Internet Algorithms Shape Food Desire and Consumption Trends

Key Quotes

"As the series went on I noticed an increasing degree of personal vitriol and misogyny we female finalists are supposedly too meek too confident too thin too domestic too smiley too taciturn if I see one more person use the hackneyed doe eyed pun bakers' dough not like the deer dough I will personally go to their house and force feed them an entire charlotte royale"

Ruby Tandoh explains the intense personal criticism she and other female finalists faced on The Great British Bake Off. Tandoh highlights the misogynistic nature of these online attacks, noting how any perceived deviation from a narrow ideal led to harsh judgment. She uses a vivid, humorous threat to emphasize her frustration with repetitive and unoriginal online commentary.

"I think what I really want is to just understand it and to understand my place in it and in theory to help you know other people to understand their place in it as well I definitely don't think that it is inherently a bad thing although I do think it is an overwhelming thing I've been part of food media for kind of a decade now and I've written cookbooks and I've done recipes online and all of this I've been on food tv so I've partaken in this kind of all consuming food media landscape and so I just wanted to take half a step back you know beyond the trend cycle and ask well how does this all work because once you can orient yourself a bit then you can navigate yourself through it a little bit better"

Ruby Tandoh articulates her motivation for exploring the impact of the internet on food consumption. Tandoh seeks to understand the overwhelming nature of online food content and her role within it, aiming to help others do the same. She emphasizes that her goal is not to condemn this landscape but to analyze its mechanisms, enabling better navigation for individuals.

"I mean I grew up with my parents had quite a lot of cookbooks so like some classics like um you know nigel slater's kitchen diaries or the moosewood cookbook nigella lawson and stuff like this so I loved looking through those even as a child and I kind of carried a few of them with me into adulthood as well and I hold on to them like these precious objects but I mean do I cook from them like absolutely not I almost never actually crack them open to cook they're kind of more about reading or kind of curating the kind of cook I would like to be but in reality I'm not but you know in the age of google I can search for any recipe anytime and that kind of abundance of choice unfortunately does lead me away from cookbooks"

Ruby Tandoh reflects on the role of cookbooks in her upbringing and current life. Tandoh cherishes cookbooks as objects and sources of inspiration, but admits she rarely cooks from them in practice. She explains that the ease of finding any recipe online via Google diminishes the practical use of traditional cookbooks for her.

"I just think it's it's absolutely fascinating so it's one of the earlier recipe websites online it was developed in the late 90s by just some guys in seattle and what I love about it is that it is almost entirely user generated and it has been from the start so you had this early democracy of uh recipe content and obviously without editorial intervention what this tends towards is some recipes that are kind of great and you know become almost like folk hero recipes and other recipes a great many of them are just terrible or you know at best kind of derivative copies of things that are already on there and so on yeah uninspired exactly but I love it as an archive of American food culture because it captures a kind of largely ignored middle ground of just home cooking by people who have to cook more or less every day usually for families"

Ruby Tandoh expresses her fascination with AllRecipes.com, highlighting its origins and user-generated content. Tandoh appreciates the website's early "democracy" of recipes, which resulted in both exceptional "folk hero" recipes and many uninspired ones. She views it as a valuable archive of everyday American home cooking, representing a segment often overlooked by mainstream food media.

"I'm self centered as much as as much as anyone and I kind of thought of my food preferences as very unique to me and so I existed in this like little universe of my own cravings my own tastes the way that I liked to do things and of course that remains something that's important to me but as I was looking at how media and the internet and all of these forces shape our appetites I realized that like you know you know what I am so I am so a part of these broader networks of taste I am so a part of them and my appetites are very much in conversation with those of not only people halfway across the world but you know people kind of 50 75 300 years back in time it is such an incredibly connective force the way that tastes change and all of this and it actually made me feel very much less precious about my appetites and that was frankly a relief and it made it's it's a really really hopeful position to be in to feel connected to other people through the food you eat"

Ruby Tandoh describes a significant realization about her own food preferences. Tandoh initially believed her tastes were unique but discovered they are deeply connected to broader networks of taste, influenced by media, the internet, and historical trends. This understanding made her feel less possessive of her appetites and more connected to others through shared food experiences, which she found to be a hopeful perspective.