Cooked

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.

More of the same. On the surface this idea had a lot potential. You quickly find that it was less of an Idea and more just a Title.

The bulk of this series is random information, plenty of holier-than-thou critiquing of modern technology, and a whole lot of "Stuff I Know" shoved at you by Michael Pollan. Not that any of it is wrong, it's just bland, smug and unnecessary.

Netflix clearly gets viewership out of these things, however. The most telling scene is a crossover bit with Simin Nosrat of Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat, another aimless Netflix doc that explains why everyone else is wrong.

Fine for casual viewing, but don't expect any epiphanies here.

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.

The initial approaching is quite exciting, an anthropologist journey into the origins of the cuisine culture itself,... I like the idea.

Unfortunately you will find yourself socked by the prejudice male sexist speech of the author. All served with abundant ethnocentrism, and 'pearls' like "how barbecue's build our manhood" and worse. Very offensive for women, and an insult to the intelligence and critical thinking in general.

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.