One in five Brits has shared a food picture in the past month, according to a supermarket survey. No wonder the dishes we cook are getting brighter and more photogenic. But does #instafood always taste as good?
I often post pictures of my food online before I have tasted it. I take the photo, adjust the brightness, contrast and saturation, upload it to my social media accounts and rejoice in how amazing it is. Sometimes, when I go on to eat the food in front of me, I dont even like it. That pretty orange and pistachio thing I made is bitter because the oranges have gone rancid. The photogenic Italian sfogliatella pastry, which I bought more or less entirely to take a photo of, is actually pretty tough. I am left chewing the pastry long after the likes have stopped trickling in. The interaction was sweet while it lasted, though.
We love to share our food. Not necessarily in the physical sense, because that would mean giving away something substantive and delicious. That gesture is still reserved for the people around us who we love and care about. But for the rest of the world the school pals and the random followers and our prying family friends we share our food online. We are sharing more food in this way than ever before, and a huge amount of this hungry, food-centric media revolves around food photography and short videos on platforms such as Instagram, Snapchat and Facebook.
Read more: www.theguardian.com