Portion size may be psychological - analyzing TV travel and cooking shows

Why do most of the travel and cooking shows on television nowadays cater to eating large portions, food eating or cooking contests, heavy reliance on eating animal products, especially meats, alcoholic beverage drinking, pigging out at burger, pancake, donut, and meat-oriented eateries, and almost no emphasis on foods for vegetarians?

Is it perhaps that vegetarianism reminds invincible-oriented youth of its own mortality? Or maybe vegan diets taste bitter at the back of the tongue to some people with the genes that make most veggies taste that way? You may have to watch the juicing infomercials, the fitness channels, and health or Green channels or news programs such as Dr. Nancy that focus on health to get a variety of nutritional information.

All these notions focus on daydreams of culinary adolescent rebellion. It's like teaching rebellion to rebellious kids through large portions of fantasy foods of pleasure or food contests, pig-outs, extreme eating, roller coasters, haunted houses, athletic adventure, and mass-eating burger paradises.

There are the TV shows that feature cooking contests up against the clock between chefs that speak with bleeped-out shock words, and cooking shows that resemble reality TV such as "The F Word," where the F word stands for food.

Why do some chefs sometimes talk on the air in so many bleeped-out shock words? What does this teach viewers about good nutrition habits? Is youth culture on TV about common sense or a notion of invincibility used against youth in the name of adventure? Maybe it’s the usual divide between the generations. Where are the intergenerational food or travel shows?

The easy-to-find place where you can see teens having fun with vegetarianism is on uTube or the fitness TV shows. The usual TV fitness shows have few people with white hair and average figures except for Jack La Lanne's juicing infomercial. Travel and food TV as it is in general might be intimidating to some of us low income sedentary gals over age 70 looking for a birthday lunch at a great under $10 soup and salad restaurant that doesn't salt the soup.

There's one vegetarian-oriented health-food cooking channel on Satellite Dish Network, Veria TV that offers some good cooking advice for vegetarians and those who don't use sugar, but even that channel uses fructose-laden agave as a sweetener in some shows rather than just mashing bananas or using solely chopped dried fruit to sweeten desserts or one tablespoon of quality honey.

Sometimes stevia is used as a sweetener in the Veria TV channel cooking shows. Stevia is a healthier sweetener compared to sweeteners that are highly fructose. It's because fructose lands in the liver where it eventually could raise the LDL cholesterol and is more likely to contribute to heart disease than other sweeteners such as a mashed banana put into a raw food or dehydrated cookie made of ground flax seed meal and fruit.

If you turn on the TV travel shows (on channel 215 Dish Satellite Network) you'll see productions such as Man versus Food, Donut Paradises, Hamburger Paradises, Bizaare Foods, No Reservations and other adventurous eat and travel shows that appeal to a young, male meat-eating audience focused on travel. There is one show, Samantha Brown that emphasizes travel, athletic feats such as hiking, mountain climbing, skiing, and sightseeing in the world of arts and museums that also emphasizes pleasurable foods such as meat and chocolate or wine tasting and cruises.

In the travel show, No Reservations, the star is a former chef who knows food well, travels, writes excellent material, but smokes, drinks alcoholic beverages, and eats a lot of meat, but in balanced meals. At least when he lights up a cigarette, he warns kids not do get hooked on the smoking habit. The quality of the show is excellent and is a best seller on TV. So are all these travel shows. They are doing well and have a large audience.

When the travel shows air in the morning, people watching are those that are not at work. It's the home-based senior citizen watching the morning travel shows, at least in large numbers. And the older you get, the smaller the portions get.

The emphasis is on the large portion size. But Sacramento radio focuses on Sunday at noon with healthy eating shows even if the sponsors of the radio programs are nutrition supplement stores. Guests on radio have medical research to back up the findings mentioned.

Outside of numerous radio programs, some of which are on the Internet as well as radio, other food and health shows on radio appear on religious broadcasting radio stations. Would you like to see the technical terminology of medical journal articles about food and supplements interpreted in plain language on more TV and radio shows geared to vegetarians, especially in your local area?

For more info: browse my books, Neurotechnology with Culinary Memoirs from the Daily Nutrition & Health Reporter (2009). Or browse: How Nutrigenomics Fights Childhood Type 2 Diabetes & Weight Issues (2009) or Predictive Medicine for Rookies (2005). Or see my books, How to Safely Tailor Your Foods, Medicines, & Cosmetics to Your Genes (2003) or How to Interpret Family History & Ancestry DNA Test Results for Beginners (2004) or How to Open DNA-driven Genealogy Reporting & Interpreting Businesses. (2007). Check out my free audio lecture on Internet Archive, How nutrigenomics fights childhood type 2 diabetes. Photo credits: Flickr.com - free clip art.

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