Cooking and Looking

Cooking shows used to be about cooking. About recipes, and following the directions. Cooking shows were the original reality TV. The smooth blends, the careful combining of dry and wet ingredients, every step demonstrated and shown, step-by-step. Oven temps and burner settings and the right type of pan. They told how to do it all, what it should look like, how it should smell.
Now, there are many, many, MANY variations of cooking shows. They have little connection to the follow-the-recipe shows of old.
Actually, they are not cooking shows. They are eating shows.
You can watch 'chefs' eat their way around a city, the important thing being who can most quickly eat the most. Any cooking or flavor components are there as clues to the next food you have to quickly ingest in spite of flavor, texture, or taste.
You can watch a fat man (how did he get that way?) wander all over the country eating the world's largest hamburger or the great steak of blank. Yeah, just watch that man eat!

Of course, the shows do go into the kitchens. They show you a powdery spice mix and tell you here's the secret ingredients -- not that you know any more about what the ingredients are. They show you how it's put on and how the food is cooked and the way to build the sandwich, if there is a sandwich.

Then there are the 'kitchen' shows. Contestants line up at prep tables and they are all supposed to make something, sometimes the same things, out of identical ingredients.  They show all the cooks doing the same or different things. One contestant uses a skillet, one boils, one broils, another bakes. Sometimes the cook will tell the camera, 'I think broiling will preserve the flavor without destroying the integrity of the selection.'  Huh?
I know I want to try that for supper tonight.

Then they have to be judged. The judges must consider whether the grape leaf should be tilted more to the right or the left, and if the sauce dribbled across the plate is writing in secret code or not. (Points off if they can read it.) Finally, they must decide if the food is edible enough for the prize. It doesn't matter if the idea of the food is appetizing -- that's completely nonessential.
I, for one, do not think fish flavored ice cream is ever edible, no matter how much cream and sugar is mixed in. Because that's a favorite 'strategy'. If you don't know what else to do with it, make it ice cream. YUM!

Why do people watch this? What is the fascination?
Food needs to be tasted. It needs to be smelled. It needs to be felt. One can't know the texture of a blend from looking at it on the screen. One can't inhale the aroma of good things coming together in a skillet or an oven. Most of all, one can't taste the result.

So why watch? If you want to see fat people eat, go to the fair. If you want to watch a circus, go to the circus. If you want to enjoy food, fix it for yourself. That's what appeases the appetite.