The minute the promos started appearing on Channel Ten, the finger started to be waved in front of the media team as images of blue and pink took over television screens around Australia.

MasterChef Australia’s 2013 season will pit boys against girls in a battle of the sexes for the best home cook. In its fifth season and
10th incarnation of the show – including Junior MasterChef and MasterChef: The Professionals – this one has definitely received the most flak for promoting sexism.

In the ads, the contestants are segregated on pastel gender lines, with the women wearing pink and the men blue. A volley of stereotypes relating to women’s and men’s respective abilities are traded as the teams trash talk.

The whole promo, and the new series, is viewed as a disaster zone – in blue and pink.

And to add insult to injury, one of the MasterChef judges, Gary Mehigan, has lashed out at fellow reality cooking show My Kitchen
Rules (MKR), saying it appeals to “bogan Australia”, and not the foodies who watch MasterChef, as the reason for the poor ratings of The Professionals series which went head to head with MKR.

“MasterChef: The Professionals really appealed to a foodie set, dedicated foodie people and they loved it,” Mehigan told the Sydney Morning Herald.

“Soap drama is easy. It’s chewing gum for the eyes and MasterChef is never going to be that.”

He said the latest instalment, the Girls v. Boys series, currently in production in Melbourne, will be true to the original concept and the show’s major ingredients have not changed.

Mehigan said there was still a large core of viewers who wanted a cooking reality series served without the drama.

“I feel confident MasterChef has a core kind of fan base and a good number and they are really waiting for it to come back.”