Where did this aspect of our (U.S. American) culture come from? It just seems so >>>bizarre!<<< I also find it kind of… grotesque! Is it just me? What’s it all mean?
It’s a culmination of knowledge from trained chefs that learned several styles and techniques from all over the globe.
And wine pairing has been around a long, long while.
Grotesque? That seems a bit strong. A little pretentious or precious at times, sure. And everything that becomes popular in the media can get a bit commodified. But at the end of the day it is just people really into good food and trying to extract the most from their dining/cooking experience.
Are you perchance one of those people who don’t take any particular pleasure in eating? No offense intended - some people are just like that. Food is necessary fuel, no more, no less. Under those those circumstances I could see the puzzlement.
I might a wee bit that sort of person. What I am very much is somebody uncomfortable with appears to me to be an odd and excessive fetishization of a basic human necessity.
Do you live in a lean-to? In many climates that’s all the shelter one needs to satisfy a basic human requirement.
Do you have more than two sets of clothes? You can just wash one set while you wear the other every day. That satisfies your basic human need for clothing.
There are also indications that the average human actually needs variety in diet. Some people consider giving a person exactly the same food for extended periods of time—like “prison loaf” punishment—a type of torture, even if it fulfills all basic nutritional requirements.
I only live in a bamboo lean-to when I’m eating pork. I find masonry homes pair better with fowl.
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Do you have more than two sets of clothes?
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Don’t be silly! Brushed denim might be ideal with dry wines but it simply must be silk with anything from California. And depending on how bitter an IPA is I have thirteen polo shirts to choose from.
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There are also indications that the average human actually needs variety in diet. Some people consider giving a person exactly the same food for extended periods of time—like “prison loaf” punishment—a type of torture, even if it fulfills all basic nutritional requirements.
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EXACTLY! I expect a different experience with every forkful! AND I find gustatory bliss only by switching to a completely different fork between bites! (Personally I refuse to finish any meal with a four-tiner!)
Cooking is an easily accessible art form–in other words, a way to be creative that doesn’t *necessarily *require a lot of extra effort, outlay, or training. Everyone needs to eat, most people need to cook for themselves, at least occasionally, and a lot of people cook for others, again, at least some of the time. And even among those with little interest in cooking, they may enjoy the creative output of others (beyond just fuel for the body)–think of it like people who enjoy going to fine arts museums, galleries, and collecting art.
There have been gourmets/gourmands at least as long as written history records. I have several translations of Apicius which is about 1600 years old, and it’s very “foodie.” A Forme of Cury is another fun old cookbook (about 700 years old) general treatise on the art of cooking, and it’s still quite readable in its original form.
These days, people in many cultures tend to be able to devote more disposable income toward food (or, it may be more accurate to say that food is generally cheaper relative to other necessities of life), so experimentation and appreciation of some luxuries is more readily attainable. Hope that makes sense! So it doesn’t surprise me that we’ve had a recent proliferation of cooking shows, celebrity chefs, and the like. Interestingly, though, we’ve seen some losses like the venerable magazine Gourmet, likely due to good amateur writing and simply the greater variety of media on the subject.
I know all of the words you’ve used, but I have no clue as to the subject of your OP. Could you elaborate (on what it is you find grotesque, f’rinstance)?
Apparently 2Bits doesn’t find anything in the world interesting and worth further study or appreciation. Especially the “odd and excessive fetishization of a basic human necessity.”
Which will inevitably lead us to an OP on mouth-breathers or people who wear socks.
The OP is a variation on a very common message-board trope: “I am not into X … so how can anyone else be into X? Does not compute.”
I think most people fall into that line of thinking sometimes, whether or not we get the urge to post about it online. Speaking for myself, I’ll cop to that much.
I’ll take another tack.
We have 900 channels of TV. Something’s got to fill it. The folks that make TV content have been trying lots of different ideas. After throwing 500 ideas at the wall this is the one that stuck.
For chefs who own restaurants, this is simply a massive ad campaign and a way for them to parlay a high stress job into ongoing celebrity status. Folks like Rachel Ray make a fortune on endorsed pots & pans above and beyond the fortune what they make as TV presenters. Which is a fortune compared to what they make owning or operating a restaurant. Celebrity, even minor league celebrity is a ticket to riches in today’s world.
So why somebody would want to produce this TV product is easy and obvious.
As to why somebody would watch it, all you have to do is look around to know Americans spend an awful lot of time eating and thinking about eating and being subjected to ads about eating. It’s a very much top of mind activity. And far more poepl choose their meals for enjoyment than do for nutrition.
To be sure, lots of people consider McDonalds and Pizza hut as their enjoyment foods. Those folks aren’t glued to the Food Channel.
How many people desire to be trendy & pretentious and “with it”? Lots. In the commercially desirable demographic of 20-40 somethings with big houses and big credit cards, damn near all of them aspire to trendy pretentiousness.
And each of these people can pretend that tomorrow, instead of grilling a steak they’ll create some elaborate 10-ingredient marinade and grill the beef just so on a plank. It’s fantasy, but it’s readily accessible fantasy.
I can certainly do that more easily than I can emulate the guy on the next channel doing sophisticated cabinetmaking in his $40,000 “home” shop that’s really a TV studio set. After all, I really do own soy sauce, a grill, and some meat. But not a jointer nor table saw.
The biggest thing in modern society is that most people (consumers and producers) are sheep. Once something becomes a little bit popular for whatever random reason, it’ll explode in popularity until it’s all the rage for everybody. Until boredom sets in and something else selected equally randomly by the luck of the draw takes its place.
IMO pretentions cooking shows have more staying power than most “entertainment concepts” simply because we all like to eat.
All in all, it’s pretty obvious to me why this works.