Attitudes and beliefs of Australian adults on reality television cooking programmes and celebrity chefs. Is there cause for concern? Descriptive analysis presented from a consumer survey
There is evidence suggesting the nutritional content of recipes promoted by celebrity chefs or television cooking programmes contradict healthy eating guidelines. This study aims to investigate people's attitudes and beliefs about popular television cooking programmes and celebrity chefs.
Males and females who watch television cooking programmes were recruited to participate in a self-administered online questionnaire (22-items) which included multiple-choice and rank order questions.
A total of n = 207 participants undertook the questionnaire with fully completed questionnaires available for n = 150 participants (Males, n =22; Females, n = 128; aged 38.4 ± 14 years). The majority of respondents watch ≤ 30 minutes of television cooking programming per day (total responses, n = 153/207; 74%) with almost three-quarters (total responses, n = 130/175; 74%) having attempted a recipe. New cooking ideas (total responses, n = 81/175; 46%) and entertainment (total responses, n = 64/175; 36.5%) were the two main reasons participants gave for watching these programs. Significantly more respondents believed recipes use excessive amounts of unhealthy fat, sugar or salt (unhealthy: 24%; healthy: 7%; P = <0.0001). Almost half of all respondents (total responses, n = 67/151; 44%) believed these programs have no impact on their habitual diet.
Our results suggest television cooking programmes and celebrity chefs are unlikely to impact habitual dietary intake; rather, vicarious viewing and entertainment appear important factors relating to why people watch these programmes. However results generated from the present study are descriptive and subjective and further investigation into the impact of television cooking programmes and celebrity chefs on behavioural change requires attention. Further investigation including a systematic investigation into the dietary quality of recipes promoted by celebrity chefs against national healthy eating benchmarks is also warranted.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 1. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 24 February 2016.
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