Food Porn

I'm not a fan of food porn. It gives me a complex. That beautifully prepared and displayed food in that photo has been primped, plumped, faked and Photoshopped as much as any fashion model--and yet I still feel pressured to have my final dish look as good as the photo accompanying the recipe.

I somehow doubt I'm the only one who experiences this problem, but nevertheless, food porn's a big business. You've got professional food photographers and food handlers for photoshoots--hell, Food Network even had a competition for Food Network Challenge in which food handlers prepared particular dishes for photos, and the person deemed to have prepared the best-looking dishes in the resulting photos won. Never mind if the food was nutritious or even prepared well. Certain undercooked foods photograph better than fully cooked ones, and some foods aren't even used at all because they don't photograph well. Got milk? Nope, got Elmer's glue.

But if the picture makes you want to buy the food product advertised or make the recipe, then the porn's done it's job.

If the image repulses you and makes you physically ill, then it hasn't done its job. Methinks the folks who've contributed photos for this steak pie recipe on AllRecipes.com should reconsider their ability to create food porn before uploading any more photos:

Pardon me, Gentle Reader, but I have to go toss my cookies now....