Italiano
What exactly does food porn mean?
After seeing this word in thousands of hashtags and mentions, we know for sure that “porn” has nothing to do with its original meaning.
That said, if you’re not disappointed, I’ll continue with the story…
STORY OF THE DEFINITION
The expression food-porn was born towards the end of the 70s in the USA, precisely in the period in which “porn” tout court exploded.
The definition was used to indicate the new custom of photographing finished foods, or of filming the stages of preparation and plating, in order to stimulate and excite (the right term…) the recipient’s senses.
Not in a sexual sense of course, but purely culinary. Grab it by the throat, that’s it…
In the 1980s Ros Coward, an English writer who advocated feminist ideology, wrote that the main objective of food pornography was to encourage the creation of
“perfectly finished and presented food is a symbol of a willing and enjoyable participation in servicing others”.
At the dawn of the social media era, in the early years of the third millennium, in the USA the term “food porn” was used as a slogan by anti-health enthusiasts, so to speak.
In a society that was increasingly aware of how harmful junk food was (remember the documentary Super-size Me?), there were those who proudly praised the pleasures of saturated fats and complex sugars.
FOOD PORN TODAY
Nowadays it seems that the term, which often goes along with its hashtag, has come closer to its original meaning. The caption #foodporn is used to describe aesthetically pleasing, and particularly graphic, pics of food, in which the details are clearly visible.
What details? Well, just to give a few examples: the alveolation of the dough, the browning given by the Maillard reaction, the steam, the dripping of the sauce, the texture, the breading…
#foodporn has its use in advertising: there is a good percentage of restaurant businesses, especially the new generation ones, which use it to advertise themselves.
And the “porner” is the foto, the more the appreciation index rises. Ok, I think I could have written it in a more elegant way, but I think I made my point clear. Right?
CONS OF FOOD PORN
In all seriousness, #foodporn also has a downside. Also, quite important. In fact, there are several studies that have demonstrated the effect of this on various types of eating disorders. This is partly due to the fetishization of food and the obsession with vanity metrics; to the overstimulation of Ghrelin, the hormone that stimulates the appetite; for the spectacularization of often unhealthy foods.
You know how they say: “too much of a good thing“.
The #foodporn is fine, but better to keep it on guard level. Let’s enjoy food, let’s enjoy the pics that portray it, but let’s also be very careful not to make it an obsession. Just like all the other topics that form #hashtags, trends, and so on and so forth…
IN CONCLUSION…
Anyway, here’s a nice example of Food Porn.
A detail of a slice of pizza just out of the oven. The photo is courtesy of the Pizzeria “Da Gigi” in Rimini (Italy).
The dough, obviously, was leavened using the Inox Bim retarder proofer!
And, if you work in catering and/or hospitality industry and you are interested in my copywriting and/or contentwriting services, just text me!
