Food Television: Evolving With The Times

Food Television: Evolving With The Times

We are a nation obsessed with food television. Many of our channels are overwhelmingly dominated by food shows, competitions and adverts, and online food blogs and videos also play into the public demand for food-related content.

A recent study of 2000 people by Lurpak found that on average, we spend up to five hours a week consuming food-related media, while only spending four hours cooking. Over half of the people surveyed said that they would prefer to consume food-related media than get cooking themselves – often due to not having the required skills or time.

Lurpak’s study found that the most popular food shows were the Great British Bake Off, Masterchef and Come Dine With Me – interestingly, all reality food competitions.

In particular, the Great British Bake Off is Channel 4’s most-watched reality television series since Celebrity Big Brother in 2006.

And while reality cooking shows are on the rise, the ‘celebrity chef’ appears to be on the decline, with fewer ‘celebrity cook’ series being released in recent years, and the ones that are, achieving poor viewing figures.

This could be for several reasons; firstly, the competitive element is a successful means of both building suspense and attracting attention. Largely, viewing trends follow that the more dramatic the mistake, the greater the level of public interest.

Celebrity chefs, on the other hand, know precisely what they are doing – which may be informative and educational – but has limited entertainment value.

Another possible reason why celebrity chefs may have diminishing influence is the rise of reality television causing many viewers to be more interested in the interpersonal drama between contestants, rather than learning how to improve their cooking techniques.

This is a move away from when celebrity cooks like Julia Child and Delia Smith had a great influence on home cooks from the 1970s through to the 1990s.

As people have started to cook their own food less, and takeaways and ready meals grow in popularity, there is less need to learn technique, and a greater demand for entertaining food television.

Catering For Everyone

A third reason why celebrity chefs may be going out of fashion, is growing awareness of sexism and racism in the modern age.

Celebrity chefs have come under fire lately for having few recognised female chefs in the limelight, while the few female cooks that are in the limelight (such as the aforementioned Delia Smith, Julia Child, and Nigella Lawson) are typically marketed towards the ‘housewife market’ – a sector that is rapidly diminishing as women take up their own career paths and start wanting to be the Chef, not the homemaker.

Chefs of colour are also traditionally underrepresented in kitchens, although as the British palette – and population – becomes more diverse, more chefs from varied backgrounds are beginning to step up to the plate.

So how did food television in the UK start? And will British television move with the times and improve its content for a changing modern audience? Let’s take a look.

The (Unexpected) Beginnings Of Food Television

Strangely, food television began as a form of propaganda during World War II.

Housewives were encouraged to ‘be the army that guards the home front’, and the Ministry Of Food release vast quantities of information booklets for housewives about how to efficiently use rations to their best advantage.

This soon led to the success of one of the first major ‘celebrity’ cooks’: Marguerite Patten. Patten released recipes for the war efforts and later began cooking on Designed For Women, the BBC’s first magazine series, through the 1940s to 1960s.

Entertainment wasn’t considered as a factor until after the war in 1946, when America’s darling Julia Child became popular.

By this point, rationing was a thing of the past, and American food television went on a rebound – now, food was luxurious and decadent, reflecting Child’s motto of: ‘With enough butter, anything is good’.

The eighties and nineties brought a strange time for food in both America and the UK.

While there was still ongoing pressure for women to be the ‘perfect housewife’, the diet industry was beginning to take hold. And although people were still watching a lot of food television, few were eating the same way they used to.

Eating disorders were beginning to rise, and food television stopped being practical viewing – instead becoming a voyeuristic pastime. This was the beginnings of modern-day ‘food porn’: the food you will never eat, but love to look at.

Because of this, celebrity chef cooking shows (which showed food made with a near-unattainable level of skill), and ‘eating’ shows, which show little cooking, but instead feature chefs sampling a large number of dishes, began to creep into the market in the early 2000s.

The Future Of Food Television

Food television now faces an unprecedented challenge: how to appeal to a market that has few homogenous factors?

Now that the cooking show market can no longer rely on a steady stream of predominantly middle-class white women and has to appeal to a range of people from diverse genders and backgrounds, advertising food shows becomes more of a challenge.

This is where food competitions come in. Competitions allow for an equal playing field for all contestants and provide other points of interest besides simply ‘learning to cook well’. These reality shows draw on the influence of shows like Big Brother to create interpersonal dramas and challenges which make for entertaining viewing for all genders, classes, and races.

Another point of difference from the ‘old’ method of presenting food television, is the different varieties of food featured.

Professional cooking used to be dominated by the French cooking method, and sometimes Italian, leading to a limited world view of national cuisines. Now, there are a rising number of celebrity cooks from different cultural backgrounds, such as Levi Roots and Nadiya Hussain among others, who spread their knowledge and skill working with different ingredients from across the world to create fascinating and varied food content.

The new emphasis on variety, creativity and creating different, memorable food for pleasure instead of duty, can only lead to more improvements and developments in the food industry.

Over the coming years, it will be interesting to see how the changing perspectives of the people who create food, will change the restaurant industry itself.

Article by Caterquip