Recipe for disaster: how good cooking shows can be terrible for the planet

Even as experts say to eat less meat and switch to electric stoves, food TV is full of steaks, gas flames and endless waste

A whole dessert unceremoniously dropped into the trash on the Great British Baking Show. Piles of raw chicken used to create a dramatic decorative tableau on Iron Chef. Gas stoves and food frequently catching fire on Chopped. If what we see on TV shapes our aspirations or our sense of what's normative, cooking shows are ripe for a sustainability makeover.

At a time when climate experts are recommending eating less meat and fewer animal products, switching from gas stoves to electric ones and minimizing food waste, reality TV cooking shows seem to be awash in thick beef steaks, roaring gas flames and tables of food that competition judges barely nibble at. These practices prevailing against a backdrop of rising temperatures and the proliferation of climate disaster seems particularly discordant once you consider that food is responsible for somewhere between a quarter and a third of global greenhouse gas emissions.