Whether you watch television shows on the sofa in the living room, like families have been doing for more than 50 years, or you stream your favorite content on the device of choice while commuting on the train in the morning, there are some great TV shows debuting and returning this season.

Still suffering withdrawal from Netflix’s “Stranger Things” and just aren’t sure if anything can top that? Think again. While it might be debatable about whether anything good is coming out of the mainstream networks, cable, and other outlets, are producing the content that we most excited about. We do recognize that so much of what appears on the small screen is complete drivel, there’s just no bones about that, so we thought we’d share some of the TV shows we think are worth catching this fall. Binge watch away, my friend.

TV Shows Worth (Binge) Watching

1. “Halt and Catch Fire” (AMC)

While this show already got under way in August, it’s still worth watching. It tells a riveting story about the early days of the computer industry. It’s deliciously full of 1980s fashions and pop culture and stars Lee Pace, who is great to watch in everything he does.

2. “Insecure” (HBO)

Starring Issa Rae, the series focuses on two friends navigating the tricky professional and personal terrain of L.A. This is one of the shows we are most looking forward to enjoying.

3. “Westworld” (HBO)

This may be one of the most anticipated series of the season. It’s a sci-fi western thriller that is based on a 1973 film by American novelist Michael Crichton by the same name. It’s all about the dawn of artificial consciousness and the evolution of sin.

4. “High Maintenance” (HBO)

Yes, we realize that we are sharing another HBO series debut, but they are the masters after all. This new show, which is based on a web series by the same name, follows a Brooklyn pot dealer as he delivers to clients with neuroses as diverse as the city.

5. “Atlanta” (FX)

Starring Donald Glover, the series chronicles two cousins navigating their way in the Atlanta rap scene. It’s billed as a comedy-drama.

6. “One Mississippi” (Amazon Prime)

Tig Notaro reveals her deadpan comedy and the ups and downs of her life in this new series that is based on real events in her life. It’s addicting and infectious.

Related on EcoSalon

5 of the Best Original Online TV Series You Haven’t Seen Yet
5 of the Best Podcasts You Should be Listening To Now
The 7 Best TV Shows to Binge Watch

Woman Watching Television Image via Shutterstock

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Column A new study links cooking shows and weight gain. Is the problem us, or what we’re watching?

Cooking at home is the best food choice you can make, right?

If you cook at home you can skip all the processed nasty stuff and focus on the good stuff. The real food. And with all the cookbooks and cooking shows out there, that has to be easy, right? That’s what we would like to think.

A new study published in the journal Appetite took a look at women who watched cooking shows, and how those cooking shows affected their health. The results were a bit disheartening.

“Our main finding is that it seems that if you watch food television and then actually cook the recipes that you see, you’re at risk for having a higher BMI [body mass index],” study author Lizzy Pope told NPR’s food blog The Salt, who asked the question “do TV cooking shows make us fat?” Pope is a researcher in nutrition and food science at the University of Vermont, and with her colleagues surveyed 500 women in their 20s and 30s.

The women were put into two categories. There were the “viewers,” those who watched for fun but didn’t necessarily cook at home, and the “doers,” those who watched and cooked from scratched. The doers were worse off than the viewers. Amongst those women, those who watched cooking shows and frequently cooked from scratch were found to have a higher BMI, about 11 pounds more than the women who just watched.

But given the research done on the link between cooking from scratch and a healthier diet, it raises an important question: if we’re watching all these cooking shows and cooking from them, but that cooking is making us fatter, what is wrong with these shows?

The issue is multi-faceted. To begin with, we have an unhealthy relationship towards nutrition. “Everything in moderation” is not a policy that most of us manage to master. Instead we live in a world of extremes, with overeating and regular indulgence at one end, and waking up at 4am to go to the gym and then do a 10-day juice fast on the other.

The popular cooking shows that most people watch are either Fancy Celebrity Chefs Making Things You Will Never Make At Home or Down Home Cooking That’s Good for Once In Awhile But Probably Isn’t Best As a Regular Eating Routine. Also, there’s Cupcake Wars. Take a look at the list of popular cooking shows and there isn’t much in the top 10, or even 20, that’s focused on balanced, nutritious eating.

