If you regularly use TikTok or Instagram, you might feel like your kitchen is under attack. It started with #CleanTok, where cleanliness influencers shared tips for sparkling stainless steel sinks and competed for the most hygienic kitchen.
After that, influencers got more ambitious with “decanting” videos documenting a pantry organization method that involved moving food from grocery store containers to clean containers in neat rows. Now it’s “chilling”.
It goes something like this: The interiors of refrigerators are arranged and decorated, with the most popular items in this genre featuring refrigerators that look less like refrigerators and more like a bohemian fairy garden. At the farm, milk goes into jugs, eggs line ceramic trays, and butter is hidden under animal-shaped dishes.
Berries, ubiquitous, are attractively placed in old bowls, raw vegetables stand at attention, and items that have no place in the refrigerator – bouquets of flowers, framed photos, string lights – are given a prominent place. It goes without saying that the fridges are scrupulously clean and are often new and large.
In this trend, the New York Times is even declared a safe label “[ States that the refrigerator is for some ” creative outlet’ and one influencer says it’s a way to make food ‘more affordable’ for her three young children. Another tells The Times that spending three hours in front of a forest-themed fridge is worth it because it makes him “more excited” to eat their products.
As someone with a culinary background – my father has been a chef for 35 years, my mother’s family is in the spice business, and I grew up in commercial kitchens working as a line cook for a year – I am deeply disturbed by the refrigerator, which I believe is the culmination of a series of trends that serves to alienate people from food.
It will take all the effort, mess, and joy out of eating There are better ways to organize your kitchen, which can improve functionality and prioritize goals like reducing food waste—and yes, it could even lead to you eating more fruit. and vegetables Cooking at home, for most of us who aren’t wealthy enough to outsource it, takes a huge amount of time and work: coming up with a menu, making a list, going to the store, shopping. , unloading, chopping, sautéing, stewing and then washing the dishes. That’s out of reach for the millions of Americans suffering from food insecurity, for the many more millions living in food insecurity, or for those who simply don’t have enough hours in the day.