Have you ever taken a look at the cover of a cookbook rather than the recipes within? Don’t get me wrong, not all of them deserve to be hidden from the public, but Brooklyn-based sound artist Mike Rugnetta has noticed a ridiculously funny trend, and everyone on Twitter just couldn’t ignore it.

“My wife (who is a very capable slicer of bell peppers) and I were thinking about getting an instant pot,” Mike told Bored Panda. “I was searching through Amazon, trying to find which was the right one, googling around for advice. My guess is that since my history was lousy with instant pot searches, everywhere I went I got served ads and product recommendations related to it. Over a couple days, I started to realize that the cookbooks I was being shown had something in common.”

Turns out, many cooking-focused publishers believe women can’t operate without the help of a man. In the photos, however, neither the women nor men look pleased with how scrupulously the photographers have arranged their bodies.

“It seems worth noting that people (understandably) react with frustration to depictions of dudes getting handsy while women only ever cook dinner,” Mike said. “[They] also react with surprise to the homogeneity of the cover models; certainly many different kinds of people cook for two, maybe put a few more of them on these covers?”

But why are these covers so consistently terrible? Heated debates on the social network have the whole internet looking for a logical explanation. “If a strong man does not stabilize a woman while she cooks, the recoil of a knife will lift her off the ground,” one person guessed.

Scroll down to read perfectly reasonable explanations why a man is a necessary ingredient to a well-cooked meal and write your own versions in the comments below!

More info: Twitter

A guy accidentally found these cookbook covers and thought something was not quite right

After further investigation, Twitter users have decided this trend is a lot more popular than it should be

And by ‘a lot ‘we mean A LOT

Everyone quickly expressed their confusion

Some even tried improving the covers

And others simply focused on the bright side

Anyone can write on Bored Panda. Start writing!

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