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I know all the cooking shows we watch provided my boyfriend with more knowledge, skills and confidence to cook; so it's a plus for us!

I don't have cable, and I don't like watching things on my laptop, so I only watch TV the 1 weekend a month I'm at home with my parents. We usually watch Good Eats, because Alton Brown is AMAZING, and Paula Deen, because there is no such thing as too much butter. That's about it, though. I cook 2 or 3 meals a day (I dunno, does yogurt with granola count as cooking?), 6 days a week; I bake bread from scratch, granola from scratch, even the salad dressing is from scratch!

I'm lucky, though. I work from home, so I have time to do all these things.
Cooking shows are good for people who don't cook, or haven't ever cooked. It gives them inspiration, and a little how-to that they might not have had before. However, without a REASON to cook, it's easy to feel that it's too much trouble. My favorite meal to cook is lunch, and given the resources, I would TOTALLY eat out for dinner 3 or 4 nights a week. Mostly, though, that's because I hate doing dishes.

... actually, to be honest, I would probably hire someone to do dishes rather than eat out....

I'm definitely cooking more. Since I finished my masters we got cable... and the food network. So we definitely watch more cooking tv programs (I

I'm definitely cooking more. I agree with deliriumsama that watching cooking shows is good for inspiration and some basic how-to. My main reason for cooking more though is the bad economy and the pay-cut I had to take so eating out is just not in my budget like it used to be. I'm grateful for the cooking shows though because I have learned a lot but mostly it is the inspiration that keeps me going. I live alone though so cooking 5 days a week doesn't make sense when I end up with so many leftovers, but even cooking 2-3 times a week is more than I did before. Thekitchn here on AT is also good inspiration.

Guilty guilty guilty. I live with my boyfriend and we watch a ton of cooking shows on tv! Our favorites are cooking competitions like top chef, next food network star, iron chef, chopped, throwdown, etc. We also watch a fair amount of the food shows on the travel channel, but we do very little cooking at home. Most of what we consume is frozen, packaged or from the prepared food sections at stores whole foods. Someday I hope to spend more time in our kitchen. Sigh.

I used to watch a lot of the Food Network. But after a while, I started to get frustrated by the lack of actual chefs on TV. Every once in a while at my mom's I'll turn it on, and it's just someone making a pretty average weeknight meal. I can see how it might inspire people new to cooking, but for me it's kind of like watching someone else brush his or her teeth.

That said, I'm dying for new Barefoot Contessa episodes to come out on DVD.

Personally, I hated that article. Pollan is no feminism expert, and he should learn a little something before trying to blame this huge problem on feminism. Processed food was coming into favor in this country long before women were in the work-force in great numbers.

I think he also misses the point of how other factors in our lives have changed the way we eat. We work more and commute more every single day, and at the end of that, who wants to come home and cook a meal first thing? I ate a box of cookies last night just to work up the energy to cook myself dinner. I can't even imagine what it is like for working parents with kids to schlep around.

Regarding the discussion point raised here, I don't watch cooking shows but I do cook. I'm vegetarian, and I cook gluten-free, corn-free vegan. That means that almost nothing I would see in a cooking show would be something I would either cook or eat.

I will say that I didn't like to cook at all until I realized that I am a born vegetarian. I have always disliked meat and the societal pressure to eat it meant that the thought of cooking sounded disgusting to me. Once I cut out meat and dairy, I discovered that I love to cook.