Pan-fried, intensely flavored, and juicy pork steak, marinated with orange juice, soy sauce, and fresh herbs. Served with fresh, steamed vegetables, topped in a smooth silk-like mushroom sauce. This house special is a one-time meal that you will never forget.
In reality, it is nothing more than pork steak with vegetables and creamy mushroom sauce. Good nutritional value, great taste, and simple and fast preparation.
It highly depends on how you chose to look and present it. That is very much influenced by your taste receptors and the way you look at food in general.
See, for a lot of people, food is just a taste. Which is not a false statement. We do have taste receptors and it is pretty hard not to stimulate them. This on the other hand provides us with an extreme amount of pleasure and leaves us feeling delighted.
Since we have more sensory input than just taste receptors, we have this ability to kind of predict the taste and produce those pleasure hormones, before we actually taste the meal. ‘’It looks delicious. It smells so good, I can hear it sizzling on the grill’’.
A lot of pleasure and anticipation for the simple act of feeding.
Don’t get me wrong. There is nothing bad about enjoying the taste. My problem is that the food industry has found ways to overstimulate those taste receptors and therefore reprogram them to like more certain foods.
A happy meal from Mcdonald's does taste somewhat better than a salad and a steak. A pizza tastes somewhat better than mashed potatoes, baked chicken, and vegetables. I had a friend that used to say that she can't eat something which doesn’t look tasty. Now I don’t know what that means, really. As an example, she said that she can't eat a boiled egg because it doesn’t look good and tasty. I am sure she has no issues with a Big Mac though.
Taste receptor stimulation seems to be a great deal in social media these days. Have you heard of ‘’Food Porn’’
It is often just a picture of a deliciously served meal. Sometimes a video that shows better the textures of the food, accompanied with a sound for a better experience. I don’t know about you, but to me, it doesn’t seem much different than traditional porn. Yes, the 18 + one.
I know it is a bit brutal comparison, but if we look at it from the angle where it is an issue, you will understand me better. We all know that porn is not serving humanity the greatest. There are several, of many bad points which relate directly to food.
The more we consume, the more we need, to get the same effect. Well, of course. Porn is designed to excite us, by showing us a twisted reality and playing with our imagination. But the sad truth is that just like a drug that stops working after a while, and the only way to get the same experience is to take more, we build a threshold of excitement and we end up needing more, to get the same effect.
In my opinion food porn is the same. The more exciting and shiny pictures of the food we are exposed to, the more we end up looking for those kinds of ‘’pretty’’ looking meals. Thus we end up lacking an appetite for a normal home-cooked food that not always looks as exciting as the ones on Instagram. Maybe that’s why my friend had trouble eating something that doesn’t look ‘’pretty’’.
Porn is not real. We all know it. The porn industry is pretty good at twisting reality and finding ways to fake normal everyday situations, which we deeply know are not real, but kind of secretly desired. That is pretty unfortunate, as the effect on kids is very significant. For someone that has never been exposed to real experience, he/she is always going to be looking for what they have seen in porn. And that is not only very different from reality but often dangerous and related to a lot of violence.
In the case of food porn, we witness content that is not faked and that is the problem. We use this digital world to excite our senses, but the problem is that if we were to look for it in the real world, it is there.
The food industry, especially the fast-food one, has done a great job at providing us with very delicious products and meals that not only answer to our expectations, visually but taste just about the same or even better than we imagine it
So if we spend 10 minutes looking at pictures of burgers, matching the description of ‘’food porn’’, do you think we will try to make our own homemade healthy ones, or open the app and order some?
Porn is not only fake, but it always encourages pleasure, instead of love. Now, of course, sex and love are two very different feelings, if I can say so. However, at least for me, they both require some sort of connection. It is some sort of relationship between the two. Think about it. Whether you are with your beloved partner or find an attractive one at the nightclub and you both agreed to spend the night together, you are connecting with each other, and whether you want it or not, deep down you know that this is the right thing to do, even if it is far from what you have seen in porn.
How is it different from food? ‘’Food porn’’ provides us with fake pleasure. Seeking a real experience (that fatty burger with fries) is going to give your body nothing but excitement. On the other hand, if you choose to replace the pleasure with a better connection with food, you will search for real products and create your own burgers. The difference. It won’t look and taste exactly the same and therefore it won’t give you the same instant happiness. However, it will provide your body with all the important nutrients that are needed for its proper function.
With this article, I do not aim to talk against porn, even though I did. My aim is to raise awareness in those that have fallen into the trap of ‘’food porn’’, looking to only please themselves.
Why does it have to be like that? Why are we running from the real natural whole experience to the fake and twisted reality? Why are we constantly seeking pleasure, and instant happiness, instead of not that much comfort, but growth? How far are we going to go like this?
Of course, food porn is a great tool to advertise and support the food industry. Of course, pictures that go viral are those that excite us and play with our temptations and desires. But at the end of the day, values matter more than pleasure. Food is not just a tool for pleasure. It is life. It is something that we need in order to function at our best. If real natural food can`t provide me with the same pleasure, then be it. I will twist it and enjoy all the other benefits that come with it.
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