to think the BBC should show less programms of people making cakes, sweets and deserts

[tmhop]

Just looking at the iplayer and 4 of the top 20 programs are just about making junk food.

With 70% of adults over weight I don't think the state broadcaster needs to encourage more people to eat junk.

I think the tax payers money should go towards making guilt free treats or meals with lots of beg.

Maybe you should move to North Korea where I hear the state likes to dictate every aspect of your life or failing that you need a bit of sugar to lighten your mood.

Home baking is pretty expensive and time consuming in comparison.

I'd rather ban the adverts which show women getting overexcited about fat free yogurts, I think they are demeaning to women.

How on earth is decent, home cooked food "junk?"
I love watching those programmes and am fat! I never eat sweet stuff though as it gives me horrible headaches.
It's savoury for me....but that's because I choose to over eat, not because I watch cookery programmes...

I'm not sure that looking at a cake makes you fat

Oh my God... I'm can gain weight by watching people making cakes?!

Well said Pico

Pico absolutely!!! Nicole Whatsit's orgasmic "YES!" Drives me to insanity!

Yabu.

I don't think the BBC shows the correct balance of food programming.

It's fine to show some programmes about cake etc, but I wish they would show some programmes about how to actually cook normal food. So much of the food programming is for foodies and its usually celebrity chef based.

The other day on the Food and Drink programme for example the episode was supposed to be about healthy cooking. Monica Galetti, who I happen to really like, was cooking and her recipe was a spatchcocked quail with something else quiet fancy. All well and good but is that really what the majority of licence payers are going to want to/be able to cook?

In a nation where people are increasingly relying on ready meals and take aways to feed themselves I think we need programmes that show people how to do every day simple family cookery which is healthy and balanced. It would also be useful to show programmes about budgeting and food planning.

I think Jamie Oliver was moving in the right direction with his Save with Jamie programmes, but that was really aimed at the strapped middle classes and a person on a tight family budget wouldn't be able to afford that. Also most of the savings were based on serving 6-8 people which doesn't really reflect the size of modern families.

Unfortunately the majority of cooking programmes on the BBC are now about foodie culture. They revolve around recipes for entertaining or showing off on your instagram.

I play a sort of foodie bingo when I'm watching these programmes to work out if it's a foodie programme.

"You can get X specialist ingredient at delis (if you live in North London) or online" e.g. I can't buy the stuff at the supermarket = foodie programme

"This is the new quinoa" = foodie programme

"You could buy this basic ingredient (e.g. pasta/pastry) ready made more cheaply but I think it's better to work laboriously for 4 hours and make it myself for the bragging rights" = foodie programme

"You can save money by buying this cut of meat/vegetables from the market" = I have no idea that most markets close at 4pm making it impossible for a person working 9-5 to go there and I have no idea what it is like to be a normal working person.

Even cookery books are blighted with this problem. I found a while ago I had a shelf full of cookery books but nothing to actually cook for my family. It was all too complicated and too fancy.

I went to the book shop to look for something simple and all I could find were celebrity chef cook books and baking books. There was an entire full size book case full of baking books, I could have bought well over 500 about fancy cake if I'd been so inclined.

I ended up ordering the Dairy book of Home Cookery on line and it's been my main source of recipes ever since.

On a tangent another thing that really bugs me about food programming is when they send some boring middle aged white man off to some exotic place and he patronisingly does a programme about the local cuisine. Cooking street food on an open flame for awkwardly polite locals is apparently mandatory for each of these programmes. Why not just get someone from that culture/country to present the programme - it would have much more insight and be much better.

PICO i actually want to put my foot through the telly when I see Nicole YES-ing all over the place. She'd sell her granny, that one!

Yes, those yoghurt adverts are ridiculous. They can ban those if they want, and I wouldn't be too upset. (along with those vile adverts for the depends things where the woman is having incontinence problems and laughs about it) Don't these companies have women in high enough places to say "oh no, no - that is appallingly awful!!" when they are putting together their advertising strategies??

I don't have snacks and biscuits and cake etc in the house for years, but I do have baking ingredients. It's surprising how easy it is and was for my two children to regulate their intake of treats at home if they had to make it before scoffing.
They are both pretty good cooks, and both find home-made fills them up more than shop-bought. Savoury as well as sweet.

