Between Paula Deen's scandals and its lackluster representation of any culture
outside the Midwest - and perhaps Italy - the Food Network has seen its share of criticism.
However, there's so much more going on behind the scenes than you might think.
This segment from Sandra Lee's cooking show Semi-Homemade Cooking really takes the cake
when it comes to poor taste. Lee is known for her trademark culinary philosophy that combines fresh
ingredients with store-bought items. Anything but festive, her infamous Kwanzaa cake is made from a
disturbing combination of store-bought cake, frosting, canned pie filling, and corn nuts.
Not only does the cake sound unappetizing, but the recipe is also made up.
To make matters worse, the host is definitely unfamiliar with real Kwanzaa traditions.
Salon reported food stylist and recipe writer Denise Vivaldo disavowed the cake.
Vivaldo claimed to have been pressured to produce the recipe for Lee's show out of financial need.
Unsurprisingly, the segment received widespread criticism. AV Club aptly described it as:
"[...] a pile of ridiculousness slathered in despair and sprinkled with nonsense nuggets."
In this case, Lee's offensive cake has no cultural relevance,
and doesn't seem like a recipe that would be welcome at any holiday table.
The Food Network is known to capitalize on a good thing. Some might argue there's a bit too
much of a good thing when it comes to Guy Fieri. Making his first appearance as a Food Network
host on Guy's Big Bite in 2006, Fieri's best known for hosting Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives.
In addition to day long "Triple D" marathons, Fieri's overexposure extends to at least
six other Food Network shows. Along with Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives and Guy's Big Bite,
the mayor of flavor town can be found on Guy's Grocery Games,
Rachel vs. Guy: Celebrity Cook-Off, Rachel vs. Guy: Kids Cook-Off, and Food Network Star.
Despite Food Network's abundance of Guy Fieri, the channel kept quiet when a former producer
alleged that Fieri made homophobic comments about a restaurant owner.
According to the New York Post, former Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives producer David Page had a
falling out with Fieri and was fired. Page sued Food Network for breach of contract,
but the network countersued and said Page mistreated the staff in emails.
The two settled out of court, and Fieri's show survived to see another diner with a new producer.
One complaint about The Food Network's programming is that,
over the years, it's shifted its focus to pop culture and guilty-pleasure recipes.
The network has always featured personalities, but culinary tastes went beyond the diner
in the earliest days. In the Food Network's infancy, trained chefs such as Sara Moulton
taught viewers the difference between leafy greens like kale and chard.
In the early 2000s, the network realized most people watched for entertainment rather than
instruction. Shows pivoted to showing fewer chefs, bigger personalities, and more desserts.
Food Network executives even pulled the plug on one of its first stars when it cancelled
Emeril Live. Hosted by Chef Emeril Legasse, the show debuted in 1997 with a live band,
studio audience, and Emeril's catchphrase "Bam!"
"Just a little bam! Bam! Bam! Bam!"
Among Emeril's many guests were the late queen of soul Aretha Franklin and cooking icon Julia Child.
The formerly chef-driven channel is now packed with comfort-food shows
and competition heavyweights. The Food Network might be criticized for making competitions,
instead of chefs, the main focus on TV, but the shift eventually worked in terms of ratings.
As recently as 2020, the network has been criticized for its lack of diversity.
Some note that women are more often eliminated in competition shows like Chopped. Wired found
on-camera talent to be vastly white, with few people of color hosting on the network's
cooking app. However, Food Network has since updated the app to showcase more diverse talent.
Regular network programming also remains mostly white.
Until 2017, Food Network featured relatively few people of color.
Some of the first to break through were Ming Tsai, Sunny Anderson, the Neelys,
Aaron McCargo, Jr., Aarti Sequeira, and Marcela Valladolid. By 2019 the network further expanded
its diversity with Delicious Miss Brown's Kardea Brown and Girl Meets Farm's Molly Yeh.
Not featuring a variety of cultures is definitely a missed opportunity.
On-screen diversity will hopefully continue on all of Food Network's platforms.
Overall, cooking shows on Food Network are very Eurocentric.
Shows featuring Western European cooking such as the Italian cuisine of fan favorite Giada
De Laurentiis make up a disproportionately large portion of the networks' programming
Not only are there few shows featuring people of color, the hosts often aren't professional chefs.
Food Network tends to limit shows featuring people of color to "natural"
or "soul food" cooking, focusing on comfort rather than technique.
The book African Americans on Television explains this setup isn't necessarily an issue
until we examine the history of people of color, especially Black people,
as domestic labor. It's problematic to have people of color perceived only as approachable
"home cooks," instead of culinary experts like other chefs on the network. Then, consider the
fact that these "soul food" shows present chefs of color cooking for a largely white,
middle-class audience, and the situation gets even murkier.
