COLUMN: Living through television

I love watching food almost as much as I love eating food. Food shows are one of my favorite things on this earth.

I didn’t get to watch much Food Network as a child, but when I did, it was absolutely amazing. Not many of my friends watched it, though; obviously everyone else was still watching the former Zoog Disney channel.

Since the 1990s, however, there seems to have been an increase in food media popularity.

It started with the big names. Mario Batali, Bobby Flay and Emeril Lagasse were the three well-known chefs to come to Food Network and take off in popularity. Before this, people would think of Julia Child for food television, and her show ended in 1973.
Emeril was the chef to really bring attention to Food Network, with a live audience and his eccentric personality. But I believe it was Rachael Ray who was able to make Food Network what it is today.

You have to understand, it’s a big deal for me to admit this. I find Rachael Ray to be one of the most obnoxious personalities on television, and from what I’ve heard, she’s not nice off screen. Secretly, I have plans to overthrow her reign at Food Network and come up with an even more ingenious plan to cook delicious meals.

But to her credit, she was able to stir up culinary passions across America. She successfully targeted the typical family home — always busy, always on the run and reluctant to break routine and cook something new.

Her program, “30 Minute Meals,” showed the nation how to cook simple meals in a reasonable amount of time for the whole family. From there, she’s become a culinary phenomenon and now has her own talk show as well. And as Ray soared to popularity, more and more catchy shows started popping up on Food Network.

Food Network’s sister channel, the Travel Channel, also started featuring food-oriented programming. Anthony Bourdain and Adam Richman are now stars for exposing different cuisines across America as well as the rest of the world.

So what’s my point?

I guess I’m wondering where on earth this all came from.

We live in a generation where home economics is no longer offered as a major in colleges, so if you want to learn to cook, you either learn by going to culinary school or watching someone, such as a parent. And not many families have the time to teach their kids how to cook, much less cook a dinner from scratch every evening.

Yet, people are still interested in cooking. They still want to create something. They just might not be able to do anything about it given their circumstances.

True, some folks might find the time to teach themselves how to cook extravagant meals, such as Julie Powell, who took on Julia Child’s “Mastering the Art of French Cooking.” But I think most people interested in the culinary arts just lack the time, energy or even just utensils to accomplish such culinary, and there is nothing wrong with that.

The Food Network has provided our nation with an outlet for essentially food porn. We are able to watch all these people explore and discover new dishes that we could try, that we could make. And given what little we have to work with in college (small kitchen space, not enough pots and pans or maybe just a squeaky microwave), food shows are sometimes all we have.

When the University sent out a survey regarding possible television channel choices for the following year, Food Network was listed. I hope those who listed Food Network realize the gift they might be giving us in the next year. 

In the meantime, I’ll just steal away to a friend’s house to watch other Food Network shows on their television, instead of huddling in front of my computer screen to watch Bobby Flay.


 E-mail: lm35@indiana.edu