“We’re no longer chasing perfection,” Meghan Markle says in the trailer for her Netflix series With Love, Meghan. “We’re chasing joy.” Premiering on March 4, the show promises “cooking, gardening, and hosting tips,” but the trailer focuses heavily on food, featuring Meghan making focaccia, ceviche, and a tiered cake to share with celebrity friends in a California kitchen.

The pursuit of joy might sound cliché, but it’s a common theme in food media—a simple concept that resonates with our need to nourish ourselves and find comfort around the table.

As a food editor with nearly 15 years of experience, I can attest that the pursuit of joy is a guiding principle for almost everyone who cooks, whether professionally or not. It’s a sentiment so universal that it feels almost unremarkable in its feel-good nature. But any statement from Meghan Markle—a woman who stirs strong opinions more than almost anyone else in Western culture—is inevitably met with controversy.

I shouldn’t have been surprised. Meghan sensibly disabled comments on her Instagram post about the series, but a quick scroll through Netflix’s feed reveals a broad spectrum of unkind reactions, such as “Anyone who streams this should be deported” and “She doesn’t understand the meaning of love.” It’s like a technicolor Trolls World Tour, full of noise and flashy lights.

I’ve always understood Meghan Markle’s stances. She speaks out on important issues, and the fact that she enjoys cooking only makes her more relatable to me. However, I’m curious about the public's view of her perceived “inauthenticity.” Her passion for food is well-documented—she featured it on her lifestyle blog, The Tig, where she shared recipes and interviews with chefs, all centered around her love of food and drink.

It was food, in fact, that helped her make a mark on royal life. For her wedding to Prince Harry, she hired London-based Californian baker Claire Ptak to create a lemon and elderflower cake, a departure from the traditional royal fruitcake.

In 2018, Meghan’s first official project as a royal was to write the foreword for a cookbook by West London’s Hubb Community Kitchen, a group of women displaced by the Grenfell Tower fire. The book helped the women continue cooking together for survivors. Regardless of her culinary credentials, Meghan Markle has a long history with food.

One comment reads, “It’s not her house, it’s not her garden, it’s not her recipe,” revealing not only the familiar resentment toward Meghan Markle’s insistence on her right to privacy but also an accusation that she’s somehow pretending to be something she’s not.

I wonder if the public realizes how food is often dramatized on television. Do people think famous chefs film in their home kitchens? Natural light, space, and setting are all carefully curated factors when filming food content, and it's rare to see a star cooking in their actual home. The people you see on screen often have a team of recipe developers, food stylists, and prop stylists working behind the scenes. This doesn’t diminish their talent or authenticity, but it’s important to acknowledge that even “home” cooking shows are productions.

From baked fish with vine tomatoes to crostini and tiny iced doughnuts, the recipes in With Love, Meghan probably won’t teach us anything groundbreaking. But let’s face it—truly revolutionary recipes are hard to come by. I’ve commissioned and edited enough recipes to know that most are variations of what’s been done before. That doesn’t make them any less original.

This, I think, is the beauty of cooking: a dish can be reworked endlessly, shaped by the hands of the cook. With Love, Meghan might be a cheesy title, but it embraces the romance of cooking.

And the public craves simplicity. Over my years editing The Guardian’s food sections, I’ve noticed readers consistently asking for simple, quick, and healthy recipes. When personalities like Jamie Oliver with 30-Minute Meals or Joe Wicks with Lean in 15 bring those meals to life, people flock to the kitchen. Food media isn’t designed to turn you into a professional chef—it’s there to entertain and, perhaps, inspire you to cook. Meghan Markle is part of this trend.

But is anyone really expecting With Love, Meghan to be a showcase of culinary innovation? Meghan is not there to be a Michelin-level chef; she’s just someone who enjoys cooking for her friends at home. Yes, her guests might include actress Mindy Kaling and her Suits co-star Abigail Spencer, and yes, the kitchen may not be her actual home but a spacious, well-lit studio in Montecito packed with top-notch produce and cookware.

But this is Meghan Markle—actress, businesswoman, and duchess. We’re watching her because she’s brilliant, not to learn how to cook. “No normal person wears million-dollar earrings while squeezing lemons,” one commenter wrote. Of course not, but that’s exactly why we’re watching her—because she isn’t just any normal person squeezing those lemons on Netflix.

Some have suggested that this show promotes the image of the traditional housewife, or “tradwife,” a controversial term that gained traction last year. Does Meghan Markle cooking in the kitchen equate to domestic servitude? That’s a dangerous and misleading interpretation, and an insult to women who choose to cook for pleasure.

Lastly, there are claims accusing Meghan of stealing the intellectual property of Emma Thynn, Marchioness of Bath, because, apparently, there’s no room for more than one Black woman married to an English aristocrat who cooks on television.

Food is universal by nature. It should bring people together, and often it does. I was struck by an article by war photographer Giles Duley in The Financial Times, which said, “Food is the opposite of war... It is the way we bring people together and show love. I find my peace in food.” That it’s become the latest battleground for her critics is a sad and tedious continuation of the misogyny and racism surrounding Meghan Markle.