Is What You See Making You Lust for More?

Ever heard the phrase “a picture is worth a thousand words”? After watching the Mason, Le Big Bob Video, I’m thinking about all the thousands of different words, thoughts, feelings and emotions going on in my head and body.

The melted cheese in the tortilla, the steam coming off the meat patties on the grill, the creamy pasta, the fresh and vibrant looking fruit and vegetables and what about the texture, smoothness of the moist chocolate cake.

Is it making you want to eat now?

Does what you see enrich the visual senses so much that your body is telling you I want that? Our growing obsession with images of glamorously presented food is making us eat!

Food or what we have come to know as food porn does have immense powers of persuasion. A visual image full of colour exaggerates realism to the extent of creating visual stimulation so compelling one to desire, lust or want food.

Deirdre Barrett, a Harvard Medical School author and psychologist suggests that “the part of your brain that governs self-control fails to kick in with food porn the way it does with actual food”. It’s no wonder when there exists so much visual representation of tempting food that your eyes open wide and your lips begin to salivate.

Therefore there is no doubt that the more extravagant, the more indulgent and appealing a photo of food appears, it certainly has the power to elicit us to want to eat more.

"Food was never meant to be experienced from just a visual perspective," says Amy Sousa, an anthropologist at the Hartman Group, a research consulting group that tracks food culture. "When we see food, we need to fill in the blanks of what it will taste like. Merely looking makes for an unsatisfying experience."

"Food, like eroticism, starts with the eyes, but there are people who will put just about anything in their mouth" Isabel Allende