The Problem with Food Reality Television

Reality TV is a sub-genre of television that will envelop and trap you if you let it. Many people watch reality TV shows in the name of 'entertainment', but somewhere down the line, it leads to misinformation. If you make assumptions about chefs based on reality cooking shows in my presence, I might look at you like you are an idiot. But then, I wondered how someone might look at me when I make assumptions about fashion based on 'Project Runaway', 'Top Model', or something else.

So, the problem here is not necessarily individuals who are eating this type of content, it's the production houses that keep feeding them. If you carefully look at the reality shows on the market, a healthy third consists of just cooking or food-related shows, and the list continues to grow.

Let's analyze some shows today and we'll hear me complain and groan about them even though I started cooking because of these shows.......let's go.

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Wherever I go, I see his face

If I ask you to close your eyes and picture a famous chef, most probably it's Gordon Ramsay. He has become a mascot by this point. Just think about all the shows that he has produced- Kitchen Nightmares, Hell's Kitchen, Hotel hell, Masterchef, Masterchef Junior, Gordon Ramsay's 24 Hours to Hell and Back (I don't even know), Boiling Point, Gordon Ramsay Uncharted, Gordon Ramsay's Great Escape, and so on and so forth. This angry British chef is literally everywhere from cookbooks to reality shows to movies to video games, there is nothing that he hasn't tried in the culinary world.

Image via Flickr by gordonramsaysubmissions

Gordon Ramsay became the infamous icon of a chef who is always angry, yelling at people, cursing, and making inappropriate jokes and these qualities naturally bred the ground for these kinds of shows. If you ask any kid who wants to become a chef, "Who is your inspiration?". The answer is Chef Ramsay, and don't get me wrong he is a great chef with many Michelin-starred restaurants, well-crafted and informative cookery courses, and cookbooks. But, I feel like people who follow him only do it for the reason that he is popular and not because they feel that he is a great chef.

The thing I despise about Gordon Ramsay's influence is that he has forever added to the stereotype of chefs being completely rude, angry, hot-blooded, pan-throwing individuals. Although those qualities exist in the cheffing world, those are not the only prominent characteristics that a chef has.

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"Reality" Television

We all know that there is a beautiful irony in the term "Reality TV", meaning that these shows are as far away from reality as we could possibly imagine. I remember starting to learn how to cook when I was young, and I decided to watch MasterChef Junior.....a really "humbling" experience I must say. I was just shocked to see how kids of such a young age were able to not only cook like chefs but also take the pressure of competition. But, later I found out that some elements of the show are staged and are not real at all.

According to Screenrant, many of the restaurants that were "fixed" in Kitchen Nightmares eventually shut down. In 7 seasons of the hit reality television series, 15 out of 77 restaurants survived while the rest closed down. Gordon Ramsay himself said in an interview that he quit the show after the backlash received due to these restaurants going out of business. But, guess what? Kitchen Nightmares is back, and they aired the first episode on September 25, 2023.

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I am not saying Reality TV shouldn't exist, it is what made me start cooking. But, I stopped watching it after a point when I found better informative sources. There is more to cooking than just time-limited high-pressure competitions, egoistic chefs, and mystery challenges. Many of these shows focus on the end product, it's all about how well the dish comes at the end but none of them try to show that the process can be enjoyable as well. If you can enjoy the process of cooking, it doesn't even matter if the end product is bad. That's why many people watch food reality TV, but never actually try to cook anything from it.

Well, that's it for this time.

See you next week!