A former MasterChef contestant has accused the reality television show of being fake.

Ben Starr, who appeared on MasterChef in its second season, has revealed the true experience of being on the show during an extensive blog post, via Radar Online. The 36-year-old, who is originally from Dallas, Texas, made it to the last five of the second season, which was ultimately won by Jennifer Behm.

Starr has explained that producers follow a regimented formula in order to create drama and conflict for the program, which is judged by Gordon Ramsay, Joe Bastianich, and Graham Elliot.

“MasterChef is entertainment. First and foremost. It is not real. It is not a competition. It is highly engineered fiction… designed to keep you watching from episode to episode… There is NOTHING real about reality TV.”

He then went into more detail about the way that MasterChef is filmed and he explained that he had “witnessed the ugly side of reality TV.” He started off by explaining that he had to sign a strict contract that declared he had given “away all rights to how he would be represented.” Starr even went into more detail about the contract revealing the exact wording of it.

“The rights granted to producer also include, but are not limited to, the rights to edit, cut, rearrange, adapt, dub, revise, modify, fictionalize, or otherwise alter the material, and I waive the exercise of any ‘moral rights.’ I understand that my appearance, depiction, and portrayal in connection with the series may be disparaging, defamatory, embarrassing, or of an otherwise unfavorable nature, may expose me to public ridicule, humiliation, or condemnation, and may portray me in a false light.”

According to International Business Times, Ben Starr then went on to explain how comments from contestants are often sliced “together from sound byte tangents recorded throughout the entire season.” He even went on to insist that they had actually edited together a sentence from three different sound bytes during his time on the show.

They’re really good at that. They even did it to me … strung together a sentence from three separate sound bytes scattered from my interviews at various points during filming. I never said what aired on TV. They created it out of thin air.”

Starr also went on to reveal that contestants “are subject to deliberate, intentional stress in order to trigger a high emotional response to situations” which even included being moved around different hotels and being awoken in the middle of the night to do so. The sixth season of MasterChef is currently in production for the Fox Network.

[Image via Newnotizie]