I did actually breath a sigh of relief when Channel 4′s Big Food Fight season wrapped up on Friday night. I love watching chefs cook on TV, and I find documentaries about food production really interesting. But two weeks of docs, pummeling home messages like ‘factory-farmed chicken is bad’, ‘you’re all going to die if you carry on like this’, ‘don’t eat junk food’, and ‘you will die if you carry on like this’, was perhaps a bit too much. When people are addicted to things, constant nagging that they should do this or do that often doesn’t go down too well. Changing peoples’ food habits takes time, a bit of patience, some guile and an approach that treats its subjects like adults.

Channel 4 managed to do some of these things in the season, it had a great trailer, and did feel like an ‘event’ some of the time. But was it too much? Was two weeks too much of an assault? And what did we actually learn from it all?

1. Two weeks was too long for a season on food.
As I mentioned before the jump, there is a danger that bombarding people with images and new thoughts when they kind of already know they’re in the wrong is difficult. People soon get de-sensitised to things if they’re bombarded with them long enough, and people develop guilt complexes very, very quickly. When it comes to TV programmes, viewers do get very bored, very quickly. I love food telly, but even I was getting a bit wearisome. Hugh’s Chicken Run was fantastic, but perhaps this could have been spread out across the whole month, not crammed into two weeks.

2. Gordon Ramsay should wash his f***ing sh***y mouth out.
I’m getting sick of Ramsay swearing on telly. It’s getting boring and actually does him no favours. If he’s not careful, the selling point that made him newsworthy may be his eventual downfall. I didn’t catch his Friday night live cookalong thing, but friends have said it was a disgrace – what could have been a great show turned into a swear-a-thon. Why was he cussing so much? All he was doing was showing people how to cook scallops.

3. Jamie Oliver is getting more like Bono every day.
Jamie just can’t win can he. He gets ripped up for saying pukka a lot, then the width of his tongue gets analysed in great detail throughout the country. Then he gets blasted for cosying up with Sainsbury’s and then called too worthy for trying to change school canteen eating habits. I don’t mind him to be honest, but his contributions to the Big Food Fight were strictly to do with shock tactics. As Mof rightly said, the man is becoming more and more like Bono each day.

4. Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall is one of us.
HFW did an amazing job during Hugh’s Chicken Run. He showed what can be done when you ask people to get invloved in a cause and arm them with some knowledge. HFW was clever, passionate and the big success of the foo season.

5. This women who present Cook Yourself Thin are really annoying.
‘Nuff said. Read Mof’s review here.

6. Channel 4 is putting so much into this food thing, it may be neglecting the rest of its schedule.
Supersize v Superskinny is on this week, and I’ve had so much food telly these first few weeks of 2008, I don’t think I can take any more. Please Channel 4, I am weary… I want some drama and please, make some decent comedy for a change.