Online chefs are seducing the internet with sexy cooking videos. Millions of people can’t get enough | CNN


Online chefs are seducing the internet with sexy cooking videos. Millions of people can’t get enough | CNN

By Leah Asmelash, CNN Published 6:00 AM EDT, Sun March 9, 2025 CNN — Sometimes the videos start with a wink or a blown kiss. Maybe it’s followed by a shot of washboard abs, or a close-up of fingers mixing pasta dough. The men caress fruit, sometimes toying with a stem on their tongue. They rub ingredients with oil or salt, hands glossing over every curve and crevice. Every movement is heightened, a thinly veiled raised eyebrow at an audience who may or may not be watching for recipe ideas. Put more bluntly: The videos are meant to be a turn-on. These are not your regular social media cooking videos. Their stars are blatantly flirting with their audiences, tiptoeing the line between cringe and attractive. There is still an expertly prepared dish at the end, but the journey there is miles away from what other internet cooks might be doing. And the chefs in these videos are wildly, immensely, fantastically popular, with tens of millions of followers combined. Fans fill their comments sections with marriage proposals and jokes about suddenly being pregnant. Some viewers take their desire a step further: Anthony Randello-Jahn, the 32-year-old chef behind the Donut Daddy account (2.2 million followers across Instagram and TikTok, veiny forearms) has received semi-serious inquiries inviting him over, sometimes from couples. That these creators have seen such explosive and sustained growth may seem curious, especially at a time when young adults — both Gen Z and Millennials — purport to be having less sex. Women especially have seen a significant drop in sexual desire since the pandemic, studies have shown. Meanwhile, celibacy has become another trend du jour, as celebrities (Lenny Kravitz, Cheryl Burke) and the masses alike have increasingly pledged against sex for reasons ranging from protesting for reproductive rights to protecting their mental health. Some have even given celibacy a trendy, social media friendly moniker: going “boysober.” Yet the popularity of these cooking videos reveals just how much sex and sensuality can still be found in every aspect of our culture. “It’s not as if sexual content isn’t everywhere,” said Chelsea Reynolds, a sexual communication scholar at Arizona State University. “It’s just showing up in unpredictable and unfamiliar ways.”