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Why Are Cooking Shows Booming?
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Why Are Cooking Shows Booming?

Al-Masry Al-Youm, Egypt, July 10

President Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi was right when he spoke last week about the noticeable increase in the number of programs airing on Egyptian television that are dedicated to cooking. He jokingly said that food – no matter how important, creative or inspiring of a topic it is – shouldn’t constitute all the content that viewers consume through public and private channels. Granted, television is guided by viewer ratings, and it’s clear that many viewers enjoy watching cooking-related shows. Entertainment was, is and will continue to be one of the important and necessary roles of the media. Among the long and varied list of topics around which television programs revolve, cooking shows stand out in particular. But this isn’t unique to Egypt. In fact, cooking and food have become the focal point of many television shows in large, developed and influential media environments, including the United States. Cooking programs address the permanent and renewed needs and desires of almost all sectors of the public and, at the same time, they don’t impose huge production expenses. In exchange for this relatively low cost, producers generate many hours of footage that can be edited and spread across several seasons. So long as the list of participants, menus and recipes continues to evolve, the audience will continue to passionately watch. Advertisers from the food industry, as well as manufacturers of cooking equipment, will continue to fund these programs by purchasing advertising space. It’s also interesting to note that cooking shows are among the least controversial media products that exist in the market today. They rarely violate any ethical or moral standards, especially when compared to talk shows or reality TV. So, what made the president criticize this growing trend we’re seeing around us? It seems as if the president, who has spoken many times about the need to avoid indulgence and extravagance, also believes in limiting our number of meals and abstaining from extraneous eating. In his view, people eat to live; not live to eat. Therefore, there’s no reason to devote so many hours of prime-time television to food and cooking. Yet if President Sisi wants to sway what the public watches, more investment must be made in programs revolving around deep, meaningful topics. In other words, the solution isn’t to limit the number of food shows, but rather to provide alternative programs people can watch. We must provide more opportunities for the public to consider and discuss serious issues, and allow the presentation of different, and often contradicting, opinions. Only then will political, social, economic and cultural programs flourish, and cooking programs will return to the normal and acceptable space they are supposed to inhabit in our daily lives. – Yasser Abd Al-Aziz (translated by Asaf Zilberfarb)

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