We’ve all seen those videos in our social network feeds that glorify meat, cheese, and decadent desserts. They don’t just make our mouths water, they also reinforce bad eating habits. No one eats mountains of ground beef, sautéed onion, and peppers by pouring melted cheese over the mess and making a video of the spectacle. Nonetheless, the normalization of such comfort-food excess serves to skew our view of what a healthy diet looks like.
I’ve been guilty of producing some food porn myself. A colleague once asked me to make some big burgers as a staff meal. I made the burgers so damn big that we spent 15 minutes taking pictures of them before eating them. We laughed and posed with our burgers, but I didn’t keep a copy of myself eating one of those burgers. I knew that sort of eating was driving my weight up and I had already stopped stepping on the scale for fear of how far I had already gone.
I spent so much time thinking about bigger sandwiches, thicker pizzas, and richer cheese that healthy foods became unappealing to me – other than as a prop for the photos. The fact is that food porn does have an impact on our diets and that’s why fast food advertisers seeks to make their food seem almost sexy in their ads.
These days my taste in food porn has radically changed. I post more photos of food than ever but it’s mostly healthy food. Just google my name and select ‘images’. There are more photos of healthy food then there are of me. There will also likely be some photos of unhealthy food but that is because I use such images in this blog to make a point.
The above photo of Cara Cara Oranges with ginger now makes my mouth water. I’m not saying that giving up food porn, or changing to health-food porn will change your diet – but it might reduce some of your unhealthy cravings that drive you to snack or overeat.
No comments:
Post a Comment