food tv

michael pollan in the ny times magazine:

Today the average American spends a mere 27 minutes a day on food
preparation (another four minutes cleaning up); that’s less than half the time
that we spent cooking and cleaning up when Julia arrived on our television
screens. It’s also less than half the time it takes to watch a single episode of
“Top Chef” or “Chopped” or “The Next Food Network Star.” What this suggests is
that a great many Americans are spending considerably more time watching images
of cooking on television than they are cooking themselves — an increasingly
archaic activity they will tell you they no longer have the time for.