Therein lies our problem. These shows simply aren’t teaching us how to eat better. Either they are putting chefs on a pedestal, or showcasing meals that are great for once in awhile, but aren’t part of an everyday balanced diet.

There is no show devoted to real, simple food. Or at least not one that I have found.

Of course, maybe that’s because real food isn’t sexy. The networks probably think it wouldn’t get very many views, but “Super Sloppy Joes” do, and that means ad dollars. Not to mention that it’s lucrative to cook poorly and then get sponsored by a pharmaceutical company that sells diabetes drugs.

If television cooking shows are making us fat, it’s because of the content. It’s not because people are cooking at home, it’s what they are cooking at home. Until we have more television shows focused on smart, healthy, real food – that’s both time efficient, budget-friendly, and yes, fun, all of which are doable – then we can just expect more of the same.

Which is why we should turn off the television and go back to the basics. Real food, made at home. Some butter on occasion, just as Julia would like it.

Related on EcoSalon

Important Lessons from Julia Child

The Truth About Good Fats and Bad Fats

A Subscription to Cooking with Paula Deen Anyone? Foodie Underground

This is the latest installment of Anna Brones’ weekly column at EcoSalon: Foodie Underground, an exploration of what’s new and different in the underground movement, and how we make the topic of good food more accessible to everyone. More musings on the topic can be found at www.foodieunderground.com.

Image: Alex Lines

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Why the first show canceled for the fall TV season deserved to die.

Last week, much like salmon leap forward in a river, the first shows of the fall TV season struggled for life upstream. Meanwhile, studio executives wearing the skins of endangered grizzly bears swiped at them from rocks in the water, gnawing at the flesh of bad jokes and ill-timed dramatic pauses. The first TV show of the season to get its tail chewed off? That would be NBC’s “The Playboy Club.”

NBC swiftly canned its knock-off to AMC’s critically-acclaimed wunderkind “Mad Men” after it proved to be a big ratings disappointment. It was also condemned by the Parents Television Council for its “racy” content. “The Playboy Club” tried to bring back the early 1960s, when Playboy bunnies were pre-silicone and hair pieces, and men could still be men. (Whatever that means. Because “The Playboy Club” never managed to explain it.) The end result? We’re happy to show it the door.

Hugh Hefner himself introduced us to the era, telling us his club was “a place where anything could happen to anybody. Or any bunny.” But the Playboy bunny costume was about as interesting as any of the characters got. Its heroes and heroines were merely one-dimensional cardboard cut-outs of era stereotypes. Club man Nick Dalton (Eddie Cibrian) stalked about the club doing his best Don Draper impersonation, mostly as a prop to a cadre of unrealistic female characters. The ingénue, the threatened older women, and the cynic all splashed together onscreen poorly. You half-expected Hugh Hefner himself to walk on screen with a soapy sponge to clean up the tropes spiraling out all over the club floor.

Hugh Hefner defended this debacle, telling Entertainment Weekly that his show was better suited for cable. “I’m sorry NBC’s The Playboy Club didn’t find its audience,” he wrote to Entertainment Weekly. “It should have been on cable, aimed at a more adult audience.” Fair enough.  Trying to write edgy material for a network show is like trying to ask your doctor if you can drink alcohol with your prescriptions. You’re supposed to be serving up sugary, family-friendly fare that viewers 18-49 are going to drag themselves off of Hulu to watch.

But “The Playboy Club” wasn’t too edgy for primetime; it was too silly. It dumbed down sexism like it was an iconic institution we were supposed to miss. There’s no need for artfully-woven characters and subtle story-telling when there are push-up bras and satin corsets. Its writing and plotting was on-the-nose obvious from opening scene to end. AMC’s “Mad Men” succeeds brilliantly with women in similarly subservient roles because you understand where everyone is coming from, even if it’s in a place we’re glad no longer overtly exists. “The Playboy Club” just expected us to reminisce as if we were nostalgic for limited choices.

