Netflix has done it again. This time, they turned Micheal Pollan’s bestselling novel Cooked into a docu-series investigating how cooking is what essentially makes us human. The show focuses on differences and similarities towards cooking around the world and calls back the universal love of cooking to a simpler time.
If you’ve ever wondered why we’re so drawn to food (its making, history or its universal nature), time to prop your feet up, turn on Cooked, and start procrastinating. It’s dope as f*ck, and makes us think about the history behind what lands on our plates and into our stomaches.
Pollan says that “when our ancestors learned to cook is when we became truly human. But we’ve lost touch… with how that food got to our plates.” In the age of fast food and fad diets, we’re a culture swept up in the “now.” We want what we want, and we want it now, goddamnit.
Each episode of Cooked revolves around one natural element (fire, water, air and earth) and the food that relates to each one. It’s cool as hell, and it’s a great change up from endless episodes of Family Guy (PSA: Netflix just added a new season of it). Beyond the content, Cooked has beautiful, striking camera angles packed with vidid color that takes us into the tables of hidden communities throughout the world.
Unlike most food shows that are more about the presentation of food and the drama behind making it, Cooked steps back from the fad diets and 10-second recipe videos and focuses on the basic, natural elements that every meal and every bite derives from.
The episodes aren’t flashy — they will invoke you with nostalgia for a more primitive time, when we didn’t greedily destroy our world and live on it, but rather lived with our world.
If you like cooking or eating (AKA you’re human), you’ll like Cooked. Happy Netflixing!
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