Food Porn and Brain

Foodporn It sounds quite intriguing, maybe even double-digit? And if we add foodgasm to this? For me, these two words ideally show how much food dominates our daily lives. Do you think this is not true? What food is just an additive? Stop for a minute and think:

• How many people in your surroundings take photos of their dishes instead of enjoying it?

• How many of your friends post food photos on their social networks?

• How many times did you have to publish photos of your dish, breakfast?

• But above all, where is the place of food in your life?

Is chocolate a supplement or a perverse pleasure?

Foodporn is a word that sounds indecent. Caught your attention? Exactly this is the goal - to intrigue. It was introduced to show the other side of the food. It is not only a thing that brings us energy for work but also gives us sensory experience. Foodporn was originally the photo, which represented products in a provocative way. Do you think this is impossible? Imagine a plate with your favorite dish shown in the photo as if you were photographing your ideal of beauty. It sounds absurd, but it affects our appetite intensely. Over time, this phenomenon began to capture more and more large groups of people - everyone shared photos with perfectly arranged food products with their friends.

So a new concept of food porn photos appeared - the obsessed work of photographs of what is on the plate. It got to the point that such photographs testify to our lifestyle, economic status and how we spend our free time. Words and actions have been replaced by images affecting our feelings. Someone in this way began to celebrate meals, others persuaded about a change in lifestyle.

How much pleasure can you get from food?

Since we know the concept of foodporn, then maybe it's time to intersect with another concept that sounds provocative, word foodgasm? This is nothing more than a description of the reaction after eating a lush dish. Did you happen that after eating something tasty, you sighed, or maybe groaned with pleasure? This is just foodgasm. According to the authors of the concept, during Foodgasm we can bend our knees. The phenomenon, which once simply testified to the deliciousness of the dish, began to be of great importance to such an extent that it awaited its name. Did you bend your knees from what you eat?

How did food take over the internet?

It all started from foodporn, which expanded to a huge scale. In the beginning, in a search engine, one could stumble upon some food porn photos in the process of searching for a recipe. Now such photos are literally everywhere. We can say that we are taxed by them. In times when people have phones with a camera and Internet access, sharing a photo of their lunch takes a minute. What decides that it is becoming popular, except for the corresponding focus? Social media posting, but also hashtags. A hashtag is nothing more than the word key under which this photo is attached under the corresponding word. If we talk about food, then, I suspect, an endless number of gastro hashtags can form. On the Internet, you can find a lot of them. Do you accept the challenge and take food porn photos to describe the gastro hashtags?

Immediately with the increase in the number of photographs relating to handicrafts in the kitchen, consumer interest and consciousness regarding nutrition increased. An increasing number of people are reading its composition before buying a particular product, so many web services have appeared, as well as fan pages comparing products available on the market.

A growing number of people are changing their lives and want to be “fit,” so they are looking for their favorite healthy food porn in a healthier version - without chemistry, unnecessary sugar, or with increased fiber content. Here is a large field of activity for nutritionists who can share their knowledge and experience.

Due to the great interest in real food porn, even shops offer the sale of products via the Internet. Food stores for people with all kinds of nutritional restrictions are specially developed in this regard. Thanks to this offer, you can see the product you want to buy, as well as read reviews about it. People with celiac disease have a big problem with buying all kinds of products, which also gives the development of networks of relevant stores.

Food with eyes - can this be understood verbatim?

Imagine that you have two plates in front of you:

• First - a layered salad of fresh spinach, cut into cubes of juicy watermelon and feta cheese and all this is sprinkled with sunflower grains and poured with sauce and served on a white plate;

• On the second plate, spinach of not the first freshness was somehow laid, a crumbling watermelon and somehow feta cheese was sprinkled on a white, slightly dirty plate

Both plates smell the same, but differ in details - which one do you choose?

Vision is also an important sensory organ during eating, as is olfaction. It not only helps us to evaluate the freshness of the product but stimulates or inhibits our appetite. At the moment when the image reaches the brain, it turns to the information that the brain already contains on the topic of a particular product, if it is something new, the brain tries to imagine the taste of it. Our brain always tries to turn to the previously collected experience, so it is very important to have a varied diet.

If the dish looks appetizing, this leads to the release of ghrelin - the hormone of hunger. At the moment when the image reaches the brain, it turns to the information that already contains on the topic of a particular product, if it has to introduce something new, visualize it.

An aesthetically served dish made from fresh products will make you feel like trying this dish. If the dish does not look desirable, you can even lose your appetite. The prepared dishes must look encouraging. Many elements are superimposed on it: the corresponding gamut, the neat arrangement on the plate and even the serving. In this way, you can attract even the most discriminating gourmets to the sample. Additionally, you need to pay attention to the selection of food colors on our plate. Colors can give us a lot of information. each has its own meaning.

The same principle applies to photographs of dishes - if you attract the eye and play with colors, we’ll even more willingly try to cook a dish from a photograph on our own or use a restaurant that has more attractive advertising photographs of dishes.

Some argue that vision when choosing healthy food porn is more substantial than taste or smell. Do you pay attention to how the dish looks?

Culinary Craziness - What Can Be Found on The Internet?

