Have The Super Wealthy Hosts Of The Food Network Lost Their Touch With The Rest Of Us?

Who deserves a good meal? If you click on the Food Network, cable television’s hub for the hungry, it might seem at first glance that the answer is you. Of course it’s you! All the decadent cakes, Iron Chef feasts, and down home country fare on display are naturally intended for you, the viewer at home. That’s why everything is so warm, so fuzzy, so homey, and so welcoming. But if you find yourself lulled into gorging hours upon hours of the network at a time, you might notice a trend: Food Network isn’t for you — it’s for the rich, perfect, happily-married-in-the-country version of you that simply doesn’t exist. Food Network is aspirational viewing, but now its pushing a new interpretation of what makes the upper class upper.

Food has always been a mean by which to measure class divide. When Julia Child revolutionized home cuisine with Mastering the Art of French Cooking in 1961, she understood that fine dining had classist connotations in the United States. That’s why she introduced her tome of French recipes with the note that she was writing for “the servantless American cook.” It’s a phrase that could inspire sneers today, but at least Child was being upfront about the Promethean task she was attempting: to share elitist knowledge with everyone. Two years after publishing the hit cookbook, Child launched her legendary cooking show, The French Cook, on WGBH. For the next four decades, Child would continue to pioneer the cooking show as we know it today. She offered her expert knowledge with a heaping dose of charm, and pinch of self-deprecation. Every current Food Network hit, from Barefoot Contessa to The Pioneer Woman, owes something to Child’s original formula. But what the Food Network has added to the format is a reflection of today’s ever-increasing class divide. More and more, the “chefs” and experts who host the homey, how-to cooking shows you watch aren’t experienced chefs at all, but celebrities and wealthy home-taught hobbyists who use entertaining as a side-hustle.

If you look at who gets to host a show on Food Network in 2018, you can fit them all in at least one of three categories:

1. Accomplished chef and successful restauranteur
2. Next Food Network Star winner (or alum from another foodie competition show)
3. The aforementioned celebrities and wealthy home-taught hobbyists

Obviously, there is some overlap. For example, one of Food Network’s newest stars, Gesine Prado, is not only a successful baker and professional instructor, but she’s also Sandra Bullock’s sister and former producing partner. But more and more, the stalwart how-to show hosts, the experts who invite us into their home kitchens to teach us the basics, were people who didn’t get their starts as dish-washers or line cooks in a fast-paced restaurant, but who we already knew as celebrities or lifestyle personalities, i.e. they were rich before they even got on TV. Ina Garten ran a successful business on the Hamptons. Valerie Bertinelli is a former child star. Trisha Yearwood is an internationally-acclaimed country singer (who happens to also be married to Garth Brooks, one of the world’s richest musicians). Giada De Laurentiis hails from a family of film producers with an old school Italian movie star for a matriarch. Sandra Lee is the First Lady of New York. Even Ree Drummond, The Pioneer Woman herself, is no mere “pioneer woman”; her “cowboy” husband, Ladd, is one of the wealthiest landowners in the country and hails from one of Osage County’s most illustrious cattle families. And while it’s difficult to get an accurate read on how much these folks were worth before landing their Food Network empires, and how much they’re now worth because of them, we know that Drummond’s family has received almost $25 million from the federal government over the last decade. That puts the Pioneer Woman’s estimated current net worth close to $50 million.

Ree Drummond is actually an interesting example of this trend because her “brand” is being down-to-earth, but you only need to look at Drummond’s “countrified” kitchen to figure out that she’s not exactly slumming it with a wrought-iron dutch oven over an open camp fire. In addition to a constantly stocked pantry and a state-of-the-art kitchen, Drummond often has a specific appliance on display that screams “wealthy”: a custom-painted KitchenAid stand mixer. Kitchen-Aids are pricey on their own, but with The Pioneer Woman’s custom Un Amore art pattern, they can cost anywhere between $1,249.00 and $1,449.00. Drummond owns at least two — if not three — of these suckers. (And it looks like Drummond might be profiting off sales of the designs, too, since they are listed as approved by her.) I know this is a crazy thing to harp on, but harp on it I must.

Is there anything inherently wrong with being wealthy? Nope. But there is a larger trend here that I find deeply troubling. If all the major personalities on Food Network come from wealthy backgrounds, elite culinary careers, or are selected through a rigorous reality competition, it sends a distinct message about food: only the “best” people deserve good food, and being able to cook “good food” is an indicator of your worth. This is especially troubling when you look at larger trends in the food world. A 2011 USDA study found that 14.9% of households in the United States were “food insecure,” a phrase to donate a scarcity in food, largely based not on availability, but poverty. The ethos of Julia Child’s cooking shows was to bridge this gap, but as more and more Food Network shows feature people whose lives are out of touch with those of us who operate with strapped budgets, you start to see more and more recipes that can’t actually be replicated without a fully-stocked pantry, access to high-end ingredients, and the latest gadgets — no matter what they’re trying to spin you.

“As more and more Food Network shows feature people whose lives are out of touch with those of us who operate with strapped budgets, you start to see more and more recipes that can’t actually be replicated without a fully-stocked pantry, access to high-end ingredients, and the latest gadgets — no matter what they’re trying to spin you.”

Food is never just food. Food is an expression of cultural identity. Food is a means to nourish and fuel ourselves. Food can be used as a way to demonstrate love, and food is indeed a marker of social status. I personally get hung up on the last point because I grew up without access to good food. I had a single, working mother and there were a lot of hard times. I don’t know how many of my current friends have visceral memories of being hungry, going to a pantry, and seeing that the only options were canned foods and powdered puddings bought in bulk during an annual discount sale, but I do. I wasn’t physically starving, but I didn’t have much access to fresh, nutritious meals. Today I spend a good deal of my limited disposable income on food experiences because, to me, eating well is proof I am doing well. So when I see Ree Drummond’s massive ranch and perpetually-stocked pantry and stable of stand mixers that could cover three months of my Manhattan rent, I don’t see a relatable home cook. What I see is a woman showing off her bounty first, and sharing limited knowledge second. I see a reminder that not everyone really is entitled to a good meal — just the rich and the lucky.

Maybe it’s not that this is what Food Network wants to project. Maybe this is just the way things are.