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The issue I have is more the raising of the simple act of cooking to some kind of art form. There are multiple cookery programs (in the US even a whole channel) dedicated to this, and the deification of certain cooks. An obsession amongst those who see themselves as a part of this movement to eat things "in season" even though with modern farming and transport it is no longer any cheaper to do so. People spending money on expensive ingredients that they cannot appreciate the difference in.
The fact is that food preparation is a simple act that people have performed for themselves and their families for all human history. To me, there is nothing artistic in it, nor any particular skill. I find it simply laughable that someone will pay £100 to eat a Michelin starred restaurant and come home hungry because all they've had is tiny portions of "gourmet" food.
The purpose of food preparation is to:
Create food that will taste nice, do your health some good, and satisfy your basic requirmnt to fuel your body
Nothing else. It doesnt matter how it looks, it doesnt matter how much money you spend on it, it doesnt matter what "beautiful" ingredients you use and then make poetic comments about.
There should be a war against this foodie movenment, but not from vegatarians, but from ordinary working class people who simply want to eat ordinary food. Imagine if there was this kind of hero worship of cleaners, and big hotels and restaurants had celebrity "chief cleaners" and we had to tolerate a TV show a night listening to how they did the ironing, the £800 hight tech hoover they needed; people got together on week nights to scrub the floor together and swap tips on which detergent they use...
Whats the difference? Cooking and cleaning are both pieces of housework, requiring an equal amount of skill and "art".
Let's get back to the recognition that following a recipe requires about as much skill as cleaning the shower. That every one of these so called masterchefs is simply a food maker. What they do is no harder than a kid who works at Subway making a sandwich. They might have more expensive ingredients and more complex recipes, but its the same process.
And at the end of the day, your subway sandwich probably tastes just as nice as your poached quail egg with asparagus foam and thrice cooked mushroom bathed in the essence in the truffle oil and saffron and blah blah blah.... and is a lot cheaper and more filling.
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