Redefining Cooking

Recently, I came across an article in the New York Times Magazine by Michael Pollan. In “Out of the Kitchen, Onto the Couch,” Pollan notes that the average American spends just 27 minutes a day on food preparation. Over the decades, food preparation time has significantly decreased as processed foods have become more prevalent and time spent at work or commuting has risen sharply. But it’s not just about providing more processed foods to consumers, and producing ads claiming to save time and energy. For this change in consumption to happen, corporations needed to slyly and persistently work to change how we define “cooking.” While we used to think of cooking as “making a meal from scratch” now it seems to mean something closer to “not eating out.”

Interestingly, at the same time, television shows about food have prospered. What began with Julia Child has continued with Gordon Ramsey, Rachael Ray, Mario Batali, Emeril Lagasse, and many others. As Pollan, the author of In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto, succinctly notes, “A great many Americans are spending considerably more time watching images of cooking on television than they are cooking themselves.” Why? There’s archeological, biological, and anthropological evidence indicates that our ancestors hunted together and cooked together – and some experts suggest that these instincts, to run, to prepare food, to spend time as part of a community, may be hard-wired into us. Our modern-day culture has moved away from that in many ways – even if we get our fix from cooking shows.

So what happens when we take cooking – and enjoying food surrounded by family and friends – out of our culture? Perhaps the American obesity epidemic. But what if the effects aren’t just physical – what if they’re mental and emotional too? Today, 80 percent of the cost of food eaten at home goes to someone other than a farmer, namely, the food processing and packaging industry. By buying locally grown foods, by building relationships with area farmers, and by spending more time cooking, could the average American change their relationship to food? I think so.