Berry’s basics the real innovation
Apparently more than 60 per cent of the UK population is overweight or obese. So you could argue that the last thing the people of London really need is a vending machine that produces pizza in three minutes 24/7. Nonetheless, nobody broached this topic when it was featured in British documentary Tomorrow’s Food (Wednesdays, 7.30pm, BBC Knowledge).
Hosted by cheery Irish comedian, Dara O’Briain the series sets out to look at the changes happening in how we create and consume food.
It skips around from Britain to Australia, the United States to China looking at cafes staffed by robots, hothouse tomatoes grown in meticulously controlled conditions, robot weedpullers and rain-making for drought stricken regions, among many other things.
Along with O’Briain, fellow presenters Dr Shini Somara and Chris Bavin are bright and cheerful and boundlessly optimistic about the various innovations. Positivity is good, but it would be nice to see perhaps just a tiny consideration that there might be a flip-side to all these things.
Why is a robot sheep dog any better than a normal sheep dog? Do tomatoes grown without soil have any flavour? And if you’re considering spending $250 on a ‘‘sonic decanter’’ that claims to make cheap wine taste better, then might it not make more sense to just buy better wine, less often?
A lot of these innovations seem questionable, at best. But the nearest we get to a hint of disenchantment is when Shah finishes up at the robot restaurant in Shanghai and, seemingly forgetting herself for a moment, describes them as ‘‘essentially trays on wheels’’.
It was good to hear even such a subtle suggestion that perhaps this future food utopia that was being portrayed might not be all it’s cracked up to be.
With a bit more balance this could be a really interesting series but, as it stands, it feels like a promotional video for, well, I don’t know what for exactly. Some sort of shadowy gigantic corporation, beloved by conspiracy theorists, that wants to take all the joy and humanity out the world with its pizza-vending machines and robot waiters. Mary Berry’s Foolproof Cooking (Wednesdays, 7.30pm, Food TV) was the antithesis of all this.
Lovely Mary just wants to show some recipes ‘‘that won’t let you down’’. And without further ado, she was smearing cream cheese on salmon fillets and making spiralised vegetables. Which slightly disappointingly turned out to be exactly that – vegetables cut into spirals with a ‘‘spiraliser’’.
Anyway, it went on in this vein – nice sounding recipes with ingredients that sounded like they might be reasonably easy to find. And Mary is a consummate professional who makes it all seem easy and unpretentious – what a delight it was to see her make aioli with supermarket mayonnaise like normal people do.
By the end of it all you can more or less remember all the recipes and there is quite a good chance you might actually go onto make one of them. Now, there’s an innovative idea for a cooking show.