Food Personalities We Can't Stomach

Shows about food are supposed to make you want to eat your lunch, not lose it. There are countless delicacies you can vicariously encounter from the comfort of your couch, but these delights are often presented by some of the most obnoxious human beings on the face of the planet. It takes a special kind of person to choose food television as a career. And while the genre has given us legends like Julia Child and Graham Kerr, we also have to deal with whoever claws his or her way to the top of a pile of reality show rejects, or whoever Oprah decides to anoint with her sacred oils. Food-people can be the worst, and here are a few that we wish we could just leave in the back of the freezer.

What can be said about Guy Fieri that can't be said by a violent bout of food poisoning? Fieri slithered to the top of The Next Big Food Network Star in 2006 and has refused to gracefully disappear ever since. The raspy madman rarely cooks anymore, instead hosting shows about how to eat yourself to death across the United States. But Fieri does own a few critically-lambasted restaurants across the nation. His most recent televised endeavor, Guy & Hunter's European Vacation, stars the host and his son as they leave a horrible impression of Americans throughout Europe, destroying whatever shreds of respect America may have had left.

Dear Bobby Flay, you're a guy who makes food; in no way does that make you a hero, a god, or even a guy who anyone would want to give a ride home from the bar. Flay's sneering arrogance is backed up by a degree in French cuisine, and amplified by a short career working on Wall Street, but is still very difficult to tolerate. And his three ex-wives probably agree. Flay's worst offense against cuisine occurred during his appearance on Iron Chef, when he stood on his cutting board at the close of a competition against Chef Morimoto, violating health standards and basic human decorum alike. During their rematch, knowing that the action was offensive to Morimoto, Flay threw his cutting board on the ground before he stood on his prep surface a second time. Real class.

You can only take that whole down-home, Southern Confederate thing so far before it stops being charming and starts being offensive. Paula Deen should have stopped at biscuits and grits, but instead, was only stopped when she dropped some racially charged words in 2013 and got called out for them. The world cringed, and Deen lost just about every contract and endorsement deal that she had. But by 2015, she launched her own digital network on Roku in a desperate attempt to remain relevant. Fear not, people, because deep-fried cheesecakes and hamburger donuts will continue, all with that insufferable Southern drawl.

You don't feed the dog at the table, and you don't allow people who are Internet-funny to think they're real-funny, because the two rarely meet. People, this is what happens when YouTube people get their own TV shows, and it's not pretty. Nadia brings genuine cringe to the table with Nadia G's Bitchin' Kitchen, where she uses her incredibly bizarre faux-Brooklyn accent to deliver off-key puns and try to pull off some weird rockabilly cooking thing. She remains active on YouTube, where she posts obnoxious rant videos and weird high-speed dances, and remains nearly incomprehensible.

You may recognize this pair from Unique Sweets or Drinks with Alie and Georgia, but the team of unbearable hipster ladies always seem to pop up when you least suspect them, even destroying an episode of Drunk History. Wine-drunk, 30-something ladies making sexually-charged comments and jokes about pill-popping are difficult enough to deal with at Applebee's or when your trashy cousins come for Thanksgiving, so watching them on TV by choice is an exercise in pure masochism. Another example of being betrayed by TV executives thinking that the Internet makes good TV, Alie and Georgia are just hard to endure.

Good Eats is undeniably classic TV, and Alton Brown's tenure as commentator on Iron Chef America was always insightful, but all of that amazing scientific knowledge of cooking is so deeply buried in a series of theatrics, bad characters, and jokes that watching classic Brown today is painful. If you can stop cringing long enough to take notes on Brown's awesome breadth of knowledge, he's quite possibly the greatest contributor to your everyday kitchen that's ever lived. Talking to Lactose Man or his own evil twin? Not so much.

Man v. Food is the closest thing that television has to torture porn, and watching host Adam Richman stuff himself stupid, sweaty, and bloated is a painful experience that's completely anti-food, and is enough to ruin anyone's appetite. Richman accidentally created a shameful commentary on food being a game instead of a necessity or an art, and his shame grew even deeper during his vulgar Instagram meltdown when he was questioned about the negative connotations of the #thinspiration hashtag he was using. It's like the man was built from pure cringe and bacon fat.

The Pioneer Woman began her career with an insanely successful blog, and was known for her meticulously detailed photos of food preparation, her subtle humor, and her down-to-Earth charm. Unfortunately, those qualities never really translated into Ree Drummond's TV personality, which is the equivalent of watching a meal being prepared by a hunk of dry, lifeless wood. Despite selling her audience on a real DIY rancher lifestyle, many former fans are now disgusted at her half-hearted store-bought recipes and dismissive flaunting of her wealth, because real pioneers only stay in five-star hotels on their book tours.