The Perils of #FoodPorn: An Exploration of the Aestheticization of Food on Social Media

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Have you ever gone out for a meal with your loved ones and had the urge to stop everyone’s cutlery from digging in - mouths salivating and tongues lolling - to spend precious minutes trying to capture on your phone the most appealing shot of your food, from every which angle? I know I have. Or consider this: have you ever spent endless hours mindlessly scrolling through Instagram’s rabbit hole of an explore page, eyes popping and stomach gurgling at hundreds of images of juicy burgers, manufactured cheese stretches, and ribbons of melted chocolate? Once again, this encapsulates much of my wasted free time. If this doesn’t describe you, then consider yourself lucky! Not to be burdened by the bug of Instagram food porn is something to celebrate. But if this is something you can relate to, do not worry - I promise, you are not alone: as of 2023, Instagram has over 500 million posts tagged #food, and nearly 300 million tagged #foodporn, some of the most popular hashtags on the platform, and only getting more popular with each passing moment.

Clearly there is no denying that people love food porn, but the term itself is hotly debated, and, although relatively modern, has a rich and complex history. Distinct from the term gastro porn, which emerged in 1977 with Alexander Cockburn’s discussion in the New York Review of Books, food porn is a focus on highly stylized images designed to titillate and elicit a “vicarious sensual thrill…” from consumers, “paralleled with the physical and mental gratification of sexual pornography” (Dennis 11). Although originally used to “describe professionally photographed food in magazines and on TV” (Madison, in McBride 40), the “idea of food porn [as opulence and decadence] has been around since the days of the ancient Romans” (Cosentino, in McBride 41), with 1960s picture cook books being some of the earliest examples of food porn as we see it today.

While feminist critic Rosalind Coward is often credited with coining the concept of food pornography in her 1984 book Female Desire, the first time the words actually appeared was in Michael Jacobson’s 1979 discussion of healthy and unhealthy foods in the Center for Science in the Public Interest’s Nutrition Action Healthletter. Here, Jacobson juxtaposed food porn against “Right Stuff,” labeling foods as good or bad depending on their health benefits, with food porn being so unhealthy that it exists outside “of the bounds of what a food should be” (qtd. in McBride 38). While a majority of the posts tagged #foodporn on Instagram are calorie-dense, it is problematic and damaging to define any foods as inherently bad and in opposition to “right” foods - doing so can lead to increased eating disorders, and can influence toxic relationships with food and calories.

While the term food porn gained linguistic traction in the 1980s, it has only recently exploded in popularity with the rise of social media, particularly Instagram. It was only 13 years ago when many leaders in the food critic, food studies, and restaurant fields claimed that food porn was not a widely used term, largely relegated to the fringes of academia (McBride). Now, food porn is the second-most searched for category on the internet, with actual pornography only just taking the top spot. While Instagram food porn is different to that of TV and print, the central element stays the same: appearance trumps flavor.

In a more recent development, food scientist Charles Spence would agree with Jacobson, controversially arguing that food porn is bad because it is linked to a larger Body Mass Index (BMI). Even when putting aside the racist, classist, and generally problematic history of BMI as an (inaccurate) measurement of health, Spence is still implying that weighing more is a bad thing and must be prevented. His focus on food porn as an issue not only ignores the many other underlying structural, systemic factors that can influence a person’s weight, but also pathologizes people, treating them as less than for weighing more. While I am critiquing food porn in this essay, it is for entirely different and distinct reasons to Jacobson and Spence’s. Make no mistake, I do not view any foods as inherently good or bad, I do not think weighing more is an issue that must be prevented, and I do not think that food porn is bad because of its supposed (read: correlational, not causal) link to weight gain. Instead, I am critiquing food porn for its many genuinely negative consequences, that actually do have an impact on ourselves and our culture.

An increased prioritization of aesthetics in food has rewarded fast-moving trends, devalued taste, and changed how we interact with food. We are at risk of developing problematic relationships with food, restaurants could lose business if they don’t subscribe to the aestheticization of their food, food waste will increase exponentially, and dining will become even more disappointing. Food porn has disregarded what makes food special, distracting us from the fulfilling roles that food can play. No longer is food a vehicle for community, love, and happiness - now, with food porn at the forefront, food is merely a commodity, a cash grab, a status symbol. All of this is in conversation with a number of intersecting constructs. We should consider gender, as we explore the sexualization of women alongside the sexualization of food, and when we discuss who is actually allowed to eat this food porn. This is also a class issue, as we understand who has the means and resources to partake in the consumption of food porn, who promotes it, and how food acts as a status symbol. Linked to this is race and ethnicity, when we observe which foods are represented in food porn, and what cultures are commodified. More so, the exploration of food porn must also consider discourse surrounding weight and fat-shaming, as we investigate the relationship between guilt and eating, and, again, who is allowed to consume food porn.

