Whether it's 'The Barefoot Contessa' or 'Tyler's Ultimate,' there's a wide variety of food, cooking, chefs and experts on The Food Network. For the most part, the diversity is great and if you're a food fan -- a foodie -- you can watch FN for hours on end and be entertained. However, if you do watch for more than a few hours, especially the 'in the kitchen' programming which is all about creating dishes, there are some things that stand out -- five burning questions about the Food Network.

1. What's with the hygiene?
On nearly every cooking show, the food preparers -- whether they're an American Iron Chef like Bobby Flay or a restaurant owner/home cook like Paula Deen -- are obsessive about washing their hands. Any time they touch meat or chicken, there's a camera following them to the sink to wash hands with soap.

It sounds like the Food Network has finally come up with a show that will compliment Alton Brown's Peabody-award winner Good Eats. The foodiest member of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, Ted Allen, has signed to host Food Detectives, a new Food Network series. Starting Tuesday, July 29th at 9 o'clock ET, the half-hour show will begin illuminating the world about the stuff we eat. They will be "pulling back the curtain and revealing the answers to some of the most puzzling food mysteries."

Actually, the concept is kind of like a Mythbusters for food. Ted will host the show and folks from Popular Science Magazine will provide the expertise. For instance, does an apple a day keep the doctor away? What about baked beans, do they really give you gas? If not, what's Beano going to do with all those commercials and product?

Are you a closet foodie? Can you whip up a five-course meal with only seven ingredients? If your doctor takes a blood sample does he (or she) find equal parts of blood and extra-virgin olive oil? Do you say 'Yum-O' a lot? If you fit into one or all of the categories mentioned above then future ruler of the world Rachael Ray is looking for you.

Ray, host of her own talk show as well as 30 Minute Meals, $40 a Day, Rachael's Tasty Travels, and five or six other shows I'm probably forgetting to mention, is starting a nationwide search to find a culinary savant who cooks and bakes for their family and church and not for the customers at their five-star restaurant. Rachael and the producers of her talk show will narrow the choices down to five promising cooks, who will be whisked away for two intense weeks of competitions and challenges to see who is really the best.