If you want to understand the disconnect between watching cooking shows and wanting to cook, get this: Schwan's Home Service is offering Top Chef-branded frozen meals. The idea that hard-core fans who study contestants' knife skills every week would choose to order from a giant company that's been delivering frozen food to rural America for 57 years doesn't surprise Harry Balzer, who tracks food trends for the market-research firm NPD Group. "You're going to eat four to five times today, and the one thing I know you're going to do is try to get someone else to prepare those meals," he says, noting that after two decades of no growth, microwave use has gone up 20% during the past three years.
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