Visual consumerism is eating up our appetites
Our grandparents might have been right to express their reservations about platforms like Instagram. At least, to some extent. The said social media outlet might be one of the main factors that have caused millennials to eat with their eyes first.
Cory Mintz debunks food fads
According to Cory Mintz, a food columnist for CBC’s Metro Mornings, people line up for hours to get their hands on the latest, most “Instagram-able” food items not because they can’t wait to eat them, but rather because they’re “suckers” for the food fads promoted on social media.
Mintz recalls recently conversing with a famous Toronto Chef who openly lives by the tacit mantra that one “eats with his eyes first”. The Chef even admitted to plan all of his restaurants’ business while keeping in mind the visual aspect of the end product that he wants to distribute to his culinary audience.
Another aspect of the food fad phenomenon that Mintz has noticed is how there actually is a way to present your food on social media. Pictures where the product at hand is presented as being bountiful and oversized tend to be more successful.
“No one likes to have ice cream all over their hands, but they do it for the photo,” he finally added.
The fads go against the trends
There’s indeed be a difference between food fads and food trends.
Examples of food fads would be the unicorn Frappuccino, the charcoal ice cream, rainbow grilled cheese, and rainbow bagels. Everybody knows that these products are successful mostly because of how they look. How they taste and what they do to one’s body is ironically less important.
Food trends, on the contrary, can bring about some positive changes. They can push people to shop for fresh produce two times a week instead of just one, or they can educate the crowds on how to purchase ethically sourced food.
We should not mind “ugly” food
Cory Mintz hopes that we will end up going back to the days when food’s taste and nutritive value mattered more than something as superficial as its appearance. Of course, as a culinary critic, taking pictures of food is one of the things that he ends up doing the most, but Mintz will tell to anyone who’s willing to listen that he indeed also enjoys food that is not meant to be beautiful only. Simply take poutine as an example. Looks gross, tastes amazing.
Chef David Chang of the Momofuku empire has started a social media hashtag — #uglydelicious — that promotes food that tastes amazing, but that is not always a work of art. His enterprise is quite a funny and light-hearted one, yet it efficiently combats the superfluous eccentricity that has infiltrated the culinary world over the few last years. Sure, this particular social media trend might direct you to pictures of bland-looking food, splattered dishes, or even simple-looking meals, but the experience might end up being a good exercise for you to fight a superficiality that smothers food and its fundamental purpose.
