I almost ignored this bit-too-long piece on the rise of the TV cook­ing show and the simul­ta­ne­ous fall of the home cooked meal (via @borrodell).

That decline has sev­eral causes: women work­ing out­side the home; food com­pa­nies per­suad­ing Amer­i­cans to let them do the cook­ing; and advances in tech­nol­ogy that made it eas­ier for them to do so. Cook­ing is no longer oblig­a­tory, and for many peo­ple, women espe­cially, that has been a bless­ing. But per­haps a mixed bless­ing, to judge by the culture’s con­tin­u­ing, if not deep­en­ing, fas­ci­na­tion with the sub­ject. It has been eas­ier for us to give up cook­ing than it has been to give up talk­ing about it — and watch­ing it.

But com­bined with this short arti­cle dis­cussing the joys a cook­ing show brought to one fam­ily, and the myr­iad ben­e­fits it brought to their chil­dren, I felt they were per­fect complements.

A funny thing hap­pened on the way through the cook­ing show obses­sion. What we were see­ing on the screen began trick­ling into our kitchen. The kids sud­denly perked up dur­ing our weekly vis­its to the local farm­ers’ mar­ket, insist­ing on check­ing out exotic fruits and veg­eta­bles and, even bet­ter, buy­ing, prepar­ing, and eat­ing them. […]

What are they learn­ing? How do I count the ways? Fine motor skills from chop­ping gar­lic. Multi-tasking from sautéing veg­eta­bles in olive oil. (Case in point is their star­tling real­iza­tion that you can’t just leave a saucepan unat­tended; this skill requires the need to over­come any ten­den­cies for ADD.) They’ve honed their orga­ni­za­tion and math skills, prac­ticed quick think­ing, and stretched to develop some orig­i­nal ideas. […] And, best of all, my kids are actu­ally eat­ing and enjoy­ing copi­ous veg­eta­bles and a vari­ety of other health­ful and exotic foods.

The lat­ter arti­cle also notes that a strong neg­a­tive cor­re­la­tion has been found between the amount of tele­vi­sion watched and hap­pi­ness. This does not sur­prise me.