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(HealthNewsDigest.com) – Apicus, a 1st Century Roman gourmand, is reported to have originally coined the phrase, “We eat first with our eyes.” He could have never imagined how Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest and food advertisements would drive what we eat today. Trendspotter Meredith Barnett noted that a desire to be Instagram-friendly is affecting how foods and food trends are developed.
Case in point – the mason jar which seems to be appearing everywhere in food photos filled with candy, soup ingredients or lemonade. Barnett said one of the year’s biggest food fads is layered salads, in reusable jars, which are perfectly Pinterest-friendly. The restaurant chain Chili’s has spent over $750,000 to make their recipes more Instagram-friendly. These visually appealing plates are intended to encourage more customer food-selfies with the hope of driving business. Marni Elyse Katz who blogs about design and food at StyleCarrot has said that if she were designing a kitchen today she would take into consideration how the colors and layout would look on social media. Twelve percent of millennials shop online for groceries, making pictures of food their driver for selections. Visuals count.
Is it possible that being surrounding by unending visuals of food may be one of the factors in our growing obesity epidemic? It is easy to blame all these luscious food visuals on cooking shows, food commercials and innovative packaging but in the last few years there has been a dramatic rise in the public’s obsession with taking images of food and sharing these food photos on social media. People are more likely to pick up their phones before they pick up their fork. There is some very real concern that this onslaught of appetizing food photos may be pushing us to overeat. Nonsense, you say. A photo can’t make you eat. Research and evolution says otherwise.
Brian Wansink from Cornell has shown through his research that external food cues, such as the sight of appetizing food, can promote someone to eat, even when they are not hungry. Digital grazing can impact our eating behavior.
Visual hunger, the natural urge to look for food with the anticipation of eating, is an evolutionary trait from hunter/gatherer times. Foraging, the search for nutritious food, is one of the brain’s most important functions. In humans, it relies primarily on vision. It has even been suggested that our color vision evolved because primates needed to see edible food in the dark green forest. From hunter/gatherers we have grown into super consumers foraging for food in the supermarket and on our digital devices. This continuous exposure to virtual food might be triggering the physiological hunger buried in our genes, causing us to eat too much too often. Still worse, we often eat mindlessly in front of the TV or another screen which turns our attention away from eating, thereby lowering our satisfaction level and causing us to eat more than we should.
Given the current obesity crisis, it would seem wise to pay attention to any environmental factor that drives us to eat more. A question that does not have a satisfactory answer at this time, is how much impact does all those appealing food images have on food consumption. In the US we are not only flooded with opportunities to eat at every turn but we are bombarded by food visuals, often called food porn or gastroporn, everywhere we look, even on our own cell phones. There are nearly 70 million posts on Instagram with the hashtag #foodporn. Through evolution our brains learned to enjoy seeing food as a prelude to eating. Our food-seeking biology evolved in a pre-technology, food-scarce environment. Can it adapt to an abundant food landscape decorated with enticing visuals seducing us to eat?
© NRH Nutrition Consultants, Inc.
Jo-Ann Heslin, MA, RD, CDN is a registered dietitian and the author of the nutrition counter series for Pocket Books with sales of more than 8.5 million books.
Look for:
The Diabetes Counter, 5th Ed., 2014
The Fat and Cholesterol Counter, 2014
The Most Complete Food Counter, 3rd ed., 2013
The Calorie Counter, 6th Ed., 2013
The Complete Food Counter, 4th ed., 2012
The Protein Counter, 3rd Ed., 2011
The Ultimate Carbohydrate Counter, 3rd Ed., 2010
The Healthy Wholefoods Counter, 2008
Your Complete Food Counter App: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/your-complete-food-counter/id444558777?mt=8
For more information on Jo-Ann and her books, go to: www.TheNutritionExperts.com.
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