As seen above, food porn is a huge phenomenon. There are many social media accounts which contribute to the growing number of food porn images and videos, which many of us love to peruse. The social media giant Tasty is a food porn behemoth - the creation of comically large foods is impressive enough to garner billions of views per month, and many of their short form videos showing sexy food in titillating motion can achieve upwards of a hundred million views. The Instagram account Food Porn has 1.1 million followers, with many other accounts similarly following suit, each post gaining millions of views and likes. This constant barrage of food porn certainly has an impact on the way we interact with our food. According to a YouGov poll, half of all Americans take pictures of their food, and Maru/Matchbox found that 69% of 18-34 year olds take a photo or video of their food and post it to social media before they even eat it. No doubt we are putting aesthetics before taste. In general, a 2015 YPulse survey saw that 63% of 13-32 year olds have ever posted a photo of food to social media. It is clear that the way we interact with food has significantly shifted from even a few decades ago, as a large number of us are struck by the compulsion to indulge in food porn, either as a consumer or producer. This number will only continue to grow.

But this relationship is concerning. A study detailed by The Atlantic found that food porn sometimes acted as a substitute for food itself, putting some people off of physically consuming food (Romm). This could have potentially damaging affects for people with eating disorders, who could use food porn as a way to satiate their desires without having to actually ingest calories. In addition, some believe that the performative aspect of food porn on social media is indicative of a larger issue. Psychiatrist Valerie Taylor’s Canadian Obesity Summit speech argued that this constant posting of photos of our meals is a sign of a disordered relationship with food, whereby we are dining for others, performing satiety, and eating solely for the enjoyment of others.

It’s not just individuals that food porn has an effect on. Businesses and restaurants, too, feel the need to take part in food porn culture. The restaurant chain Chili’s Bar & Grill has redesigned its menu to be more social media friendly and capitalize on the food porn aesthetic, as “burgers are placed higher on a plate, fries arrive in stainless steel containers and, most interestingly of all, ingredients are picked for their social media friendly aesthetics, right down to which burger bun is used.” (Lynch) There are many articles online that promote using food porn to a business’ advantage - Kugel writes for Entrepreneur “Six Ways You Can Leverage Food Porn,” and Entenman highlights in So Yummy! her formula for “How To Get The Most Likes For Your Food Instagram Posts,” both extolling the virtues of natural lighting, hashtags, and adding a “human touch.”

When considering food porn, it is necessary to also explore food influencers and their role in this increasingly aestheticized food culture. Food influencers, online content producers with large and loyal followings, have “become prized commodities in the restaurant world” (Harris), with inordinate power to make or break restaurants. These individuals can bring massive amounts of profit to struggling businesses, just by posting a generous 30 second review, usually consisting of varying sexy shots of food in motion, in return for some free food and a check (some even charging up to $10,000). Small and struggling restaurants tell of suddenly trending on Instagram or TikTok and getting an influx of new customers, to the extent that they become overwhelmed. One can almost always tell when a restaurant has blown up on social media - check the long line of young teens, all with their phones out, on a street where all the other establishments are left deserted. Guaranteed, that place benefited from a food influencer’s magic touch. Or is it really such a benefit? As already suggested, a sudden and drastic change in clientele can be overwhelming, especially when a business is unprepared to meet the demand. And as much as they can ‘make’ a business, food influencers can also break them, as Los Angeles Times investigated, threatening and blackmailing restaurants with bad reviews unless they receive free food and service.

And what if the trend of, say, Korean corndogs only lasts a few months (or even a few weeks, given the increasing prevalence of “microtrends” on social media)? This small business, that once saw much hype and profit, is no longer fashionable. The lines die down, Instagram moves on to the next trend, and restaurants close. Many people’s livelihoods are tied to this quick boom-and-bust cycle of Instagram food porn, and the power that individual influencers have, as well as the overall food porn culture on social media, is a fickle thing to tie one’s hard work to. It is simply not sustainable. Even if we are not talking about the ethics of fetishizing a nation’s cuisine and turning the culture into a micro trend, that so many restaurants are dependent on food porn is problematic and just plain unfair. Ultimately, restaurants that don’t bow to the food porn giant lose out on business, however short-term that may be, and those that do feel confined to vapid and fleeting trends, with no opportunity for genuine innovation, experimentation, and authenticity towards the restaurateur’s vision.

You might be thinking, ‘why does any of this even matter?’ Well, if you are someone who eats, then this should matter to you. Because “food porn can tell us a great deal about who we are and the culture in which we live” (Kaufman, in McBride 42) the depraved state in which it exists today is something that affects us all. Food porn on Instagram has changed the way we interact with food, for the worse.

