Food porn
Foodporn ( English [ ˈfuːtˌpɔʁn ], German 'food pornography' ) or food porn is a neologism . It describes images of dishes that are often glamorous and spectacularly staged, and the trend to spread them on the Internet. The representation of food and groceries on foodporn pictures aims to trigger feelings and emphasizes appearance above all other properties. They emphasize the sensory delights of food as opposed to other media depictions of food and groceries that focus on health and fitness.
Definition
"Foodporn" is a mixed word from English food ' Essen ' and English porn ' Porno ' (abbreviation for pornography ).
The term is used to describe the attractive qualities that people seek when visually displaying food in media such as cookbooks , cookery shows , websites and social media platforms. In the context of desire, for example for soft cupcake dough, sweet temptations, small sins or greasy hamburgers , metaphorical language is also used , some of which is known from the subject areas of sexuality and religion , such as "Today is a sin". While the term has primarily referred to the Internet in its use since the 2000s, it is also used in current research not only to denote the content of professional blogs on the subject, but also to refer to older food media such as cookbooks and cooking shows on television. There are also numerous pictures of dishes in advertising . The term can therefore refer to the photographed food including its presentation and the production of still images or video images, but also to the increasingly common photography of food for social networks or public exchange.
Various foods are staged on social media. Both down-to-earth home cooking and ingeniously arranged plates from restaurants as well as cardboard bowls with French fries from a snack bar . Many users of social networks share photos of food, diners and groceries on the Internet in social networks such as Instagram , Twitter and Facebook . Even Pinterest , Tumblr and Snapchat offer in the present space for a variety of representations of people who cook and eat and food itself. The hashtag "#foodporn" is often used on these platforms when users share pictures of food and drinks. The trend came up in the early 2000s. Often there are graphically sensual stylized close-ups, bright and softly lit shots that show the food in a look that is both adored and objectified. Trend researchers speak of a zeitgeist phenomenon and a new way of showing individuality. Special photo filters from current apps for smartphones put the dishes in a particularly good light.
One variant is the representation of food that is considered to be particularly unhealthy, such as pasta , French fries , hamburgers , cakes , bacon , pancakes , pizza and cookies . The presentation of the opposite health awareness can also be determined by presenting fresh, crunchy salads and current trends in street food . A current marketing trend is superfood , which is visually appealing and considered healthy, but whose taste is debated. Food such as avocados and smoothies are shown here, but also fresh juices, fruits, old grains, salads and muesli .
The term is discussed in contemporary gastronomic secondary literature, but it is controversial.
distribution
The aesthetics and practice of food porn have been popularized with the rise of blogs and websites devoted to food production and consumption. Free blogging platforms with pre-made templates such as Blogger and WordPress reduced the financial and technical barriers to entry and allowed both professionals and amateurs to participate. In 2012 there were between 8,000 and 11,500 active English-language blogs devoted to the subject.
In 2014 and 2015, “food” was the second most popular search category on the Internet. It can therefore be concluded that the popularity of food porn is not only due to marketing strategies and the food industry.
In 2015, 178 million photos were tagged with the hashtag “#Food” on the Instagram photo network. Under the hashtag “#foodporn” there were 54 million images in the same year and over 92 million in 2016. In 2019 there were already 204 million images with this hashtag.
A survey by the opinion research institute YouGov in 2016 found that 43 percent of Germans are inspired by food photography. 61 percent of Germans said they had photographed their food before. 55 percent of them created a picture of self-prepared food and 44 percent photographed good-looking or good-tasting food in the restaurant. Every third person said they had photographed food while traveling. Every fourth food photographer published the picture on social networks.
A 2016 survey in the US found that 63 percent of 13- to 32-year-olds shared at least one photo of food, meal, or drink on a social network. 57 percent regularly shared pictures of meals before they were actually consumed.
history
The importance of the visual appearance of a dish was already recognized in ancient times . As early as the 1st century AD, the Roman gourmet and author Apicius probably wrote "The eye eats first".
