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Netflix Food Shows You Need To Watch

Food Shows And Documentaries Every Food Lover Needs To Watch On Netflix
Couple watching television and eating popcorn
Ashley Gill via Getty Images
Couple watching television and eating popcorn

Everyone loves food, whether we’re making it, eating it, watching it or dreaming about it (we’ve all been there). Our obsession to record our food escapades is far-reaching -- we don’t go a week without capturing a meal and we’ve posted an impressive 85 million Instagram photos with the hashtag #foodporn.

We also live in a time where more of us want to know more about the food we eat. We Instagram restaurants and cafes in advance and Google their menus ("The cafe doesn't serve maple bacon so it's dead to me"). We also shop more consciously and make an effort to find out where our food really comes from. Food isn’t just a necessity, it’s a hobby.

It’s no surprise then our TV interests have also shifted towards more food-filled shows. Yes, we still watch the latest drama on House of Cards (or The Bachelor, no shame there), but we’re also watching shows that go behind the scenes of our favourite meals and ones that explore the harmful effects of certain foods and food industries, as well.

For any food lover -- so, everyone ever born -- these food shows are for you.

Gastronomy Documentaries

Chef’s Table

This mini-series peers inside the kitchens of six of the world’s best and most exciting restaurants. Each episodes follows the six masterchefs behind these renowned restaurants and focuses on the detailed processes behind the meals. It’s not just about the finished dishes -- it’s about the ingredients, sense of place and the art behind the food.

The first episode focuses on Massimo Bottura, the three-Michelin-star chef behind Osteria Francescana in Italy, with Australia’s own Ben Shewry of Attica Restaurant in Melbourne starring in the fifth episode.

If you’re thinking six episodes is not enough, don’t fret -- season two premieres in late May.

The Mind of a Chef

If you’ve watched all of Chef’s Table and need to fuel your obsession, The Mind of a Chef series will help. Producer and narrator Anthony Bourdain combines travel, cooking, history, and science to explore the creative processes of international celebrity chefs to learn what fuels their culinary artistry.

Follow Bourdain to Japan to find out about the art of sushi, yakitori and tsukemen noodles, to Spain to discuss pork bushi, and to Kentucky to explore all things meat and whiskey.

Cooked

Cooked is a four-part documentary that details best-selling author Michael Pollan’s exploration of the evolution of food and what food means to us through the four natural elements -- fire, water, air and earth.

Throughout each episode, Pollan explores the powerful connection between food, love and memory by looking back at traditional beginnings of cooking.

“We are the species that cooks -- no other species cooks,” Pollan said from the outset. “Is there any practice less selfish, any time less wasted, than preparing something delicious and nourishing for the people you love?”

Somm

Somm is a documentary that follows the journey of four sommeliers embarking on a study for a prestigious and nearly impossible-to-pass exam to achieve the Master Sommelier Diploma. Over the past 40 years, the “hardest test you’ve never heard of” has only seen around 170 people in the world obtain the coveted diploma.

Somm is a tribute to the gifted (and completely obsessed) sommeliers who dedicate their lives towards wine and the millennium-old fruit, the grape.

Food Industry Documentaries

Food INC

This Oscar-nominated documentary looks into the truth of the foods we’re eating and the food industry’s harmful effects on human health and the environment. Food manufacturers are growing food faster, bigger and cheaper -- and it’s making us sick.

Through exploring the realities behind meat and grain production, Food INC reveals the illusion of diversity in supermarkets and helps us to better make food choices.

Food Matters

Hippocrates’ quote, “Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food”, sets up this hard-hitting documentary that takes a look at how the foods we eat are helping or hurting our health, and what we can do to live (and eat) better.

Food Matters delves into the issue of how eating a wholefoods diet can reduce the need for pharmaceutical medication and dramatically help to treat conditions such as Chronic Fatigue.

Fed Up

This eye-opening documentary examines the biggest health epidemics of our time: obesity. With more cases of childhood obesity than ever before, Fed Up tackles the serious (and entirely preventable) medical issue in America that no one seems to want to talk about.

The confronting documentary is a movie the food industry doesn’t want you to see, revealing shocking facts about the sugar and junk food industries -- and our addiction to these foods.

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