The younger generation is increasingly prioritizing aesthetics over taste, focused more on posting a good meal, rather than actually enjoying one. Younger women, in particular, are struggling with their relationships with food, constantly seeing skinny, attractive influencers interacting with calorie-dense, over-the-top food porn, but never having the chance to indulge in it themselves. As Mull expertly explores in her Eater article Instagram Is a Sad, Sparkly Lie, young women are Instagram’s target demographic, and these women, who historically have been forced into having a “fraught relationship” with food, are sold something that they do not (or cannot) literally eat: food porn. With some instances of food porn acting as a substitute for a genuine meal, this is a worrying development that can have dangerous consequences for younger generations’ relationships with food. Will we become a nation of disordered eating? Are we already at this stage?

Partaking in food porn culture is also an exclusive activity. Mull details how food influencers have transformed food into a “status performance… signal[ling] affluence and leisure” because of the time and expense required to acquire the latest food porn trend. Do you have hours to spare to wait in line for the most recent matcha-cream-filled, sugar-encrusted pastry the size of your head? Because I sure don’t. What about parting with your hard-earned cash to spend too many dollars on some excessive freak shake, too sickeningly-sweet to actually consume more than a few sips of? Let’s face it, only certain, privileged, kinds of people can avoid the FOMO and actually try the foods that food porn pushes in our faces. And these people are the ones who post about it, to prove their high social status. Those that can’t are losers, people who don’t know what good food is, whose lives are unfulfilled. This is clearly a class issue - those with wealth, time, and resources are part of this exclusive club and get to benefit from it, and those without are doomed to live outside of this world, constantly tempted but always restricted from fully indulging.

Who else isn’t allowed to be part of the club? Not just those who can’t afford it, but also those whose cultures and cuisines are not represented. Consider what foods you see consistently on Instagram’s #foodporn: burgers, pizzas, pastas. While there is a surge of Korean food as a trend on the food porn explore page, as we have already discussed there are not necessarily many merits to a culture becoming a food trend, especially when it has been whitewashed to be more palatable (pun intended) to a white, Western audience. The bastardization of traditional dishes to appeal to American eyes has its limits, not just in the lack of true food representation for people from different backgrounds, but also in the fundamental misunderstanding that the US has of many a different culture’s cuisine.

What is most insidious about this restructuring of food as a symbol of social status (though historically food has always been a way to signify wealth and class) is that a “desire as essential and physical as food [has been] co-opted by capitalism’s most profitable avenues of distribution and sales” (Kaufman, in McBride 41). While opulent and decadent foods have always been symbols of the rich, the emphasis was, at least, still on taste - fatty flavor, bursts of sugar, succulent meat - now, we have even lost this, with aesthetics taking the prime cut. Most food trends are too unpleasant to actually get eaten - though one may ask why this should even matter when “the real gratification comes once the photo is posted” (Mull). No one truly benefits from pretty foods devoid of flavor, other than the businesses that profit off of it. This is a sad indictment of the world we live in, where food is valued for its role on social media as a money maker and status symbol, rather than its nutritional value; nevertheless, this neatly fits into our neo-liberal, capitalist society that consistently prioritizes profit over people.

Food porn is also concerning because of its sexist implications. As explored above, young women especially struggle with their relationships with food. In addition to this strikingly problematic issue, the term food porn itself is complicit in the sexualization of women. As Alan Madison said in McBride’s food porn forum in 2010 “using the word porn in connection with food photography desensitizes us to the pejorative meaning of the word and thereby makes sex porn seem not really so bad” (42). Here, Madison claims, by pointing out that sex pornography debases women, that food porn in itself is a sexist term that continues this dehumanization of women. There are many examples of women and food both being sexualized in order to sell. Just look at the infamous Hardee’s or Carl’s Jr. adverts and it is clear that women and food are seen as interchangeable - sexy commodities designed to appeal to the senses and make us spend our money. Instagram food porn only reflects and reinforces this sexist sexualization. If we want to strive for a truly equal society, this comparison of women with something we consume, first with our eyes, must come to an end.

Those who are overweight may also struggle with the exclusivity of food porn culture. Have you ever seen a fat food influencer? If you have, are they usually praised for their actions? As we have seen, it is usually conventionally attractive (thin and white) women who are food influencers, and young women are the majority of food porn consumers. The relationship between guilt and eating is a fraught and messy one among women, that is not helped by food porn’s obsession with “guilty pleasures,” and showing off calorie-dense foods that you never see actually get eaten. While we have seen that only certain people have the means to partake in food culture, we should also acknowledge that these same people are the only ones allowed to consume this food. As soon as BMI starts to tick higher up (which is not inherently a bad thing, although Spence and many others would disagree), the acceptability of watching, eating, and consuming food porn in general begins to drop. Food porn culture, thus, is a fat-shaming one, which does nothing but harm everyone’s relationships with food, as we all internalize toxic food mantras. If we factor in weight, then, alongside gender, race, and class, food porn culture is even more exclusive and damaging.