The staging of visually appealing and prestigious foods has been in art history since the Renaissance around 1500 at the latest . A study that evaluated paintings of food from the past 500 years found that they often depict food that is now considered unhealthy: salt, bread, meat in large quantities. Renaissance paintings of family meals also showed a similar picture. Out of 36 pictures, only 8 pictures showed vegetables. Overall, foods that were considered to be luxurious or aesthetically pleasing were shown, which shows similarities to the food porn phenomenon of today.
Consumption of food together has long delimited a special social area and defines circles of familiarity in which eating together or marking a special occasion with special dishes promotes a feeling of intimate social belonging among those present.
According to research, the images of food already shaped the up-and-coming classes in the past, who had achieved social advancement .
The social differentiation is always evident in the way food is represented and consumed. Rulers staged their power through artfully arranged banquets . Still life painters in the 17th century romanticized natural aspects of the dishes and set representative tables with the trompe-l'oeil effect, among other things . The still lifes by Frans Snyders , whose clients saw themselves as an elite with an understanding of art and cuisine, were formative. Food porn as a genre has similarities to the still life genre, which still shapes ideas about the visual representation of food to this day, even if, in contrast to the food porn phenomenon, still lifes tend to depict unprocessed foods such as bread, wine, water, meat and fruit. The aesthetics of the color composition and the arrangement of the dishes in this genre can still be seen in today's food porn. In the food porn phenomenon, however, cooking is often presented and conveyed as a practice.
In connection with the visual aesthetics of food, the saying "Man is what he eats", which is often attributed to the philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach and refers to the staging of social status through food, does not come from Feuerbach, according to recent research, but was created around 1820.
In the history of food photography there are repeated references to art history and its epochs. The by photographer Charles Jones photographed in 1900 leeks can of Édouard Manet's picture of asparagus bundles remember. Paul Strand's Still Life of a Pear (1916) is reminiscent of Cubism from France at that time. Irving Penn's photos of rectangles made from frozen raspberries , blueberries , apricots and peas have a constructivist effect .
Edward Weston staged vegetables and fruits as an erotic food shot. For example, in the first half of the 20th century, he photographed peppers like nudes .
The semiotic Roland Barthes showed as early as the 1950s that commercial food photography depicted the dish steak in its various variations as a sign of class, regional roots or psychological constitution. Sociologist Pierre Bourdieu found that the rising bourgeoisie was most likely to be inclined towards foods that mimick the tastes of the upper class .
The term Food Porn first appeared in the late 1970s, but its usage has changed a lot since then.
The coining of the term is also attributed to the feminist Rosalind Coward , who used it in 1984. From then on he occasionally referred to glossy pictures of dishes. In 2004, a “Foodporn” category for food photography was created on the Flickr image platform, which quickly became popular.
While cooking programs in the second half of the 20th century were more aimed at housewives and older men were more likely to be regarded as gourmets , the image of food and cooking shifted in the 21st century: pop stars appear in cooking programs and fashion magazines such as Vogue print recipes .
Even in the 21st century, the public dissemination of photos of aestheticized foods enables the public demonstration of social prestige and thus the participation in cultural capital as a form of conspicuous consumption. According to studies, these social areas in particular also shape food porn in the present.
Sociological Aspects
In contemporary science and sociology, there is no consensus on theories about the phenomenon, and the effects on consumers of food porn are controversial. Reasons for staging food in social networks by users are the documentation of creativity, the archiving of memories, communication between the sharing and the viewer and the representation of identity , as can also be found in the field of fashion or musical taste. A picture of a dish offers the possibility of letting a fleeting moment survive and of sharing the experience of the moment. People present themselves to the outside world through what they eat and thus also communicate their own values, preferences, orientations and their individuality . Documenting dishes and meals also has a function similar to writing a diary . It is often aimed not only at memories of the food, but also for the occasion, the companions and moods.
Visual enjoyment can also serve as a substitute for the fact that everyday life often does not offer the opportunity to prepare elaborate meals. The philosopher Robert Pfaller developed the concept of interpassivity , which assumes that the passive consumption of cooking magazines and cooking programs compensates for the lack of time and leisure in everyday life .
The representations of eating habits can be very different. On the one hand, this creates a connection between food, health, control and self-discipline, while other protagonists of food porn portray excessive unhealthy eating as a pleasure and thus reproduce the joy of exceeding partially culturally accepted social norms .
