The Food Network’s Heartland Kitchens: Cooking up neoconservative comfort in the United States

Abstract

Since 2010, the Food Network has introduced a series of female-hosted, daytime shows that emphasise conservative regions of the United States and glamorise traditional gender roles. I discuss the shared characteristics of such shows and explain how this kitchen-centred neoconservatism emanates from a culture of national anxiety, as well as the parallel shifts to traditionalism incited by foodie culture, post-feminism and neo-liberalism. I contend that the ways in which home cooking is presented on these shows may work to conflate the pleasures of food with the pleasures of gendered and racial neoconservatism in the United States.