Eating With Our Eyes

How do you know that every dish I cook or every dessert I bake tastes delicious? It may not be perfect but I still put it out there making it look all pretty and you fall for it. The lemon cake I baked was dry, too lemony and not what I imagined it to be but because you can use only one sense, you fell for it and told me how delicious it looked, or you ‘doubled tapped.’ What if I say I posted a picture of a pie with shaving cream on top instead of whipped cream? What if I say the picture of the ice cream I posted last week was not edible since it was made from corn flour and food color? What if I say the roast dinner you double tapped on was a dish you couldn’t consume because I used hair spray on the beans to get that shine and soaked cotton balls in hot water to get that steam, and did this just so that I could get that perfect picture. What looks pretty isn’t always pretty! What looks delicious can’t always be consumed! You will never know the truth behind any food picture unless you were part of the behind the scenes.

It’s a Sunday afternoon. You’re sitting at a table for lunch at a restaurant. The waiter keeps all the dishes you have ordered for on the table. You take out your phone and click a perfect picture of every dish. When someone tries to eat, you stop them and they are forced to sit back and wait rather than eat their food hot. When you get that perfect picture, you are so happy; it’s almost as if you have done some sort of worldly service. This has become a daily epidemic occurring worldwide, posting pictures on Instagram has become the standard pre-meal ritual.

In the last few years there has been a dramatic increase in people’s obsession with clicking pictures of their meals, especially while dining outside. These pictures are eroticized and labeled as ‘food porn’ or ‘gastro porn’. The quantity and quality of food people are consuming today is also changing due to the visuals that are provided in cookbooks, food advertisements, cooking shows and social media. Food consultants and publishers have suggested how food appears is very important and therefore chefs try to plate their dishes that are ‘Instagramable’ or ‘social media worthy.’ There are books and sites that guide their readers about ways to make their food visually pretty.

Today, we eat with our eyes. The way food is plated has an impact not only on people’s perception of its flavor but also in the amount one consumes. For example, a plate of chicken fried rice with gravy is plated in two different ways; the one that looks more attractive will be seen as the one having more flavors in comparison to the other and therefore will be consumed more. Recently I went to a restaurant for lunch and when they served the pizza, the first thing that came to my mind was the unappealing presentation of the dish but I was hopeful about its taste. I immediately connected presentation to the flavor of the dish.  Studies show that when a person is blindfolded they eat less than their fully-sighted counterpart (Giant Peach, 2017). This means that when you take away the sense of sight, along with reducing the pleasure, you also reduce the amount being consumed.

An example of an 'unappealing' food plating.  

Food photography is a part of postmodern photography which means that it is very difficult to capture new fresh pictures and therefore people re-photograph an already existing food picture. Penny De Los Santos, a visual food photographer, in the podcast ‘Meant To Be Eaten’, Episode 22: Visual Food Anthropology, talks about how there are numerous pages posting pictures of the same food due to which the picture becomes stale and is no more interesting. In order to set their pictures apart, these food pages use creative captions. For example most people in Mumbai click a picture of a vada pav but only that picture of a vada pav with a creative caption will attract the viewer’s attention. This is similar to the concept of novelty in social psychology which states that in order to grab people’s attention, advertisement companies or social media use unusual or unique things or situations.  Every vada pav tastes different and has a different story, be it the creator or the recipe of origin, but social media in terms of the visual representation has diluted the details and made them flavorless clones.

Food photographers today use various hacks to get the perfect picture that looks aesthetically pleasing, attract followers or even customers in the case of food advertisements. For example, they use shoe polish to make the glaze on the chicken shine or even on French beans. Antacids in soft drinks are used to make them look fizzy, and to make vegetables look fresh they use hair spray and deodorant. These hacks are also used in food advertisements. For example, Burger King in their advertisements show how their burgers are juicy, saucy and have fresh vegetables when it reality it is the opposite. The patty is dry and their sauces are diluted with water. A glass of milk in advertisements looks so fresh because they use soap water and bubbles.

Originally, making food look beautiful was only the concern of fine-dining restaurants but today with the advent of social media; all kitchens make an attempt to do so. Due to technological advancements and introduction of editing programs such as Photoshop one is able to click attractive and aesthetically pleasing food pictures. Thus we also seek technological validation from app-based filters as a means for the final judgment of human validation. Today there are workshops that teach people how to capture that perfect food picture by using certain props, lighting and filters.

People also consume and upload pictures of certain food products in order to receive validation is linked in possessing a certain status in society. The act of putting up photos is richly stuffed with the concept of the ‘other’ and is often an act of aggressive juxtaposition. Many photos are representative of ‘look I am eating this, and you are not and can’t’ For example, by uploading a picture of food products consumed either from Nature’s Basket or Food Hall, one is trying to indirectly show that they belong to a higher position or have a higher status in the society. It causes a hegemonic division in society on the basis of who can afford to consume what.

The theory of ‘looking-glass self’ by Cooley, describes the process wherein individuals base their sense of self on how they believe others view them. They use social interaction as a type of “mirror.” People use the judgments they receive from others to measure their own worth, values, and behavior. The appearance one imagines for them is displayed through their posts. When people imagine their image through their social media posts, they are conscious that it might not be an accurate image of them. The decision of what details to allow in their posts is a result of imagining their appearance. Connecting this to food, people might put a picture of the meal they are consuming at a fancy restaurant but will think twice before putting a picture of a basic home cooked meal that is served to them in a thali. They tend to display an image that is accepted by their peers and representative of social groups that they are part of. They therefore take their time before posting a certain picture and imagine how others perceive it and develop their desired image. For example, one might not post a picture of them consuming dal rice with their hand but will surely put up a picture of them eating with chopsticks. This correlates to Cooley’s claim that we attempt to gauge the responses of other individuals to our presentation of self. With social media we are given the ability to represent ourselves however, even though it may not be the true representation of ourselves. This desire to create an alternative form of you on social media is a motivated by popular culture and the need to fit in or belong.

Just the way people are photo-shopped in advertisements or magazine covers, the same is being carried out with food pictures. In order to make a product appealing to the eye of the customers, advertisement companies use various editing tools and hacks. This also leads to food not only being inaccessible in terms of monetary gains but also with regards to the dominance of who can consume foods that might be ‘high culture’ or ‘gastronomy’.

 

Written by:

Juhi Idnani- SYBA 

 

REFERENCES:

Bhatt, A. (2016, March 16). You Won't Believe These 20 Clever Tricks Advertisers Use To Fool Us. Retrieved January 10, 2019, from https://www.scoopwhoop.com/clever-tricks-advertisers-fool-us/#.cgu6sge8g

Huerta, M. (2014, November 21). COLLEGE STUDENTS: LOOKING GLASS SELF & SOCIAL MEDIA. Retrieved February 19, 2019, from https://prezi.com/eopejymngni7/college-students-looking-glass-self-social-media/

Meant To Be Eaten | Episode 22: Visual Food Anthropology. (n.d.). Retrieved January 11, 2019, from https://heritageradionetwork.org/podcast/visual-food-anthropology/

Writer, M. G. (2018, April 25). Eating with your eyes in the age of social media. Retrieved January 11, 2019, from https://www.pressherald.com/2018/04/25/eating-with-your-eyes-in-the-age-of-social-media/