The millennial curse? This is why we still feel the urge to take pictures of our food

Framed pictures of food.

Credit: Stylist

Life


The millennial curse? This is why we still feel the urge to take pictures of our food

By Meena Alexander

2 years ago

3 min read

At some point, writes Stylist’s Meena Alexander, our brains have been rewired to associate tasty-looking meals with an urgency to document them. But why can’t we stop?


Food is the constant of social media. In the earliest days of Instagram, you’d have been forgiven for thinking the app was created solely for sharing #FoodPorn; there were just a sprinkling of Valencia-filtered sunsets and selfies that were 95% fringe to be seen among the many, many plates.

For a long time, the world-record holder for the most-liked Instagram post was simply a picture of an egg. YouTube has thrived as platform for long-running series revolving around food, from Amelia Dimoldenberg’s Chicken Shop Date to the celebrity magnet Hot Ones. TikTok is bursting at the seams with taste tests and food tours around every major city in the world. 

Since I secured my own handles back in 2010, I’ve been unable to scroll past something delicious without engaging. And 13 years of this, it seems, has altered my brain chemistry in a way I’m starting to resent.

Last week, I was flicking way back through my phone’s camera roll in search of a very important screenshot, and could I find it among the hundreds – no, thousands – of food pictures? Nope. There it was: my entire culinary history flashing before my eyes. 

Food pictures dominate Meena's camera roll.

Credit: Courtesy of the writer

Plates of homemade pasta I’d topped with a sprig of basil and suddenly felt a rush of pride and a need to record. Meals I’d spent too much money on at over-hyped restaurants and thought, ‘At the very least, I’ll get some content out of it.’ Towering desserts that filled me with so much excitement when I saw them hovering towards me in the waiter’s hand that I whipped my phone out in the hopes of capturing the feeling.

So many pictures, most of which hadn’t been sent to anyone or posted anywhere, but were proof of a habit that was almost pathological. At some point, my brain had been rewired to associate tasty-looking meals with an urgency to document them.

Now, if you’re a Gen Zer or a person who does not feel the urge to reach for your phone anytime something remotely interesting happens, you’ve probably got the ick right now. I don’t blame you; the truth is, I’m self-conscious whenever I’m snapping some food in public, usually because I’m aware that others are not. 

Taking pictures of our food is something we often do without thinking.

Credit: Getty

Part of the shift towards greater authenticity online has meant it’s now cooler to post the aftermath of a delicious meal rather than the before picture. Sauce-smeared plates and empty wine glasses say, ‘I was too busy enjoying my life and being present to take a picture first.’ (Whether you buy that or not is up to you.) 

But studies from the past decade have sought to explain the largely millennial affliction of excessive food photography, and they suggest that it is more complex than sheer force of habit. 

Research published in the Journal Of Consumer Marketing found that the act of taking a picture before eating can actually make food taste better. This is because you’re noticing the colours and textures and interacting with the food for longer than you usually would before you taste it. It’s the added pleasure hit of delayed gratification, which makes sense.

This was backed up a study in Psychological Science that also found a link between meal satisfaction and taking a picture – or, in fact, any short ritual that was about the food but delayed the act of eating, such as saying Grace or unwrapping and folding the foil of a chocolate bar in a particular way before you bite into it.

Discovering this makes me feel slightly less silly about my obsession with amateur food photography; rather than creating a barrier between me and the richness of real-life experiences, my habit of reaching for my phone camera was an attempt to experience it all the more. 

Having said that, I do think it’s time for a camera roll clear-out. Some of those homemade pasta shots are pretty shocking. And something tells me that, in decades to come, I won’t be showing my grandchildren 15 different angles of a cream-filled cronut I ate once.


Images: Getty

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