You can find different cuisines of the world on the Internet, the most colorful dishes with the lack of some products. These blogs provide opportunities for everyone interested in the world, allergy sufferers, diabetics, vegans and vegetarians, people with celiac disease, and cook beginners. There are many possibilities - just enter the hashtag (the word key) and we will get a photo with access to an excellent recipe. Or maybe you have no idea for lunch? Don`t worry - enter in the search engine the products that you have in the refrigerator, and there’s a recipe for you!

Is Foodporn Positive or Negative?

It all depends on the perspective from which we look at it. According to dietetics, the growth of consciousness in the field of nutrition is a positive phenomenon. It will make it possible to prevent many nutritionally dependent diseases, such as diabetes or blood pressure, and at the same time increase awareness on the topic of health and a rational diet.

You should only remember that you need to use trusted sources. There are a lot of directions in nutrition, but all of them will suit everyone separately. It is necessary to check the people who present this direction and make sure that they possess the necessary knowledge to help in specific cases.

Jumping With a Phone

This phenomenon will decisively negatively affect the atmosphere in which we eat. Taking a photo or sitting with your nose in your phone will definitely not match the atmosphere of eating. Besides, jumping with a phone from different angles while taking a dish does not help you take real food porn positively for the body.

There are pros and cons in this matter. Since there are always two sides of the coin, it depends on us what we choose. Always make your choice wisely! Let foodporn be your art. At first, if there was a desire, they took a photo, then they set about eating.

History

Feminist critic Rosalind Coward coined the term food porn in 1984 in her book Female Desire. This is the name of idealized and heavily edited food photos, which, like real pornography, are found in abundance all over the Internet. Food porn stars, such as journalist Nigella Lawson, reveal the sensuality of food, showing that you can get as much pleasure from it as from sex.

Images that are designed to attract and delight us are rarely intended to satisfy hunger. Instagram photo with broccoli and rice don't make you drool. Food disguised as “energy fuels” will never appear on the r / foodporn sub-forum on Reddit, nor will hand-held lovers become a category on YouPorn. All these are not sources of “over-stimulus”, the scientific concept, because of which we react so vividly to food porn.

Over-stimulus is a highly exaggerated version of the stimulus. A person reacts to it especially actively. The Dutch ethologist and author of the term “over-stimulus” Nikolaas Tinbergen found that by creating exaggerated variants of natural stimuli, he can control the behavior of different animals. Animals rarely encounter over-stimuli, unless they are given by scientists observing their behavior. We can use super-incentives for entertainment and our own benefit. In the case of pornography, this is Photoshop, stage lighting, and plastic surgery, which create high expectations of how people look and behave during sex.

Girl food porn and real pornography are close - if not identical - in how they affect our brains.

One of the main dangers of pornography is the release of dopamine (the hormone of joy and pleasure) into the bloodstream. Canadian psychiatrist Norman Dodge, author of The Brain That Changes Itself (Plastic Brain), wrote that dopamine is released as a result of sexual arousal and a sense of novelty. Pornography is dangerous in that it can become addictive: to satisfy it, a person will need to watch more and more sophisticated and tough scenes. While seductive real food porn photos do not cause dopamine release in most people, it can occur in those who suffer from overeating, a US Department of Energy study showed.

Another similarity of food porn and pornography is that as soon as a person is "saturated" with them, they cease to be interesting to him. University of British Columbia employees concluded that well-fed people do not respond to food porn due to insulin (a hormone released after eating to regulate blood glucose). Also, food porn and pornography are primarily visual stimulation. To make us like how the food looks, it is removed from a certain angle and with the correct lighting, saturate with additives and paint in the colors we like. In photographs and reality, food can look completely different.

The strange similarity between pornography and what jokingly called food porn is actually much stronger than it seems to us. In an era when idealized photographs and high expectations prevail in many areas of life - fashion photography, food photography, pornography - maybe it's time to talk frankly about how people react to porn in terms of physiology? ”

A few years ago, in Korea, they came up with new entertainment: attractive young people shot a video about how they eat. They did it slowly, with comments, they consumed a lot of food, which caused the viewer to feel as if they were at a feast or in a cafe. Such a food porn meme. Many of the foodporn filmmakers have become so successful that they have paid online broadcasts of their dinners. One blogger, for example, earns about 9 thousand dollars a month! We also want to receive money for food, but “they” do not give us.

As with porn, the image often makes up for the lack of what is desired in real life. According to opinions, most viewers of the popular American channel FoodNetwork eat semi-finished products from the supermarket. And they are just curious to watch others live. I wonder what will happen if they try to cook normal food?

What else makes food images and pornography similar? Interestingly, both porn and foodporn actively use close-ups to reduce the distance between the viewer and the object and create the illusion of the ability to touch the object. Frequent reception - focusing on individual details. There is no need to explain what porn is all about, and foodporn photographs very often show sauce/caramel/toppings spreading over a dish. Also, these pictures often show what is difficult to reach in real life: exotic dishes, very expensive and/or difficult to cook. Like porn, the illustration of forbidden joys - sweet, greasy, junk food - affects the viewer.

Recently, scientists have found that porn addiction as a medical disease does not exist. Foodporn - as a young phenomenon - has not yet been fully studied. So watch porn, girl food porn and have fun!