'Cooked' Trailer: Alex Gibney's Doc Series Urges A Return To Meals As An Institution

In today's fast-paced information age, people are constantly in a hurry, and our attention spans are smaller than ever. While technology has made it easier than ever for us to connect with each other, in a way, more distance has sprouted between not just our interpersonal connections, but our very nature as humans.

Documentarian Alex Gibney (fresh off his stellar Scientology doc Going Clear) thinks that in this world, we've lost touch with our primal need to cook and the more meaningful and satisfying way that humans used to prepare food. And that's where his four-part Netflix documentary series Cooked comes into play, taking a look at the evolution of food and what cooking and the human institution of a meal should still mean to us.

Watch the Cooked trailer after the jump.

Based on author Michael Pollan's book Omnivore's Dilemma, Gibey chooses to look at the origins of cooking and the basic idea of the meal with the four natural elements of fire, water, air and earth as the basis for each of the four episodes in the documentary series.

From the trailer, it sounds like Gibney wants to urge people to get back in the kitchen, to make cooking a basic part of the skill set of families. There's no doubt that the speed at which we live our lives has resulted in immediate satisfaction from quickly prepared sustenance in the form of fast food, frozen meals and more. And it's hard to deny that we've lost touch with what food, cooking and meals can do for a family, even complete strangers, beyond just giving them the calories they need for energy.

This sounds like quite the fascinating documentary series full of more philosophy and more of an outright message than we've previously seen in Gibney's docs. This could be the nourishment some of us need in order to really start rethinking the way we treat our bodies with the food we consume. That may sound a little New Age and preachy, but this documentary feels like anything but that which is why it just might be important to listen.

Explored through the lenses of the four natural elements – fire, water, air and earth – COOKED is an enlightening and compelling look at the evolution of what food means to us through the history of food preparation and its universal ability to connect us. Highlighting our primal human need to cook, the series urges a return to the kitchen to reclaim our lost traditions and to forge a deeper, more meaningful connection to the ingredients and cooking techniques that we use to nourish ourselves.

Cooked hits Netflix on February 19.