Vision & Perception
How can ‘foodtography’ inspire people to utilise the leftovers and enhance the value of unwanted ingredients?
Nowadays, “foodtography”, a trend of taking food pictures and post them on social media, has become a new culture throughout the world. Most of the time, people tend to post pictures of their “perfect, mouth-watering meals” to attract attention from others. It is obvious that no one will put pictures of their leftovers on Instagram. Stemmed from this observation, this project has been created to investigate the possibility that the unwanted ingredients or the leftovers can be masked with the positive imagery of a perfect meal. In order to do so, The Loveovers Kitchen, the food and lifestyle online community, has been launched on various social media platforms, namely Instagram and Facebook. Unwanted ingredients and leftovers were being transformed into creative, mouth-watering dishes to show how vision can change people’s perception. Additionally, the project could help reduce the food waste by encouraging the use of leftovers or unwanted ingredients.
It all began with the green apples found at a reduced to clear section from one supermarket. They didn’t look appealing; they were in fact bruised; yet they sparked a fundamental question for this project. If they were still on the shelf for sale, they would have to be edible wouldn’t they? According to a nutritionist, “bruised fruits, unlike ones with molds, are edible and can provide the same amount of nutrition as the perfect-looking ones. (Sriprachya-anunt, 2014)”
In order to find an answer, an experiment was conducted by letting a group of samples taste pieces of apple that were peeled and removed of all the imperfections. As expected, no one suspected that what they have eaten have such defected appearance, but what came as a surprise was that once shown the picture taken from the shelf, many started to change their thoughts of how the apple actually tasted. This result led to a new finding that vision has a major influence in distorting people’s perception.
To investigate the influence of sights further, a professional chef, Miss Utchi, was invited to transform almost-expired and leftover ingredients into 5-starred dishes; each dish will have its photo taken by a food photographer, Cliff Rawley. These elaborate photos are then posted on Instagram to observe public response, which turned on to be much better than predicted. Moreover, a group of people was invited to enjoy these dishes with full knowledge of what they were made from; all of whom gave positive responses. Unlike the previous sample group that saw picture of discolored apple, this group only has pictures of finished products as a reference. The result helps confirm that negative perceptions can be changed through the use of imagery.
Still believing in the concept of vision and perception, Instagram became the first platform that came to mind as it used to generate highly positive responses from the cooking intervention. Additionally, it has “over 150 million users on the platform, 16 billion photos shared, and 1 billion likes happening each day; (Harris, 2013)” thus can be an effective way to reach out to new generations by visually demonstrating inspirational ways to utilise the leftover food in the kitchen and create more value to unwanted ingredients. Reducing food waste is also a long-term intention that this project hopes to achieve. Collaboration with Chef Utchi will help increase the account’s credibility, which will hopefully attract more followers and comments. As an incentive to encourage people’s interaction, weekly rewards will be given to the best and most creative photo of recreated dish that are posted with a particular hash tag.
Throughout the process, I have gained knowledge and awareness about the problem of food waste that is happening in the world. I am more conscious about value of food, and changed the way I eat; how much I actually need for each serving. I also have come to a new understanding of the phrase ‘you can’t judge a book by its cover,’ which allow me to investigate deeply in all aspect of life before making a decision. I am proud to say that I have grown tremendously from this journey.
Reference
Harris, S. (2013, October 15). 8 Surprising New Instagram Statistics to Get the Most out of the Picture Social Network. Retrieved October 27, 2014, from Buffer: https://blog.bufferapp.com/instagram-stats-instagram-tips
