Cooked: Netflix Original, Sequence 1, 4 episodes: Fire – Water – Air – Earth
Alex Bibney & Michael Pollan
An essay by Anja Roubos/Foodie Records
In his new serie ‘Cooked’ Michael Pollan takes you on a journey through a world that concerns all of us: the world of food. In these four episodes Pollan focuses on our lost knowledge about the origin of food. Since the 50s of last century, the industry has been trying slowly but surely to get us out of the kitchen, so that they themselves could make more money to produce our food. Pollan searches the origins of the cooking process and tries to gain more insight in the way we used to use the elements fire, water, air and earth to cook our meals.
In this series of four episodes, Pollan neatly switches between close-ups, atmospheric travel images, people, slow motion footage, interviews with people from the field, footage from ordinary kitchens, businesses, his own kitchen and interviews in which he talks about his research. He addresses a serious subject but the almost poetic power of the images used in ‘Cooked’ approach the subject hopeful, not heavy. He doesn’t want to push people into the kitchen, but he wants to lure them, by showing how cooking can bring joy and freedom. A view which is supported by the images. His enthusiasm, liveliness, ‘joie de vivre’ or joy comes from knowledge. Knowledge he shares with you in these four episodes.
Michael Pollan describes how American society deals with food and how the historically grown position towards food affects the choices we make today. The American way of dealing with food may differ from the Dutch way, but there are elements that overlap. In The Netherlands, we also spend much less time in the kitchen than in the past. In families with dual-earners, it is difficult to find the time for cooking proper meals. And the options for easy, processed food are overwhelming too. Traditions like making raw milk cheeses are being questioned once in a while and must be fought for. Fast food chains are everywhere. Although ‘Cooked’ is about American eating habits, many of Pollan’s findings also apply to The Netherlands. The questions he addresses are also important to us Dutch and the stakes are the same: good and real food is important everywhere.
When watching ‘Cooked’ the question raises ‘why did we chose to approach our food the way we do so nowadays?’ Why convenience over old traditions? Why did we stopped to care for the transmission of basic knowledge about food? In the time that women were more likely to work outside, the issues around how to spend time/energy to cook, arose. The emancipation process created a doorway for the food industry. In studying advertisements from that time, I noticed how produced food was introduced as the perfect sollution. Not surprising people were attracted. It was a solution for them. By the cheerful and attractive promotion of produced and processed food, people fell in love with the time-saving aspects of readymade meals that only needed heating. Advertisement made it appear to be about nutritious meals. Exposure to advertisements made women in the 50s/60s and their families trade in their knowledge about traditional food for easy use of produced food and the time-saving benefits.
Does watching commercials like an advertisement for a soft drink, with visually appealing elements (colors, shapes, speed, brightness, beauty) and the narrative aspect, which links drinking soda to having lots of friends and a fantastic time, affect your thinking facility? Yes. And seeing became believing. Believe that social connectivity and associated blissful moments are also in reach for you … provided you acknowledge the conditions: drink soda! If seeing is believing, the maker of the advertisement retains the power. Michael Pollan wished to outline the way the food industry wants us to look at food. And by making ‘Cooked’, he shows gives us an alternative: he zoomes in on the structure of bread, the process of making a good stew and the power of fire in the kitchen. In addition, he shows how food is cooked in different places in the world and he shows traditions in an attractive cinematic way. He cookes in his own kitchen and he brings these cooking sessions onto the screen in an entertaining way. He cooks for a large group of friends who come to eat his food. Images of smiling friends and the joyful mood of his party is completed with an image of Pollan talking to some friends and relaxing, enjoying a successful dinnerparty. Can his images have the same effect as thought through commercials for produced food? Does it enhance your appetite for a real meal? Or play the ingredients of fast and produced food a crucial role in our desire? Have we become so focused on sugar, salt and fat that our attention by definition goes out to processed food, even if healthy food is presented in an attractive way? What tips the balance?
Pollan investigates (lost) knowledge about food. Does that encourage us to do the same? In that sense we are back at the question whether the women in the 50s/60s had made different choices if they were provided with knowledge about the new produced food. Could more knowledge about fast food have encouraged them to appriciate the knowledge that they had been handed down from generation to generation? Had more knowledge made them able to better value the great importance of preparing good traditional food? A task that should not have been taken over by a third party? A task which they had probably marginalized by means of emancipation, or a task that they — prior to the emancipation — experienced disparaging? To marginalize nutricion and the role of the person who prepares it, and to put produced food on a pedestal, elementary components in our social relations shifted. The importance of the role of the person who feeds is never properly assessed on value. Not by women, not by men. As they assessed value to the task of providing food, perhaps they would have made other choices in the allocation of tasks. Perhaps men and women would have been better of settling the disputes over classification of time and domestic tasks, in stead of leaving room for the food industry to seize this stalemate and provide a way inside our homes. A way to the heart of the family: the kitchen.
If knowledge was placed on a pedestal, rather than consumerism, society had been different. But that’s all in the past. The beauty of this sequence of four episodes by Michael Pollan is precisely the positive outlook he has towards food. There is still much to discover, seems to be his message. It’s not too late (yet). It does not make sense to think about a choice women (and men) back in the 50s/60s simply did not have by a) the long road of emancipation that lay ahead of them and b) a predominant emerging food industry that quickly realized that there is much to earn for those who are in charge of the kitchen. So the question is not whether women could have reacted differently. But whether we – as today’s society, women and men – think differently about food when knowledge is offered to us. Are there elements in knowledge that can inflame a change? Are we prepared, once we have gained more knowledge, to adapt the ways in which we structured our days, so we can make room to investigate whether we can benefit from changing our relationship towards nutrition? A profit for us and our familymembers. And can we recover traditions in our family? Do we even want to cherish these specific traditions? In the current era of globalization, which traditions do we want to embrace? Is it possible to choose the traditions that appeal to you most? And thereby regain pleasure in preparing your own meals?
Fortunately, we have been busy regaining that pleasure. The large amount of foodblogs and foodfestivals are an example of our growing attention to food and its origins. The son of Michael Pollan describes the feeling you can get by preparing your own food; an indescribable feeling of authenticity and pride when you make a dish that you never thought you would be able to make. Michael Pollan communicates his enthusiasm. He radiates a certain happiness in his statements about his findings. Michael Pollan encourages the viewer to think about the way they prepare food. Pollan shares the knowledge he gathered during the making of this series. But he especially shows how curiosity, the urge to gather more knowledge and the quest for knowledge can contribute to the choices you make about food.
