Harper's Article on "Food Porn"

[SethG]

Thanks for being here.

In its November 2005 issue, Harper's magazine published an article by Frederick Kaufman entitled Debbie Does Salad: The Food Network at the Frontiers of Pornography.

The article prominently featured a taping of your show and contained several on-the-record quotes from you, but I had the feeling reading the article that you were either deceived by Mr. Kaufman or simply never told the angle on food television he wished to explore. I figured you had to have felt a bit betrayed when he described your show as "dump-and-stir television," and when he suggested in support of his (in my opinion sophomoric) porn analogy that the food cooked in your shows simply can't be replicated as well at home and that actually making the food isn't the point anyway.

Can you share any thoughts with us about how this article came to be and your opinions on it? Do you think that the article, while unfair to a show of substance like your own, might actually be pretty close to the mark in describing where the FoodTV network is headed?

[Sara Moulton]

Actually, I was sort of relieved that I got off as easily as I did in that article. He was pretty harsh on the Food Network. I think he had his thesis firmly in place - the food porn one- before he talked to me. Certainly I agree that the new young pretty talent has brought younger men to the food network, which makes the network very happy and it is a growing trend, the sexy cook, in food tv that started with Nigella.

Again and call this silly, I was expecting much worse so I didn't get upset with how he characterized me.

[Chris Amirault]

Certainly I agree that the new young pretty talent has brought younger men to the food network, which makes the network very happy and it is a growing trend, the sexy cook, in food tv that started with Nigella.

I beg to differ, Sara. Nigella may well have been the first of the female PYTs on FTV, but let us not forget the original food-sex-bomb himself, Graham Kerr, The Galloping Gourmet.

[srhcb]

I think the whole food/porn thing has gotten a bit "lame".

SB (as has Harpers)

[Bill Miller]

Certainly I agree that the new young pretty talent has brought younger men to the food network, which makes the network very happy and it is a growing trend, the sexy cook, in food tv that started with Nigella.

I beg to differ, Sara. Nigella may well have been the first of the female PYTs on FTV, but let us not forget the original food-sex-bomb himself, Graham Kerr, The Galloping Gourmet.

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Graham was more fun before he quit drinking and was "saved" by the calorie and lipid police. Sara has always been fun--my son says she looks so "clean and cute".