TV cooking shows—Consumer entertainment or education?

Abstract

The current observational study aims to determine the extent to which main food safety principles are addressed in Slovenian cooking shows and whether the type of main actor or television channel significantly impacts adherence to good hygiene practices. In general, our results show that food handling presented to the audience in Slovenian TV cooking shows often deviates from the main food safety recommendations. A comparison between amateur and professional chefs has shown notable but statistically insignificant differences. While in the area of personal hygiene, more deviations were found among amateur than among professional chefs (p = 0.011), we can observe the opposite in the area of preparation practices, albeit with insignificant difference (p = 0.884). The current study provides further evidence that there is a large gap between what viewers see and what they should have seen in television cooking shows from a food safety perspective.