Don't Eat With Your Eyes

One of the most confusing things about the internet these days is trying to keep up with what I am supposed to be angry about. Obviously I know not to take a cue from every editorial on the internet because there is always going to be at least one person who is annoyed about an issue and if I tried to agree with every single position I would go insane after 20 minutes of browsing. I'm talking more about discovering which issue, which has been going on for months if not years, the world has finally gotten around to noticing and taking exception to until another issue comes along that we can notice and take exception to. (The good news is that if you miss the opportunity to be outraged about this topic another one will be coming around in a couple of days.) The other thing we love to do is drag up the same issue every couple of weeks during a slow news cycle even though no one has anything new to say about it. For example, lately I have noticed that a lot of people are back on the issue of people gracing magazine covers while being heavily airbrushed. They think it sets an unattainable standard, gives people a warped sense of body image, perpetuates a lie and all sorts of other claims that are surprisingly similar to the ones we have been hearing since PhotoShop was invented. While I agree with everything the protesters are saying, my heart really isn't in it. It's not just because they have already won the argument (who is in favor of heavily PhotoShopped pictures?) yet keep talking, but because I can't take these people seriously until they become a little more consistent.

Sure, there are times when models or celebrities are photographically edited to the point they don't even look human anymore. However, I would say that happens pretty rarely as most of the time the cropping is done to eliminate dark circles under eyes and the occasional wrinkle. It is reality? No. But it is certainly closer to the real thing than the "reality" TV many of these same people watch without complaint. Meanwhile, there is a hell of a lot more deception going on which no one raises a peep about and it is happening in your average food magazine. If you open up just about any food magazine this Thanksgiving inside you'll see plenty of recipes with accompanying pictures of food which looks perfect. That is what these magazines are telling you dish should end up looking like but the odds of that happening are pretty damn slim when you remember that what you are looking at isn't even really food. A couple years ago I remember seeing a television report about all the tricks photographers use to make food look so delicious. Thanks to the hot lights most food would wilt, melt or burn before the picture was captured so after a while the photographers figured out the easiest way to do this was to eliminate the "food" part of that equation. 70% of the things you see pictured are plastic and the remaining 30% are other household items made to look like food. (One of the ones that stuck with me is they love to use Elmer's Glue for milk.) Every single picture snapped is a lie and yet you never hear of anyone writing a pissed off letter to the editor about their food pictures. It just seems like an odd double-standard.

Now, you may be thinking the reason no one complains about pictures of fake food as much as the issue of people being PhotoShopped is because there are no real consequences to having really nice pictures of food out there. It is not like striving to achieve the lofty goal of having your concoction come out looking like a masterpiece would be a bad thing. I would reply the people who say things like that have clearly never waited until the last minute to make a new recipe for the first time and then start freaking out when what comes out of the oven looks nothing like the pictures in the recipe said they would. That can be quite the strain on people who aren't very confident in the kitchen and are perhaps working out of their comfort zone in an effort to impress a boss or members of a significant other's family. I would contend that probably messes up more people on any given day than an overly-altered picture on the cover of some woman we all know doesn't really look like that does in a week. Sure, there are some people out there who are complaining about this but so far if you want to show the "realistic" side of cooking you have to go to smaller sites like PinterestFail. When a cooking magazine starts putting photos of bread that never rose on the cover and everyone starts talking about how 'brave' the baker was for doing that like they do when some actress agrees to appear on a magazine without any make-up on, then I will know the idea of overly-produced food has finally come to an end.

As you probably guessed, I brought this up because this weekend I tried make a couple of new desserts and while things ultimately ended up deliciously they did not end up as well photogenically. Not only did the end result come out looking more than a little off, my attempts looked very different on several steps which is not good when you are visual learner like myself. I find the entire thing quite annoying, especially when you consider that cooking is something which should never be uniform. The entire concept is about putting your own spin on things and if that weren't the case than we would only have one giant restaurant chain for the whole world. I guess the solution would be to just bake strictly off the words and not have the visual to go along with it (it certainly worked for the first dozen or so generations of society. Look in any old cookbook and you'll get one picture for every 10 recipes). The problem is that we are now in a digital world and even the crappiest of websites can easily upload pictures. That means the genie is out of the bottle and there is no going back. All I can hope for instead is that enough people finally start to get annoyed by how all the food looks a little too-perfect and it sparks a rebellion against the very concept. The thing is it shouldn't even be all that hard because cameras are taking better pictures and everyone has them on their phones so catching food during those couple of minutes when it is at its peak should be easier than ever (if you don't believe me go on Instagram sometimes - it's almost exclusively pictures of people's food). Honestly, this should be a pretty easy thing to get people to rally behind, which is good because when you remember how quickly we bounce between causes we'll only have a couple hours to work with anyways.