But that’s not all. Consider the hundreds of millions of images of food porn on Instagram alone. Do you really think all of those foods were eaten, every morsel swallowed, plates scraped clean? Especially considering how taste is no longer a priority and aesthetics take the forefront. Smithers writes for the Guardian that of the 15 million tonnes of food waste produced by the UK each year, 7 million comes from households - as the “Instagram generation” fuels the mountain with their desire to recreate Instagram-friendly dishes using unique and rare ingredients that tend to get thrown out after one use. And it’s not just the average person who contributes to food waste because of food porn culture. Do Bianchi highlights how many chefs on Instagram have “lost sight of… sustainable practices when they create and then discard hardly edible dishes conceived expressly for the social media platform.” It’s a genuine question: what happens when the cameras turn off? Even edible dishes cannot all be consumed. At food influencer events, up to “75% of it goes in the trash” once it loses its aesthetic value and Instagram potential (Mull). Food waste is a large, and distressing, by-product of food porn, one that not only leads to billions of dollars of loss, but also the release of 170 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere, contributing to devastating environmental change (Buzby).

There’s even more to the food waste story. Chef Alton Brown argues that “Instagram has done to food what porn has done to sex” (Bratskier), that is: setting unrealistic standards for what food should be. The amount of food waste related to the aesthetics of food is significant - millions of bananas are thrown out every week, solely because they don’t look right, people pass over ugly foods despite them being in perfect, edible condition, and in general, people’s understanding of what food should look like has been tarnished by food porn’s hyper-fixation on perfection. Not only this, but I argue that this focus on looks discourages home-cooks from experimenting and challenging ourelves, constantly in fear of “failing” in our own culinary ventures if a dish doesn’t look up to food porn scratch. Food porn devalues and even pathologizes “ugly” (normal) foods, disregarding the nourishment, love, and tradition that goes into making a meal. Not only this, but the high standards we now have mean that dining has become perennially disappointing. Food isn’t tasty anymore, as all the effort is put into how it looks. Is a meal really satiating if it doesn’t look good? If you can’t post it on social media, did you really enjoy it? Food porn has, ultimately, led to high standards and low satiety. What is the point of eating if we can no longer be truly satisfied?

It may seem like there is no solution to such a pervasive and growing problem, but there is both individual and large-scale action that can be taken to help reshape the narrative around food porn, and restructure the way we think about food and what we value about it. For one, social media algorithms can be changed. The government and the people can put pressure on social media companies to tinker with their code to ensure that we are not sucked into an endless loop of highly aestheticized, but ultimately tasteless, food images. Social media companies profit off of us staying on their apps for as long as possible, by showing us exactly what we want in a ceaseless feedback loop. If laws can be enacted to encourage, incentivize, or even force these companies to regulate what they promote, depersonalize the algorithms, and put forth time limits, then we can start to think about food not as porn, not as a cultural commodity or social status symbol, but as so much more. Along the same vein, making it a legal requirement to declare whether food porn is an ad could help people to distinguish between what is real, and what is highly stylized for views and profit. But these suggestions only treat the symptoms, not the source; what we really need is a cultural paradigm shift.

As I have outlined, media is heavily regulating our relationship with food. Can you think of the last time you had a meal that was devoid of some sort of media influence? So let’s take back control and forge our own relationships. We can’t get rid of food porn, as it is so deeply ingrained on our culture, but what we can do is reshape the narrative to be more fun, forgiving, and welcoming. As we are all in this together, we can make a change by collectively embracing all kinds of foods. As Dumitrescu asserts in The Curious Appeal of ‘Bad’ Food, there is “no such thing as bad food.” In a time of culinary perfectionism, it is a fun and rebellious act to emphasize foods that don’t look the way food porn has told us they should. Our sense of what we value in food has been messed with, so let’s prioritize what is important to us: our personal, “weird” creations; our traditional recipes passed down through the family (that don’t, surprisingly, incorporate rainbow cream cheese or unicorn dust); our 30 minute weeknight meals made from whatever is leftover in the fridge. These are the foods that make us who we are. Chasing food porn trends is unsustainable, not just for restaurants, businesses, and influencers, but for ourselves. Let us indulge in “ugly” foods. Let us “fail” in our cooking. We need to remember what food really represents. Not a status symbol or porn, but nourishment and sustenance, family and community, life and happiness. Love. If you can’t put the camera down, ignore the hashtags, and just eat (which I highly recommend), at least take pictures of all your meals, not just the ones that look good. Take a picture of your dad’s heart-warming, though sloppy and brown, stew; share your favorite soggy sandwich, because that’s just the way you like it; show off your guilty pleasures, sans guilt - because beige foods are often the tastiest. All food is beautiful, because it feeds us. So let’s start sharing the truth.

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