Mark Bittman Probably Hates Your Favorite Cooking Show

What does food writer and occasional food television personality Mark Bittman think about cooking shows and other food television? Oh, just that "it’s all competition, cleavage, nastiness." Last night in a persnickety interview with Ruth Reichl, according to Capital New York, Bittman talks about how television is pretty much the worst as "multiple takes, scripting and editing all interfere with the purity of the process Bittman enjoys in his writing."

Though he acknowledges cooking shows have given food greater importance, Bittman declares that no one has "actually learned how to scramble an egg" from a damn cooking show. And the worst thing about television? The tendency to blur the lines between "cooks" and "chefs":

"The vast minority of people who cook wind up being chefs. No where else in the world, except for the West right now, would anyone ever think that cooking and being a chef was synonymous. There is that tendency around television. Books are a small part, television is really—if 'blame' is to be cast television is to blame for that.”

Finally, even Nascar is better than food television, in the world according to Bittman: "For some reason people don’t watch—what’s it called—NASCAR and think they can’t drive a car unless they drive it 180 miles an hour."

· Mark Bittman and Ruth Reichl Savage the Food-TV Craze [Capital New York]
· All Mark Bittman Coverage on Eater [-E-]
· All Food TV Coverage on Eater [-E-]

[Photo: MarkBittman.com]