Growing Up On TV Dinners

When we were younger, the Food Network was newly born. Balancing a stack of ironed shirts on one knee and their child on the other, mothers intently studied as Mario Batali effortlessly glamorized average household dishes. As we grew older, we would beg for our mothers to change the channel.

Now we're grown up, sort of. But as college students, we are tuning into the same channels our parents watched decades ago. Since the turn of the millennium, The Food Network has acquired a new demographic of viewers, the 18-24-year-olds. While the targeted audience is 25-40-year-olds — parents, like our own, learning to cook with little free time — teens are tuning in more frequently.

Even while juggling academics, extracurricular activities and a job, college students are now watching more television than ever before. Youth Trends analysts found that many teens and young adults are tuning into NBC, home to popular shows such as House, The Office, and Desperate Housewives. There is growing popularity in MTV as well, as viewership skyrocketed after the release of the channel's most-watched show, Jersey Shore. But a startling number of young adults prefer the Food Network to many larger basic cable channels.

We watch cooking shows for obvious reasons. Food is attractive to us because college students are voracious, and the attraction can be enhanced by styling food. But beyond that, it's comforting to watch the rhythms of a kitchen, comforting to see a meal be prepared wholly from scratch, and especially comforting to eat it after slaving over a stove for hours. It's all the things students cannot enjoy while maintaining a meal plan and living in a room slightly larger than a prison cell. Instead, we live vicariously through cooks like Rachael Ray, whose macaroni and cheese looks better than the way our moms made it.

The Food Network has not only marketed cooking as something you do, but it has transformed the task into something you watch. Shows like Everyday Italian and 30-Minute Meals make cooking accessible, but there are many food-related shows that make cooking exciting. Shows like Iron Chef have morphed cooking into a spectator sport, where competing chefs battle against a clock to prepare divine, unique dishes with ingredients most viewers have never heard of before. There's something almost surreal about watching world-class chefs artfully executing and designing a multi-cultural meal.

Though more and more college students are watching the Food Network, the channel isn't doing too much to cater to their younger audience. Emeril Live has been the only show to devote several installments to "College Cooking," where dorm-friendly, do-it-yourself dishes are on Emeril's menu. Other than that, the most popular shows are those preparing quick meals. Popular cooks are Giada de Laurentiis and Ina Garten.

The most modern reach toward the young adult community occurred almost exactly a year ago. Food Network released Cook or Be Cooked, a video game for the Wii console. Players can select from 12 simple recipes to cook, such as over-easy eggs and lasagna, and simulate the real cooking experience.

For all the devoted (or desperate) college students that are tuning into cooking shows, it is surprising how little cooking channels are paying attention. Students seeking to perk up their daily dining hall diet should search for alternative sources teaching dorm-friendly recipes. College cookbooks now exist to teach young adults just that.