Who needs old-fashioned khana-pakana when we can have food porn. In a Harper’sMagazine article titled “Debbie does Salad”, Frederick Kaufman charted the emergence of gastroporn, the reinvention of cooking as salacious spectacle, designed to titillate all our appetites, gustatory and otherwise.

Kaufman’s piece focused on the Food Network channel shows, featuring dishy chefs creating just-as-gorgeous dishes, aimed not at stodgy little housewives but “that choice prime-time demographic, the 18-35-year-old male can’t-cook-won’t-cook crowd—the men who like to watch. As people cook less and less, they ogle cooking shows more and more”. Where there are foodie celebrities—chefs, hosts, food critics—there will be cookbooks, gastroporn’s equivalent of literary smut. More...

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