And this is why we’re glad to see it go. We understand retro-sexism when it dives deeper below the surface. When it looks at the underlying forces at work in the early 1960s that later birthed the feminist movement. Instead, NBC’s venture made us feel like we were literally thumbing through a Playboy magazine. It’s nice to see all the pretty costumes or lack thereof, but what’s the point when it’s all just a surface fantasy? The Playboy Empire has never been about portraying a realistic representation of femininity, but rather an image of gleeful subservience tucked into a costume. In the end, we just felt like we had witnessed something we’d rather forget – or at the least, move past.

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EcoSalon’s Foodie Underground columnist explores the cultural ramifications of cupcakes.

A matter of grave importance. One that divides educated women everywhere. Hotly debated in the halls and Skype chats of EcoSalon, one editor loves it; another dismisses it as “glorified gluten” and a columnist – yours truly – despises it.

It’s the matter of cupcakes. And the fact that they’re everywhere. No really, everywhere. Even in mini versions.

Trendy cupcake stores are one thing, and even if I can’t get behind the popularity of the baked good, I’ll agree that they’re colorful, cute and, if you have a sweet tooth, taste good. But restraint is not a virtue Americans possess, and so we weren’t satisfied with adorably stenciled hole-in-the-wall cupcake shops. Instead we had to make the cupcake a national trend on a level of the beanie baby. Cupcakes have literally taken over. I’m too frightened to check QVC.

It Began with Cupcake Crap

When I saw the package of cupcake push pins at a local bookstore, I immediately snapped a photo and sent it to two fellow cupcake haters. “No. Just no,” was the immediate SMS.

iPhone covers, baby blankets, semi-scandalous Halloween costumes, tattoos…you can get it all a la cupcake. But really this is just another symbol of our need to consume more. It’s not that this stuff is covered in images of a saccharine baked good, it’s that none of it is stuff that we really need. But marketers know our sweet tooth, and they know what feeds it, and a cupcake product is apparently it.

Blogs

Just take a quick second and Google “cupcake blog.” The variety and quality out there is about as bad as the tumultuous sea of mommy blogs and World of Warcraft art. There are some decent ones which actually take cupcake baking to the next level, and as a foodie with a love for good food photos, even I can appreciate, and then there are the ones that make This Is Why You’re Fat look good.

Cupcake Creations Gone Wrong

At the grocery store last week I stopped and stared at the latest copy of Women’s Day, which prominently featured what looked to be corn on the cob as the cover story. Upon closer look, it turned out to be a photo of “corny cupcakes,” brown butter frosted cupcakes covered in jelly beans so they looked like sections of corn, oddly positioned next to a “15 minutes to a trimmer tummy” headline. Well, then.

The only thing worse than a cupcake is another food product that incorporates cupcakes, cupcake stuffed strawberries being a prime example. No, not a cupcake with strawberries in it, but vice versa. Like a culinary science experiment gone wrong. Equally as bad as a Push Pop Cupcake and a cupcake kabob. Or you can always go for a raw cupcake, which in my book is up there with the weirdness factor of veggie bacon.

TV shows

In a recent discussion with some friends, I asked, “did you know that there’s a reality show about a cupcake shop in D.C.?”

“Yeah, and then there’s Cupcake Wars,” another friend pitched in.

Helpfully, Cupcake Wars features thrilling food competition, cupcake style, vetting the best of the best cupcake bakers against each other. DC Cupcake is a little more absurd; think Real Housewives meets fluffy frosting. Did you know you can make an engagement ring and even a wedding dress out of cupcakes? Pardon me while I ponder the impending demise of our society.

Hygiene Products

As if stuffing yourself with overly sugar filled baked goods wasn’t enough, now you can brush your teeth and keep your lips hydrated with the stuff. You can even make your dentist happy by keeping your gums healthy with cupcake flavored floss.

Cupcake Camp

Just like good ole summer camp, but replace the sleeping bags and mosquitoes with frosting and sprinkles. And this in one of the pastry capitals of the world? Non merci.

Sure, they might help fight terrorism, but at the end of the day, do you really need another cupcake, cupcake?

