Trashing leftover food is unfortunately quite common. Most cooking shows can take 12 to 14 hours of filming in a day, which means a lot of food is left out longer than is feasibly safe to eat.
At the end of tapings and seasons, unused ingredients will usually go home with the show's producers. Like most of the other shows already mentioned, uneaten parts of the meals also go to feed the show's crew.
Cuoco would face some heat for the post, given that fans thought they just throw away the food. However, this is not the case, "FYI that food had been eaten, touched and worked with all day. We save all food and give away all uneaten leftovers at the end of shoot days."
Competition shows can take up to 12 or 14 hours to film, so the final dish isn't always what the judges taste. Food waste is dealt with differently depending on the show, but it is usually donated, eaten by the crew, or thrown out.
We have large commercial refrigerators for use off the kitchen studio so that ingredients can be kept fresher for longer. Anything else, like leftover fruit and veg, we donate to the local food charities or food banks closest to our location.
ONE MAN IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE CLEAN-UP
Dishwasher Leigh Dowling is one of over 200 crew that make the MasterChef dream a reality. "Leigh washes everything you see," executive producer Margaret Bashfield reveals. "He's the happiest bloke on the team, even when he gets pots that are horribly burnt on the bottom."
It's the question that perplexes MasterChef Australia fans year after year: by the time the contestants bring up their dishes for the three judges to taste, aren't they cold? The answer is yes. "They try our dish as we're cooking it," Steph reveals.
The good news is it doesn't go to waste. The prepared food is eaten by staff members, and unused food is donated to a local food bank.
Production companies rely heavily on restaurant supply companies to give their kitchen and dining rooms a realistic look. Actors eat real food in the scenes, but they're not swallowing every bite. Since multiple takes are required to get the scene just right, actors spit the food into a bucket between takes.
What happens to all the meals cooked or bought on television shows and movies? Prop food is in fact real food if it is plated for actors. It goes in the dumpster after scene, just like food used in food, restaurant or grocery commercials.
However, with not all of it actually being consumed, you can't help but wonder where all the leftover ingredients and uneaten food end up. Channel 10 confirmed to Refinery29 Australia last year that the produce doesn't go to waste, with several charities receiving what's left in the pantry and on the cooking benches.
Former contestant Simon Toohey once said the cooked dishes are put into the compost bin “or they get spread around to people like us and the crew”. “There is actually zero waste within the MasterChef kitchen, which is unreal,” he quipped.
In 2013, "MasterChef" judges and producers were accused of sexual, mental, and physical harassment by former contestants. Many accusations came from a blog post by former contestant Marie Porter, where she describes how friends she met on the show were allegedly sexually and physically harassed by judges and producers.
The food you see on TV isn't getting eaten
Specifically, the food that gets cooked and plated eventually gets tossed. Instead, a new version of the same dish is actually cooked for judges to taste.
Make Everything Do Double Duty
Small scraps may not amount to much on their own, but they can be brought together to make something new. Gather veggie and bone scraps to make homemade stock. Stock freezes well, so you can make a batch whenever you have the ingredients and save it for future use.
If individual meal components like sauces have been cooked but not served, they're sometimes delivered as well. They also take raw ingredients, including blemished produce that goes uncooked because of over-purchasing, to food pantries and soup kitchens. Of course, leftovers on customers' plates are thrown away.
So, do actors really kiss? Short answer: It depends. They usually do some form of kissing, but there are ways to get around it (more on that later). Whether you wind up locking lips with another actor or not, there's a lot that goes into kissing scenes that you should know about.
While some performances make you believe the actor must have been intoxicated while filming, actors do not usually drink actual alcohol on set. Instead, they are given prop drinks, which look like alcoholic beverages but do not contain any level of alcohol.
When actors appear to eat or drink on camera, they often aren't really ingesting, due to the caloric stresses of multiple takes and the need to be heard clearly. Multiple takes: Actors often need to shoot and reshoot a scene multiple times, meaning that if they eat food once they may need to eat it dozens of times.
Diners didn't have to pay for their meals, however — which makes sense, since a lot of times, they never see the food they ordered. In fact, as compensation for their time, each diner was paid $50. They weren't paid to act or react in any way, however.
Hell's Kitchen is an iconic neighborhood in west Midtown Manhattan known for its gritty history as a slum for poor Irish immigrants.
And "Hell's Kitchen," it turns out, is no exception when it comes to making contestants abide by strict rules, either. In fact, "Hell's Kitchen" contestants can't even use their phones!
MasterChef US and UK
Of course, we're all curious where that veritable smorgasbord of delights ends up after filming is over. As it turns out, the crew gets first dibs, Marketplace reported. All leftovers and unused pantry items are then donated to MEND – a support service charity based in LA.
We did some digging, and according to reports, Network Ten generally pays contestants a little more than the legal minimum wage to appear on the competition reality series.
Contestants have to buy any ingredients they require to practice dishes to make at home and aren't given any money towards it - but ingredients and a full pantry are provided in the MasterChef kitchens. 11.