Menu of television food shows keeps growing

Food-truck battles and cupcake wars; little people crafting chocolate confections and five-star chefs forging masterpieces with ingredients from a vending machine; molecular gastronomes making scientific ideas edible, and D-list celebs opening a restaurant.

Full yet?

Food shows were once largely limited to quiet PBS instructional fare - like how to calmly make a cheese souffle under Julia Child's tutelage. While there are still plenty of series teaching viewers how to cook (there are now two channels devoted to food with the recent launch of the Cooking Channel, an edgy spin-off of the Food Network), in recent years a deluge of programming has shifted the genre toward full-fledged participation in the reality-TV era. There are competitions between professionals (Top Chef has sliced and diced through nine seasons) and cook-offs between amateurs (Hell's Kitchen is about to embark on its ninth season). There are culinary adventures, such as No Reservations and Bizarre Foods. And the dessert course is especially rich, with a raft of shows (more than a baker's dozen!) including Ace of Cakes, Cake Boss, Last Cake Standing, and Cupcake Wars.

Just as culinary trends keep evolving, food on TV continues to venture into new formats. Rocco's Dinner Party, airing on Bravo, is a hybrid food competition/talk show, with chefs competing as host Rocco DiSpirito converses with celebrity dinner guests. And The Chew premieres in September; part of the new fare replacing several soap operas on ABC's daytime slate, it suggests that the network sees food as a genre of the future.

All of these culinary offerings have indelibly changed how we look at food, helping usher in a new generation of enthusiasts. "Almost everyone in America has 'foodie' on their to-do list," said DiSpirito, a pioneer in modern food TV as star of NBC's reality series The Restaurant (based on his career as a restaurateur). "And almost everyone has a favorite chef now or a favorite ingredient or a favorite farmer's market, and that is very different from when I started out cooking. I don't think it's simply a trend anymore."