Netflix’s ‘Cooked’ Shows Us The Importance of Home Cooking

RVZIONNE.COM
Jul 23, 2017 · 5 min read

In Netflix’s 4-part series Cooked, the entertainment company took the time to visualize Michael Pollan’s book, Cooked: A Natural History Of Transformation. Pollan’s presentation was dramatic. In each episode, they tackled the 4 elements of cooking: earth, water, air and fire.

The documentary was not just about the history of how humans were able to learn cooking, but it also highlights food’s cultural and economic relevance. Pollan was able to take this journey of the primal versions of food to the most exquisite modern-day interpretation of the world’s cuisines. The entire storytelling of our food, as humans, is interesting, but Pollan’s big takeaway for everyone is a simple message: cook.

During his research for the book, Pollan has met with different chefs from the aboriginals in Australia to the pitmaster in Texas. Pollan said that cooking is human’s main difference with the animal kingdom. It was us who were able to process raw food and turn it into something else. He said that it has already been imbibed in our evolution to eat only cooked foods. More than two millennia into the evolution of man, we have learned that cooked foods is the basic way to digest energy. Though we love cooked foods, the commercialization of fast food taught us that cooking with our own hands has become too tedious that we should let other people do it for us.

In the early advertising of microwaved products the messaging has transformed from, “When it’s time to eat, you cook,” to “Are you hungry? Why not pop this box into the microwave oven? Et voila!”

This was also triggered by the women joining the workforce, which caused an imbalance on home roles, industrialized food companies now has an even stronger leverage: the automatic home chef. Since women no longer dominate the kitchen, the question on who should cook was solved by the food companies. That is why microwavable food and instant noodles became so attractive.

This food system is not doing what it is supposed to be doing which is making food that keeps us healthy. Fertility [of the soil] is declining. Crops are not working as well as they used to. It is just not sustainable. WE annot continue to pump animals full of antibiotics. — Michael Pollan

This should have been the perfect answer, everyone thought. Since both the mom and the dad are tired after work, dinner should be done in the easiest way possible. This also encouraged people to order food or even go out so somebody else can cook for you. Though industrialized food has quick solutions for hungry families, Pollan said this should not become a tradition for most of us.

We all have memories of someone cooking for us and this is one of the reasons why cooking at home should be a more important practice now more than ever. In our world where connectivity via technology has become more rampant, we are losing touch of that home bonding whenever family members cook. At the same time, Pollan’s research emphasizes that cooking is knowledge. If our generation forgets what it is to cook, we will not be able to teach the new generation how it’s done.

But could it be that, for us, the taste of foods rich in umami also sounds deep Proustian echoes, bearing us back to memories, however faint, of our very first food? Is it merely a coincidence that so many of the things we think of as “comfort foods” — everything from ice cream to chicken soup — traffic in tastes of either sweetness or umami, the two big tastes first encountered on the breast?

Moreover, we have massive food industries that process food in a different way. For them to maximize profits, they need to use different compounds to compensate for the natural nutrients you can find in a home-cooked food. Vitamin C now comes in power form that they measure in milligrams to make sure your instant food has enough of it.

Pollan said this is one of the major reasons we should all go back to the basics and start cooking our own food. Aside from the surmountable health benefits of home-cooked food, Pollan said we begin to see the value of what we eat more if we are the ones doing the manual labor. The best-selling author argues that the process itself provides a therapeutic result for home cooks. It serves as a relaxation and a form of expression. To put it simply, cooking reveals us our true nature as humans.

It may also be that, quite apart from any specific references one food makes to another, it is the very allusiveness of cooked food that appeals to us, as indeed that same quality does in poetry or music or art.

Cooked is not just about being righteous with what you eat. Fast food chains are here to stay and junk foods will innovate over time. However, for us to retain our humanity in all the progress that’s happening around us, we have to understand that knowing how to cook and cooking are both necessary basics we have to revisit. Pollan said that since ads tells us cooking is tedious, we have forgotten how enjoyable it could be. There are foods that may take hours to cook, but we could start with the quick ones. The more you practice it, just like any other skill, the more you feel comfortable with it.

Lastly, cooking is a way of life. To sum it up, here’s Pollan’s quote on the grave importance of cooking in our lives:

Cooking food creates a profound web of relationships, connecting us to each other and to the earth.


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This was originally published on THE REVOLUZIONNE

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