Junior MasterChef, a learning experience or child abuse?

MasterChef Australia has been one of Network Ten’s most successful shows, placing first every week in ratings. It’s hard to put a finger on what exactly is so interesting about watching people cooking over a stovetop. Perhaps watching visually pleasing edible pieces of art being created or just laughing at some of the awful dishes that have come out of the ‘invention test’ (strawberry risotto anyone?) are what makes the show so engaging and entertaining.

After seeing the commercial for a new spin-off series titled “Junior MasterChef” I responded with concern and cynicism rather than anticipation for a new series of the show. The show runs similarly to its original; promising chefs go through a series of ‘cook-offs’, with a selection or an individual contestant being eliminated after each round, until the last remaining is crowned the ‘MasterChef’, except that these contestants range from eight to twelve years old rather than over eighteen and are not competing for a $100,000 prize package and cookbook deal to launch their food careers, but are instead competing for a set of cooking knives, a blender and a food processor (which they would probably only be able to use with the assistance of Mummy and Daddy).

Among the challenges that MasterChef contestants compete in are ‘the Invention Test’, ‘the Mystery Box Challenge’ and the infamous ‘Pressure Test’, which is usually the decider for which of the bottom two of the week are eliminated from the competition. These tests had always put great mental and emotional stress on the contestants in the original series; contestants being pushed the point of tears was not unusual. If these tasks lead adult contestants to emotional breakdowns, it is worrying to think of the impact it would have on children as young as eight. Watching the first couple of episodes of the new show when the children lined up in front of the judges after their challenge, awaiting the news of their fate in the competition, many had obviously been crying, much of which was probably edited out. These situations can simulate what being a real chef is like, which can be useful to the adult aspiring chefs, but why should children have to be concerned about these things when they still have several more years until they enter the workforce? These situations are obviously not suitable for children, so I wonder why children are competing in the show in the first place.

The winning prize certainly isn’t of much value compared to the prize awarded to winners of the original MasterChef. A few cooking tools probably wouldn’t do much to help these children in their future careers. They probably wouldn’t even be able or allowed to use these prizes at all (the contestants use safety knives on the show for goodness sake!). The expressions on the faces of the many parents from the bleachers watching their children cook for their (not very long so far) lives answer these questions. Children as young as eight cannot be expected to make major justified decisions for themselves (like perhaps competing against 5,000 other applicants on national television in front of an audience of about 2 million people for example). So they trustfully turn to Mummy or Daddy to make decisions for them, unaware of the mental stress they will experience on the show.

The first series of “Junior MasterChef” ran in Britain in 1994 for budding cooks aged twelve to sixteen. The series promotes “encouraging cooking talents at a young age” however, the first winner of “Junior MasterChef” UK, Katie Targett-Adams, is pursuing a career completely unrelated to food as a model, singer and Celtic harpist in China. The winners of the following four series of the show have not been active in the food industry since the shows aired, 10 to 15 years on.

Putting children on reality TV has previously had concerning effects. Gina DeLeon from “The Real Housewives of Orange County” has said that her children were “teased and bullied at school” after being on the show. Dr Drew Pinsky says that “these shows can open the kids to a level of public scrutiny, of shame and failure”.

Competitive reality TV can make these children feel self-conscious about their actions as millions of people had seen them fail at something. Childhood should be a time for fun, happiness and feeling carefree. It should not be a time to feel mentally stressed and pressured to meet the expectations of not only your parents, but also famous food critics and not to mention, the whole country. Why should children as young as eight have to decide their career path and enter such a competition to encourage their talents to grow, when they still have almost another ten years of school left to complete for them to decide; their interests and priorities could certainly change within that period of time. Since their parents are the only people who can give them consent, are they responsible for these effects? We can only hope that the impact does not last years on, when they can eventually use the knife set they had gone through numerous episodes of mental stress to win.