In her keynote presentation at the Research Chefs Association conference, Alford said that consumers’ connection with food via the media has made good food more accessible to Americans of all backgrounds, and helped raise awareness of issues such as sustainability and how we feed our children.
“Eating out at a ‘white tablecloth’ restaurant used to be an exclusive thing to do. Today, food is no longer an exclusive club,” she said. “And chefs are no longer unapproachable.”
Alford said that it was Julia Child who set the standard for what chefs on television could do, by making food a personal experience.
“The more engaged we became with our audience the more we realized that people wanted their best friend to teach them how to cook,” she said. “…[Celebrity chefs] are helping us to explore different cultures. People need guides. They are our mentors and they have made cooking hotter than ever.”
Alford said that people are beginning to realize that many chefs have an incredible understanding of food science, and can help to make science more accessible - or awe people with their knowledge and skill. But she argues that the most important role of the television chef has been to help people feel connected to their food environment.
She said: “We’re very conflicted about food. We love it but we eat too much of it, or we are told we eat too much of it - and we don’t have time. Young people aged 18 to 34 are connecting with food more than anyone else, the generation that’s grown up with food media. And these food connectors are equally male and female…It’s no longer cool to say ‘I don’t know how to cook.’ And it’s no longer cool for men to not know how to cook.”
She stressed that this is not to say that cooking always involves preparing an entire dish from scratch.
“People are okay with a combination of homemade and convenience food,” she said. “They are really comfortable with that.”
Alford also mentioned some of the food trends that the Food Network expects to emerge over the next year, including pie as a continuation of the ‘comfort food’ theme; sourcing local foods; creative ways to use vegetables; tacos as ‘the new sandwich’; noodles, giving an Asian twist to Americans’ love of pasta; and cooking with what she terms the ‘more interesting’ parts of a chicken.
“We have been eating so much chicken breast over the past few years,” she said. “What’s happening to the rest of that bird?”
In all of these trends - as well as in getting people interested in eating at home again in the first place - she said that the difficult economy has been a big factor.
She said: “It’s a downstream benefit from all of this. I’m not sure that people are going to want to get out of the kitchen when the economy improves.”