Image: kristin_a (Meringue Bake Shop), Cupcake Project, Magazine Time, TLC, Lost at E Minor, Sugar Daze, lamantin

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Just because your guilty pleasure is watching “The Bachelorette,” that doesn’t mean you must have your television sitting center stage in your living room the other six days of the week. Check out these five clever ways to disguise or outright hide your TV when it’s not in use.

Stashing the boob tube in the fireplace is a common approach when you want to make the TV disappear into the decor. Interior designer Kelly Giesen took the idea a step further and installed a faux fireplace around the television with the express purpose of using it to hide the box. A mirrored fireplace grate rests in front of the TV when not in use for an elegant look that ties together the whole room.

If you’ve got paneled walls, see if there’s any dead space behind it – say, underneath a staircase, for instance. If so, consider burrowing into the wall and creating a platform for television storage. Put the missing wood panels on hinges or sliders so they’ll stash out of the way for easy TV viewing.

If you’ve got room for an extra piece of furniture, have a look at these elegant media centers by Reversica. They’re specifically designed to look like cabinets and bookshelves, with a little James Bond magic behind the shelving. When you’re ready to watch TV, just spin the bookcase around 180 degrees to expose the set, then hide it again when you’re done.

Finally, two-way mirrors are good for something besides watching criminals be interrogated in jail. Several companies now manufacture special mirrors meant to be permanently mounted in front of TV screens that disappear once the set is turned on. This is a perfect look for televisions mounted over a fireplace shelving unit, or other wall space where a large mirror is a natural fit.

Show your appreciation of art by covering your TV with a painting when it’s not in use. For about seven grand, you can get your favorite still life imprinted on a screen that rolls up and down in front of the television – kind of like a window shade.

Image: Terren in Virginia

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There are times when watching what my husband calls “the idiot box” is the only option for kids who can’t jump on a bike and go exploring outdoors. But it is an option with more health consequences than we thought, according to a new study on 111 children ages 3 to 8 published in the Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine.

We all know kids tend to become obese watching too much TV due to the tendency to snack mindlessly, but these results found the more kids watched, the higher their blood pressure, no matter the weight of the kid. In fact, of all forms of inactivity examined by researchers in the U.S. and Spain, being glued to the tube was the worst.

“These results show that sedentary behavior, and more specifically television-viewing, is related to blood pressure independent of body fat or obesity level,” says Dr. Joey Eisenmann, a kinesiologist at Michigan State University and one of the study’s co-authors.

During the course of one week, the children tested wore accelerometers, instruments that record the body’s acceleration in a vertical plane – sitting results in a score of zero, and walking and running produce progressively higher scores.

Anything under a score of 50 per day was listed as sedentary. The children were sedentary for five hours each day, and 1.5 of those hours were spent in front of a TV, computer or video game, on average.

Researchers found when they broke down screen time by activity, TV-viewing had the strongest connection with higher blood pressure. Kids watching from two to five hours of television each day had systolic and diastolic blood-pressure readings (the two numbers that indicate pressure caused by blood pumping from the top and bottom chambers of the heart, respectively) that were five to seven points higher than those of children watching less than half an hour of television a day.

“These results show that TV-viewing really is the worst of all possible sedentary activities,” says Dr. David Ludwig, director of the Optimal Weight for Life Program at Children’s Hospital Boston, who was not part of the study. The American Academy of Pediatrics says children under two should not watch any television and that older children should limit their viewing to one to two hours per day.

So what makes TV less healthy than playing video games or surfing the Internet?

Among the explanations: children may be downing sweet and salty junk food while lying around and this can push up blood pressure readings; watching too close to bedtime can stimulate their brains, interfere with hormones and cause them to miss precious hours of sleep; missing sleep can lead to weight gain and hypertension because the metabolism doesn’t recharge and renew itself overnight; and content of commercials encourages overeating of the wrong types of food, which can be habit-forming throughout life.

In previous studies involving the same group of children, about 20% had developed prehypertension or hypertension – often because of weight gain.

So what is a healthy dose of television watching for children? Like everything else, moderation. One show after homework, a Saturday morning cartoon after a soccer game. And try to replace good movies with harmful commercial television packed with ads marketed to the most vulnerable viewers.

Image: Aaron Escobar

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