Foodporn can be understood as playful and enjoyable, but there are also approaches to view it politically as a form of “ post-feminist media production”.
The sociologist Eva Barlösius points out that a “ like ” in a social network indicates that the recipient understands the staging of food porn.
criticism
In the past the term was often used pejoratively and the shifting of the topic of food intake into a seductive image that is only consumed by the eye was mocked, the term is now less and less morally burdened.
Foodporn promotes unhealthy eating. It can be seen as problematic that the food shown on television implicitly sets standards. From the point of view of brain research, the brain involuntarily simulates what it would be like to consume the food being viewed; it cannot distinguish well between images of food and real, actual meals. The brain decides in fractions of a second how good the food shown would taste. Foodporn can stimulate the flow of saliva. Just reading the description of good food can have a similar effect. When viewing food porn, numerous areas of the brain are activated, such as the taste area ( island cortex ) and the reward area ( operculum and the orbitofrontal cortex ). Foodporn brings problems and health risks with it. One study found that looking at pictures of attractive food increases appetite. The feeling of hunger increased sharply when the participants were shown a video with pancakes , waffles , a hamburger and eggs . The effect was independent of whether the participants had not eaten for a long time or had just eaten a meal. Often, although food with an appealing visual appearance is what the brain finds particularly attractive from the point of view of brain research, it is not from the area of healthier nutrition.
University of Oxford scientists warn that regular viewing of food porn leads to obesity, but they also point out that appealing images of vegetables could encourage young children to eat healthier foods.
The ubiquity of mobile technologies means that humans are confronted with more images of food than ever before in human history . The YouGov survey from 2016 found that 40 percent find the trend rather annoying. More than half of the respondents were of the opinion that food photography only served to present oneself.
The term itself is criticized for being able to downplay actual pornography. It can be assumed, however, that it has become so widespread because it is intended to describe a great intensity of viewing pleasure. The political and cultural problems of the term are not reflected on.
It is also asked how social inequality and social policy are related to the topic of food porn.
Another criticism of the phenomenon is that the images and recipes are so far removed from real life that they can only be used as a vicarious experience, signaling and evoking something unattainable that makes the average cook or consumer seem increasingly inaccessible. According to studies, viewing food porn on the Internet not only leads to passive reception, but also to cooking the food. According to a study, food that is photographed before consumption tastes even better.
The dissemination of some images can also lead to legal problems: Peculiarly and lavishly designed dishes can in some cases enjoy copyright protection and, similar to a work of art, photographs of these dishes can not be easily reproduced and distributed.
The food porn phenomenon is judged differently among contemporary chefs , but the influence of Instagram is recognized. The results of a survey among celebrity chefs revealed different opinions on the trend. While there are chefs who have their own user account on social media, among other things to advertise, others even prohibit the use of smartphones and cameras in their restaurants.
literature
- Marie Schröer: "Show me what you are eating ...!" Functions of #foodporn and semiotics of food photography . In: KiF - Cultures in Focus . Potsdam 2017 ( Internet presence on the Cultures of Romance Countries [accessed October 4, 2019] University of Potsdam , Institute for Romance Studies).
- Charles Spence : Gastrology. The amazing science of culinary seduction . CHBeck, Munich 2018, ISBN 978-3-406-72036-9 ( limited preview in the Google book search - translated from English by Frank Sievers).
- Isabelle de Solier: Tasting the Digital: New Food Media . In: Kathleen LeBesco, Peter Naccarato (Eds.): The Bloomsbury Handbook of Food and Popular Culture . Bloomsbury Academic, London / Oxford / New York / New Delhi / Sydney 2018, ISBN 978-1-4742-9622-9 (English, limited preview in Google Book Search).
- Deborah Lupton: Cooking, Eating, Uploading: Digital Food Cultures . In: Kathleen LeBesco, Peter Naccarato (Eds.): The Bloomsbury Handbook of Food and Popular Culture . Bloomsbury Academic, London / Oxford / New York / New Delhi / Sydney 2018, ISBN 978-1-4742-9622-9 (English, limited preview in Google Book Search).
