Cooking and the Zeitgeist

DW-WORLD.DE: As a nutritional psychologist, what do you make of the changes in eating habits over the last few decades? Is there such a thing as a zeitgeist when it comes to nutrition?

Volker Pudel: The words "nutrition" and "food" are no longer synonymous. People used to be satisfied with eating until they were full, but now, they don't want to feel full. Food has increasingly little to do with its original biological function. The way people eat is no longer determined by the need for energy and nutrients. The result is a discrepancy between needs and requirements, and problems that range from malnutrition to overeating.

Even increased awareness of healthy eating has not led people to eat the way they should. They continue to eat the way they always did, but now they eat with a guilty conscience. Increasing awareness of healthy eating was too cognitive and rational, so even though people understood it, they didn't change their behavior.

Children and young people are getting increasingly fat. A representative survey of 2,900 German families showed that children and young people have sound judgment when it comes to food. They know that wholegrain bread is healthy -- but they don't like it. Coke and chocolate is fattening, but they like those things. Eating behavior is emotional behavior, which is why sensible arguments are useless. In recent decades, cooking skills have worsened rapidly. Twenty-seven percent of men admit they don't know how to fry an egg. According to our calculations, by 2020 no one will be able to roast a beef roulade anymore, because they won't know how to do it. Convenience food is filling the gap. I predict that soon, apartments will no longer necessarily feature kitchens. A microwave is enough to heat up bought meals.

Breakfast, lunch and dinner are rituals that traditionally take place within a community. What happens to food when these rituals no longer take place?

We've already moved away from shared mealtimes. Fast food and eating on the go are gaining ground. Eating behavior has become more flexible and determined by the situations we're in. In the process, we've lost a regular basis for the sort of familial communication that should be taking place at the dinner table. The shift from private to public eating also means that we lose any emotional attachment to food and its provenance because we're no longer buying and preparing it. [In a restaurant] the atmosphere is considered more important than what is on the plate. And with the food trade conditioning German consumers to pay discount prices, rock-bottom cost instead of quality has become the first priority. These trends are hard to reverse, because they have been entrenched over decades.

These days, chefs are seen as artists. Catalan chef Ferran Adria was invited to documenta 12. Other famous chefs have their own TV shows and thousands of viewers watch their live performances. Has cooking become an art because it no longer takes place at home?

Television can provide pseudo-satisfaction when it addresses issues neglected in people's private lives. The more passive Germans become, the higher the ratings of sports shows. The same applies to cooking shows, which elevate cooking to fine art at the same time as entertaining. TV chefs demonstrate how cooking can be an event, rather than a necessity. This distinction is also apparent in the home. The husband tends to be the event cook, the wife -- if she can cook at all -- does the basic meals. Event cooking is more like what goes on in the TV studios, with high-end utensils, a glass of good wine and friends helping out. Event cooking is communicative, basic cooking is just hard work.

Cooking shows are hugely successful these days. But it seems that the better TV cooking gets, the worse people eat. How would you describe the current relationship between nutrition and the media?

The media manipulate both "nutrition" and "food." Meat scandals are popular media stories which ultimately leave consumers scared, even though the media usually fails to assess the risk objectively. On the other hand, the media use the topic of food less in an advisory role but rather as entertainment -- the presentation of the recipes makes it hard to actually cook them.

The advertising industry has long been instrumentalizing food. Barely any meals are produced in German kitchens that don't feature convenience products. Consumers are no longer even aware of how many convenience foods they are using, and surveys show that in fact, the majority of people say they don't like them. The term "homemade" has been redefined, with 34 percent of people who run a household describing a cake made from cake mix as "homemade." Over 90 percent of people use a packet or a powder to make what they call a "homemade" sauce. Standardized products lead to standardized tastes. Children who are brought up on long-life milk don't like fresh milk. The same goes for strawberry yoghurts with flavor enhancers. We're losing regional tastes, because the products people buy can be bought everywhere.

Surveys show that viewers enjoy cooking shows. Do you think they have psychological benefits?

Audiences definitely love cooking shows. The chefs demonstrate what's possible to do in the kitchen. But they have a circus appeal, they're good entertainment. Now and then the viewer might think they could cook something similar, but then they forget all about it. But cooking shows put the focus on what's missing from many German kitchens. They beam into the living room an ideal of sensory pleasure, albeit one than can only be enjoyed visually, rather than by our senses of taste and smell. I cannot judge whether a wonderful meal enjoyed only visually is positive for the psyche. I personally like to eat what I cook.

What does the future hold?

The problem is two-fold. On the one hand, bad nutrition is fast becoming a serious health risk. The majority of Germans are overweight and there is no end in sight to this trend. Secondly, eating as a key part of our standard of living is increasingly out-of-house. Standardized meals, the disintegration of the shared meal tradition, worsening cooking skills are just some of the issues. It is hard to understand why a society in which everything is so regimented ignores the issue of food. Kindergartens, schools, offices, hospitals and retirements homes can offer whatever food they want, so long as they meet hygiene requirements. Children would be given a better basis for later eating patterns were they to be taught cooking at school, were they to take part in trips to farms as a way of developing an emotional relationship to the provenance of food. Eating habits can be altered by experience, not by information.