“Some sociological research reports that we are now putting cooking on a pedestal and that people feel intimidated.”
Speaking on the BBC Feeding programHe warned that people often felt embarrassed by their lack of culinary finesse compared to what they saw on social media and television.
And he added: “We need to eliminate that type of thinking around cooking; “It is not necessary for food to have a Michelin star to be able to eat it.”
A recent phenomenon on social networks has been that of young people watching their grandmothers cook in videos intended to show the art of traditional recipes. The YouTube channel, grandmothers pastawhich reveals the craft of Italian grandmothers, has more than a million followers.
Generational disconnection
The popularity of home videos reveals a generational disconnect when it comes to cooking, experts say.
Charging
Lavelle warned that culinary skills are no longer passed down from generation to generation as they once were, and that grandchildren are now much less likely to know the recipes used by their ancestors.
She said: “There are a multitude of factors that impact that transfer of skills, but the mother remains the primary source of learning in the literature.
“So if children are not learning from their mothers now, then there is that necessary gap and we must provide them with some other source of learning as well.”
Instead of learning to cook and using generational knowledge in the kitchen, young people can simply observe the process as a form of entertainment and be served by a multitude of influencers.
Ramsay and Jamie Oliver have large followers on Instagram, while fashionable Instagram nutritionist Emily English has sold tens of thousands of copies of her book. live to eat.
Abir El Saghir, a famous Lebanese chef, is followed by 27.4 million people on TikTok and has earned hundreds of millions of views.
American influencer Stefan Johnson has over 8 million followers on TikTok who watch him try various popular snacks.
Charging
Food features prominently on social media and the platforms have helped create the habit of taking photographs of food, which has become problematic.
In 2014, leading French restaurateurs launched a campaign to end the culture of “food porn” and ban smartphone photos in their restaurants.
Alexandre Gauthier, then chef at the Grenouillere restaurant in La Madelaine-sous-Montreuil, introduced a symbol representing a camera with a line through it on his menus.