- Erin Metz McDonnell: Food Porn. The Conspicuous Consumption of Food in the Age of Digital Reproduction . In: Peri Bradley (Ed.): Food, Media and Contemporary Culture . The Edible Image. Palgrave Macmillan, London 2016, ISBN 978-1-137-46323-4 (English, limited preview in Google Book Search).
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d e f The Germans are very excited about photos of Essen. July 16, 2016, accessed October 4, 2019 .
- ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l Marie Schröer: "Show me what you are eating ...!" Functions of #foodporn and the semiotics of food photography . In: KiF - Cultures in Focus . Potsdam 2017 ( Internet presence on the Cultures of Romance Countries [accessed October 4, 2019] University of Potsdam , Institute for Romance Studies).
- ↑ a b c d e Isabelle de Solier: Tasting the Digital: New Food Media . In: Kathleen LeBesco, Peter Naccarato (Eds.): The Bloomsbury Handbook of Food and Popular Culture . Bloomsbury Academic, London / Oxford / New York / New Delhi / Sydney 2018, ISBN 978-1-4742-9622-9 (English, limited preview in Google Book Search).
- ↑ a b c d e Beat Metzler: Six reasons why we love “food porn” so much. In: The world . July 19, 2016, accessed October 4, 2019 .
- ↑ a b c d e Deborah Lupton: Cooking, Eating, Uploading: Digital Food Cultures . In: Kathleen LeBesco, Peter Naccarato (Eds.): The Bloomsbury Handbook of Food and Popular Culture . Bloomsbury Academic, London / Oxford / New York / New Delhi / Sydney 2018, ISBN 978-1-4742-9622-9 (English, limited preview in Google Book Search).
- ↑ a b c d e f Charles Spence : Gastrology. The amazing science of culinary seduction . CHBeck, Munich 2018, ISBN 978-3-406-72036-9 ( limited preview in the Google book search - translated from English by Frank Sievers).
- ↑ a b c d e Erin Metz McDonnell: Food Porn. The Conspicuous Consumption of Food in the Age of Digital Reproduction . In: Peri Bradley (Ed.): Food, Media and Contemporary Culture . The Edible Image. Palgrave Macmillan, London 2016, ISBN 978-1-137-46323-4 (English, limited preview in Google Book Search).
- ↑ a b c Emily JH Contois: Healthy Food Blogs. Creating New Nutrition Knowledge at the Crossroads of Science, Foodie Lifestyle, and Gender Identities . In: Gendered Food Practices from Seed to Waste (= Bettina Barbara Bock, Jessica Duncan [Hrsg.]: Jaarboek voor vrouwengeschiedenis / Yearbook of women's history . Volume 36 ). Verloren, Amsterdam 2017, ISBN 978-90-8704-626-2 (English, limited preview in Google book search).
- ↑ a b Daniele Muscionico: Food-Porn: Why we never get tired of looking at food. In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung . July 8, 2019, accessed October 4, 2019 .
- ↑ a b Fabian Schmid: Viral dishes, food porn: How Instagram changes restaurants. June 17, 2015, accessed October 4, 2019 .
- ↑ a b Tobias Timm : A feast for the eyes. In: Zeit Online . August 7, 2019, accessed September 27, 2019 .
- ↑ Andreas Peter Auersberger: “Foodporn” has been around since the Renaissance. In: The Standard . July 27, 2016, accessed October 4, 2019 .
- ↑ Alois Wierlacher : The dictum “Man is what he eats” . On the criticism of previous attributions and views. In: Alois Wierlacher, Burckhard Dücker, Ludwig Eichinger , Nicole Graf, Irmela Hijiya-Kirschnereit , Maren Möhring , Christine Ott, Gerhard Rechkemmer , Reinhard Spieler (eds.): Yearbook for Culinary Studies. The German Journal of Food Studies and Hospitality . Science - culture - practice. tape 1 . Iudicium, Munich 2017, ISBN 978-3-86205-525-8 , pp. 524 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
- ↑ a b "Food Porn" - the big end is sure to come. In: The world . October 15, 2015, accessed September 27, 2019 .