Cooked

I always like the way Michael Pollan divides him musings into food categories that connect to cultural beliefs and historical discoveries, as he did, for instance in Botany of Desire. He did this in Cooked by devoting each episode to one of the ancient elements of fire, water, air, and earth. I won't say what foods and cultures they correspond to; discover the connections yourself. Allow Pollan to take you to unexpected places of cooking excellence and expertise.

I grew up in a large, somewhat stressed family that relied on prepared convenience food much of the time. I am talking Tater Tots, Hamburger Helper, fish sticks, pot pies, and canned chili, so I don't have great role models for cooking food that is fresh and natural, eco-friendly, and nutritious. Nevertheless, I aspire to do so.

If you are like me, you can't always cook an evening meal, but this series inspires me to try to do so a little more often.

I have watched this series 4 times now, and each time I do, I learn something new. This is purely meant to remind everyone the beauty in cooking and how much it means to carry on cultural traditions. It is also an eye opener for big corporations and how much they have affected our lives.

This is not about politics, race, or any other nonsense one will try to create from this. Remove your bias, and open yourself up to being more comfortable in the kitchen. It will be life changing for you!

This is the story of a narcissist heteronormative man who believes he holds the truth about the history of the human kind. From avoiding the realities of slavery in american history (supposedly, food brought black slaves and slave owners together in peace), to having the egocentrism to believe he can impose meat eating onto vegetarian AND have change their life, to perpetuating patriarchal male ideals as well as gender inequalities, to cultural appropriation, to assuming that meat is the main food in all culture, Pollan really succeeds in showing how narrow-minded and ignorant white privileged folks can be.

Although this series starts with the interesting techniques of a group of Aborigines in Australia, there really is little new or interesting, or even that factual in this documentary and the show degenerates in to a smarmy, upper class, preach about the perils of not cooking properly. Yes people eat too much junk food, that much is clear, but to generate enough time of an hour cooking every day for a lot of people is just not realistic and the whole thing seems out of touch with reality. In an ideal world we'd all sit around with a source of a thousand, organic, fresh ingredients, but there are ways to do this without going back in to the past completely.

At times the narrator and presenter produces some of the most general sweeping statements about food culture in the world and often seems to think that "the West" actually means "America".

The food is pretty good to look at, but there's not a whole lot of interesting or different dishes in there. The presenter says a couple of times things like "Oh, you're doing what the French call 'XXXXX' and you didn't even know the name! That's fantastic!" which is just about as patronizing as you get.

It's a shame. The most interesting person in the show was probably the food expert, Harry Balzer. He actually had something interesting to say that was aside from all the misty-eyed, 'it used to be better a hundred years ago' jargon, patronizing, preachy advice etc that we're left with.

Good message, shame about the packaging and content.

The show actually explains the history and different aspects of cooking. But more importantly it will make you go back into the kitchen. It helps you understand that how cooking as a process brings famalies together. Beautiful show. Must watch.