Food website Eater speculated that the Food Network's 2010 push to appeal to more young
male viewers might have been the wrong move. The culinary-focused outlet reported that including
more reality TV in primetime programming resulted in a glut of copycat shows. The
network ultimately canceled the show Chefs vs. City, a food-based Amazing Race clone,
after just two seasons. The unintended consequence of programming changes might
have added to a perfect storm when combined with lackluster new shows.
As reported by Huffington Post, the programming shift led to the network's key demographics,
women ages 18 to 49 and 25 to 54, switching to other channels. Viewers moved to other networks,
where reality and cooking shows such as Cake Boss and Top Chef reigned supreme.
It should also be pointed out how the network's then parent company, Scripps Networks Interactive,
launched the Cooking Channel the same year it acquired Travel Channel. The added
internal network competition may have further damaged Food Network's ratings at the time.
Chef Robert Irvine rose to fame on Food Network thanks to his no-nonsense persona
as host of Dinner: Impossible. In 2008, Irvine gained exposure of a
different kind when questions about his culinary credentials arose in the media.
Among the fabrications in Irvine's CV, revealed by the BBC, were a knighthood, ownership of a
Scottish castle, a friendship with Prince Charles, and claims the chef had cooked for four United
States presidents. The Food Network dismissed Irvine from Dinner: Impossible and replaced
him with Michael Symon. Audiences didn't connect with Symon, and somehow, Irvine got his job back.
While Food Network brass may not have cared much about credentials, the show's writers
and producers weren't so forgiving. Irvine's new missions on Dinner: Impossible set him
up for failure. Reportedly, Irvine would show up on set to find inadequate materials available to
complete the show's challenges. Sometimes lying to your co-workers really doesn't work out so well.
"Ahh, man. You're like making my life a misery today."
Turns out the Food Network has a history of bad fact-checking. Joshua Adam Garcia, aka Chef JAG,
became a fan and judges' favorite on Food Network Star thanks to his unlikely background story.
JAG claimed to have graduated from the New York Restaurant School and joined the Marines where
he served in a war zone. There, he reached the rank of corporal. His resume turned out
to be so unlikely, because it was fake. The show revealed the betrayal on network television and
shocked the audience when the finalist was asked to step down before the final vote.
The real background of this disgraced chef is much less decorated.
JAG never graduated from the New York Restaurant School and never served in a war zone,
or rose to the rank of corporal. In reality, he'd been demoted due to a Marines hazing scandal, and
his military career was cut short. Food Network forced JAG to withdraw from the competition show,
but his memory lives on as an iconic moment of television.
Southern cooking personality Paula Deen is no stranger to controversy.
What's a bit more unusual is for scandal to strike her son, Bobby Deen. That changed when
Paula's team posted a photo of mother and son dressed as Lucy and Ricky from I Love Lucy,
complete with Bobby sporting offensive brownface makeup. Obviously, it wasn't a good look,
and a backlash quickly ensued. To make matters worse, only two years earlier,
Paula had apologized for racial slurs in a 2013 lawsuit brought on by a former employee.
The photo was eventually deleted, and Paula Deen announced the social media representative
responsible was fired for the incident. That still doesn't explain how anyone thought the
brownface makeup was a good idea in the first place. And while not necessarily offensive,
it's also a bit weird for a mother and son to dress up as a married couple.
Regardless of the social media criticism, the incident didn't harm Bobby's standing
with the Food Network. Today, Bobby's show, Not My Mama's Meals, airs on the
Food Network's sister network, the Cooking Channel. Bobby Deen has also hosted several
seasons of the Food Network's Holiday Baking Championship and Spring Baking Championship.
In the early days of the Food Network, UK transplant Jamie Oliver hosted the fully
clothed culinary show, The Naked Chef. With his relaxed and laid-back approach to food,
Oliver became a household name. His popularity eventually led to his own
line of cooking products. However one Jamie Oliver item went over the line.
Oliver released a product called "punchy jerk rice," supposedly flavored and inspired
by traditional Jamaican cooking. You might be asking, what's jerk rice? Good question.
There's no such thing, and that made Jamaican chefs understandably angry.
A jerk is a spice rub made of allspice and scotch bonnet peppers.
Traditionally, the rub is used for chicken or pork that is then barbecued.
Jamaican-born Levi Roots, a chef who actually taught Oliver how to cook jerk style,
called him out for the appropriation of Jamaican culture, adding that it, quote, "needs to stop."
Aside from the recipe itself, the real outrage about the rice centered around the tendency to
borrow from other ethnic groups without regard for knowledge of the culture. As a culinary figure,
Oliver should've known better. He attempted to brush off the
criticism, saying he only meant to acknowledge the flavor's inspiration.
Oliver might think twice before borrowing cultural traditions for his next sales pitch.
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