Cooking on digital TV has really taken off over the last 10 years, back in the 1980’s people went through a stage of opting for the more convenient way of eating, choosing to eat quick and easy microwave meals, rather than spending time cooking in the kitchen. To many cooking was seen as a waste of time, why spend hours cooking when you can have the same meal saved up in less than 5 minutes. Take away food started to become popular and most shopping places boasted one or two take away joints. Unfortunately, some people have taken takeaway eating to the very limited, with obesity on the rise, take away and convenience food were no longer trendy, and it was now the turn of the chef to try and get us back in the kitchen and cooking.

Gone were the days of Delia Smith and practical cooking, it was now time to make cooking look good, like something everyone would want to do. Chefs such as Gordon Ramsey, Jamie Oliver and Ainsley Harriett were put on our television screens to try to entice people into cooking. Ainsley was on a show called Ready Steady Cook, this was a show that proved that you could cook up a good meal on a budget. The chefs were given a certain number of items, all of which cost under £5.00, they were then asked to cook up a meal with them items. At the end of the show the audience voted for which dish was the best. Nigela Lawson was put on our television screens to make cooking look sexy, and more appealing to men. Nigela Express is a great show which gets you to use everyday items which would be in the cupboard to cook up a meal. Quick and easy cooking which looked sexy and appealed to both men and women.

Gordon Ramsey is on such chef which has had a fantastic run of things, with shows such as Ramsey’s Kitchen Nightmares, The F Word and Hells Kitchen to name but a few. He swears and shouts a lot but the viewing public love him, he offers the public a chance to see how meat is prepared from the very first stages of rearing the animal, to slaughter and finally to cooking recipe (Kochrezept) out of the animal. Both him and Jamie Oliver are two of the most popular chefs on British television. Jamie Oliver was originally known as the naked chef – this was due to his no nonsense approach to food. He himself offers an insight on television into growing your own vegetables and then cooking them – the television show is called Jamie’s kitchen and he pulls vegetables and fruit from the garden and shows the viewer how to prepare good food such as salad. He has also run a programme called Jamie’s Ministry of Food where he enticed people who had never cooked before, into the kitchen. He did this by placing an advert in the local paper. Around 20 people came forward to learn how to cook, many of them had never even turned on a cooker, and lived on constant takeaways. His mission was to teach each one of them people to cook, they would then teach 2 more people to cook, them 2 people would teach another 2, and his vision was to get the whole of the country cooking. Some people stuck with it, whilst others gave it up as a bad job. One thing is for certain convenience food is no longer at the forefront of peoples minds, with many people now choosing to grow their own and live a healthier lifestyle.