We won't ever need a nanny state while there are members of the public seriously touting crap like this.

Combine - yes! Didn't need to watch the rest of the programme, that look alone meant that he would be the next to go.

Shop bought fondant, how very dare he!

yabu
I think mary berry is a great example of how you can enjoy cake and not get as big a a house.
everything in moderation. don't eat when you are not hungry. one slice of cake wil do, you don't have to scoff the lot.

Yes, because the rise in obesity is entirely caused by people buying ingredients, consulting recipes, and baking their own scones and tarts at home. The fat scum.

You've really swallowed the whole diet industry vocabulary/ethos, haven't you, OP? 'Guilt free treats'? Do you also say 'Ooh, I'm going to be a bit NAUGHTY' before you get out your scales and mixing bowl?

And Mary Berry, Nigella Lawson and Michel Roux should be publicly crucified for their crimes against the nation's wobbly waistline.

i suppose my cake is technically bad for you but i did eat most of it!

We should watch more programmes about vampires. Vampires are always slim.

I have cake instead of lunch, not as well as. No problem. And definitely no guilt.

'Ooh, I'm going to be a bit NAUGHTY'
I can't tell you how much this grates against me when women says this!
That fucking maltesers advert...!

on a more serious note my son is slim as a whippet his favorite shows are cooking and dr who he is the child who made the street laugh when i was peeling his fingers off the doorframe to get him to bed and he was screaming BUT ITS THE HAIRY BIKERS I WANT THE HAIRY BIKERS I NEED TO KNOW HOW THEY COOK THAT (next time i will close the window)

Did anyone see the bit last week where some fellow said he wasn't using homemade fondant - it was shop bought.
In one polite facial expression she managed convey utter disgust- like he'd shat in her lap not just made a fondant faux-pas

Yes, pure TV gold! Mary Berry's recent home cooking show was lovely too. And I'm really enjoying the Sweets Made Simple one.

To me, using small to medium amounts of baking spread & sugar in home bakes isn't junk food. Junk food to me is so full of preservatives & chemicals so you don't actually know what you are eating. Home baking means you are in control of additives & the nasties that go into food.

Programs using veg for cooking etc would be nice yes, but boring so would have a limited audience I would imagine. Plus I will not have a state broadcaster dictating what programs are aired 'for my own good' & restricting ones that in their opinion are bad.

Plus there is a factor of personal responsibility too, people choose what they eat & if you cook the main evening meal for the whole family as I do, then you are unlikely to stampede off to the baking section in supermarkets & cook nothing else until the 'junk food' series you're watching is over. Adults like us are capable of watching such programs & then going to cook a healthy meal afterwards. If you watch Grand Designs you are unlikely to put your house on the market the next day & sink all of your cash into a personally designed new build are you?

Plus I went to a museum the other day & was actually shocked at how much sugar was in one ration in WW2 for one adult per week. It seemed like such a large amount. But the problem is not sugar itself, its hidden sugar so restricting the amount of baking programs isn't going to affect the amount of sugar in tomato ketchup for instance. At least with home baking you have control over the ingrediants.

Guilt free? What is guilt free? If you assume responsibility for your eating then its a question of proportion. Surely guilt free snacks advertising would just feature a bunch of slim women bouncing around like labradors while telling women that if they do not eat this product then they are fat & a disgrace & will never find or keep a man (said man being free to eat whatever he chooses btw).

But surely icon the type of people who mainly watch cookery programmes are people who are interested in cooking and food. I wouldn't watch a programme about how to make a sheperd pie, lasagne or fruit crumble because as a competent cook I can already do that and it would be boring for me. What I want from a cookery programme is something that is aspirational and shows me how to cook things in a new and different way with ingredients that I mightn't have considered or includes a bit of a traveloge.

You mentioned about the spatchcock quail but there is nothing to stop you replacing the quail with cheaper chicken, the processes are still the same just that for programming purposes they have jazzed it up by using quail. Cookery programmes are primarily there to entertain and give ideas, not as a basic guide for cooking in itself

We won't ever need a nanny state while there are members of the public seriously touting crap like this.

Thanks sooty. I was just about to post a long winded lecture, but this says it all.