Food for thought: how TV cooking shows influence the way we eat

In the most recent series of Chopped, all 13 episodes featured at least one red meat ingredient. Illustration: George Wylesol/The Guardian

Four million viewers are tuning into the Great British Bake Off every week as it returns with its 14th season. It’s entertaining, but is it more than that? If the old adage holds that we are what we eat, are we also what we watch on TV?

Researchers agree on the power TV has to shape what we eat. Studies have shown that cooking shows not only influence how healthy our diets are, but also our food preferences. Frans Folkvord, a professor at Tilburg University in the Netherlands who has conducted research on this topic, says it’s about “priming” certain foods and “modeling behavior”.