Has Cooking in One's Own Kitchen Actually Become a Status Symbol?

I don't watch much TV these days, and much of that is a matter of reruns on "classic" TV channels. This is mainly a matter of habit and familiarity, and frankly because the older stuff is in many ways more to my liking where casual, "easy" viewing is concerned.

Still, running across newer shows I have been struck by how much time people--well-off, glamorous people--seem to spend in kitchens, cooking.

Of course, kitchens and the food prepared in them are, as much as anything else, an occasion for conspicuous consumption. Please observe, the producers of such scenes seem to say, the spacious, handsomely paneled, tiled and grouted kitchen unit, with its island counter and French door refrigerator. Please observe the locally sourced, organic ingredients, among which there is an abundance of healthy vegetables--for we are nothing like those gauche carnivores, heaven forfend! (I find myself recalling a line from The Great Gatsby: "Daisy and Tom were sitting opposite each other at the kitchen table, with a plate of cold fried chicken between them." Today writers would be far less likely to present folks like Daisy and Tom consuming such fare.)

However, along with the conspicuous consumption of goods is a conspicuous enjoyment of leisure. For here are our overclass protagonists with all this time to prepare elaborate meals from scratch--which preparation testifies to all the time they had in which to become (apparently) gourmet cooks, in contrast with the poorer, more harried and exhausted and time-strapped people who have little recourse to opening cans and cartons and packages, and throwing things in the microwave.

Of course, that does not stop the better-off from chiding the less affluent for their imperfectly healthy ways--but then the better-off generally seem to think that sanctimonious lecturing is (yet another) perk of their position.