Questionable Concerns
Jun. 14th, 2011 10:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ladyspriteI admit that I have a weakness for cooking competition shows. I like the fact that most of them are at least somewhat more about the food and the ideas than the standard schadenfreude of reality television, I like the fact that, as an amateur cook I can at least vaguely relate to the challenges, and most of all I love playing along in my head - when they put forth a challenge, it's a lot of fun to think about how I would respond, and what I would make. I know I'm nowhere near good enough to actually compete, even on an amateur level, but it's a fun mental game.
However, the more of these shows I watch, the more I notice one thing that bothers me. It's small, and it's probably silly, but it's really starting to irk me.
There is an immense amount of food wastage going on in these things. I don't just mean sloppy cooking, or the fact that they're cooking obscenely pricey and prestigious dishes for a very small set of people. I mean actual throwing away of perfectly good food.
Top Chef tends to have a mise en place relay every season, for instance, that usually involves butchering multiple chickens per team, chopping cups on cups of onions or apples, shucking dozens of oysters.... nothing is actually done with these things after. They're not used to cook. They're just an end. I'm watching Masterchef right now, and they've had over 30 contestants slicing apples for two hours straight, to test their knife skills. Later on in the show, if it's anything like last season, they'll have situations where everyone cooks, and only two or three dishes actually get eaten. The rest are just tossed.
And.... that strikes me as wrong. There are people starving in this country, let alone elsewhere in the world, and people who can't afford healthy food, and here they are just throwing away pounds upon pounds of healthy, tasty food. And that's aside from the fact that these shows are supposed to be celebrating food, and in the case of one of them, cooking for regular, everyday people. It kind of goes against the entire point of the show, when you think about it.
I know myself well enough to know that I'm not likely to stop watching, at least not right now - though it may keep me from coming back next season. But it would really make my day to hear about a show like this that, say, actually used the extra ingredients to make food for shelters, or food banks. I think that'd be a lot more likely to impress me as a viewer than any number of glamour shots of waigyu beef, or sob stories about rags-to-riches competitors.....
However, the more of these shows I watch, the more I notice one thing that bothers me. It's small, and it's probably silly, but it's really starting to irk me.
There is an immense amount of food wastage going on in these things. I don't just mean sloppy cooking, or the fact that they're cooking obscenely pricey and prestigious dishes for a very small set of people. I mean actual throwing away of perfectly good food.
Top Chef tends to have a mise en place relay every season, for instance, that usually involves butchering multiple chickens per team, chopping cups on cups of onions or apples, shucking dozens of oysters.... nothing is actually done with these things after. They're not used to cook. They're just an end. I'm watching Masterchef right now, and they've had over 30 contestants slicing apples for two hours straight, to test their knife skills. Later on in the show, if it's anything like last season, they'll have situations where everyone cooks, and only two or three dishes actually get eaten. The rest are just tossed.
And.... that strikes me as wrong. There are people starving in this country, let alone elsewhere in the world, and people who can't afford healthy food, and here they are just throwing away pounds upon pounds of healthy, tasty food. And that's aside from the fact that these shows are supposed to be celebrating food, and in the case of one of them, cooking for regular, everyday people. It kind of goes against the entire point of the show, when you think about it.
I know myself well enough to know that I'm not likely to stop watching, at least not right now - though it may keep me from coming back next season. But it would really make my day to hear about a show like this that, say, actually used the extra ingredients to make food for shelters, or food banks. I think that'd be a lot more likely to impress me as a viewer than any number of glamour shots of waigyu beef, or sob stories about rags-to-riches competitors.....
