RARELY DISCUSSED!!!) clean everything up.

This takes up a huge amount of the day, shopping/prepping/cooking/cleaning and the majority of women have long said no….in fact so long, as correctly reported, many no longer have any intrinsic knowledge of HOW to prepare foods from scratch and their mothers do not know either and very often, neither do their GRANDMOTHERS. Knowledge once gone, is gone and it doesn’t come back easily. Remember how much human knowledge and culture — art, literature, science — was lost during the Dark Ages for over a thousand years!

And — Mr. Pollan again conflates this with dieting, i.e, which is to say, slimmness vs. the “obesity epidemic”. The purpose of eating excellent, fresh, delicious, HEALTHY food is NOT solely to lose weight or get (or remain) thin.

My maternal relatives (going back 50-80 years) all came from Central Europe, from small farming communities. They certainly had no fast food or prepared foods; they grew everything themselves and the women cooked everything from scratch. They raised their own animals, had their own stream to catch fish in…obviously everything was “organic”, there were no fertilizers or pesticides. And they worked at hard, physical work every single day and walked everywhere (no cars).

And…and…they were all obese. Not just obese, but MORBIDLY obese. Very few of them made it out of their 50s alive. I had a couple of aunts who topped 400 lbs.

Yet I think there was still value in their attitude towards cooking and food, because here, nearly a century later, I am among the few of my friends and neighbors who actually knows how to shop for, prep, cook, STORE and serve real scratch food. Many of them look on, baffled and even a little in awe, that I can and do routinely take completely raw and unprocessed “stuff” and turn it into delicious meals. And I love it, and I think it means something…even if I’m one of the last home cooks, standing at the edge of a new Dark Ages.