{"id":11037,"date":"2007-04-20T08:10:52","date_gmt":"2007-04-20T15:10:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/2007\/04\/20\/this-is-not-my-beautiful-food.html"},"modified":"2007-04-20T08:10:52","modified_gmt":"2007-04-20T15:10:52","slug":"this_is_not_my_beautiful","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2007\/04\/20\/this_is_not_my_beautiful.html","title":{"rendered":"This is not my beautiful food!"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>\n

Fun site comparing how restaurants advertise how their food looks, and how it really looks when you get it<\/a>.  Yum!<\/p>\n

Each item was purchased, taken home, and photographed immediately. Nothing was tampered with, run over by a car, or anything of the sort. It is an accurate representation in every case. Shiny, neon-orange, liquefied pump-cheese, and all.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Of course, the site isn’t really being fair.  The implication is, “Hey, all those professional photos of the food we see in ads and in the restaurants themselves are deceptive — real food doesn’t look that good.  What a rip!”<\/p>\n

There’s an element where that’s true — just as with professional models, reality rarely matches the ideals of the ads.  But the premise that it should <\/em>is sort of flawed.  As a comparison,  for example, the stuff I<\/em> make out of recipe books rarely looks as gorgeous as the illustrations imply.  And the stuff I cook out of boxes never looks as stunning as the picture on the front of the box.  Does that mean that the recipe book industry is somehow intentionally deceiving me?  In fact, there are perfectly good reasons why your fast food will never look as good as the ads, and why you really don’t want it to.<\/p>\n

Part of that is because food photogs don’t use real food for a lot of their shooting, because (a) it doesn’t actually photograph well, (b) it doesn’t hold up to studio lights, and (c) most food doesn’t stay fresh looking (hot, juicy, etc.) for more than a minute, max. That food you see folks eating in TV series is rarely what it appears, either, for much the same reason.<\/p>\n

And the site owners admit they don’t take the food just as it’s served up, but take it home and then <\/em>open it up.  I guarantee it’s not <\/em>going to look as good, even if Wolfgang Puck personally prepared it for you..  Lettuce will be wilted, meat will have reabsorbed grease, contents will have shifted — and, as in the picture, cheese will have melted.  Time <\/em>is the bane of food in general, fast food in particular.  If it takes 10 minutes to get home — well, would you be a happy customer if your food sat, unheated behind the counter for 10 minutes before it was given to you to eat at the restaurant?  Do you think it would look as good?<\/p>\n

I do remember when I worked at Burger King while in high school and college.  We had a huge wall-sized photo of a Whopper, with every gleaming droplet of water on the lettuce, every glimmer of juicy meat, every sesame seed on every bun, was all absolutely perfect — and really didn’t look like what we served up. <\/p>\n

That wasn’t necessarily deceptive.  First off, the pictures (esp. of burgers) are almost always fluffed outwards to make the burger bulge (in reality, you rarely see a of the ingredients poking out from under the bun that way, and if you did, it would all fall off when you take a bite).  Second, the “best of the best” is always chosen — the perfect piece of lettuce, the ideal sesame seed bun.  And, yeah, it’s likely not what’s being brought in by Distron or SE Rykoff through the back door of the restaurant, because those never look perfect.<\/p>\n

Finally, the food usually suffers some for the container it’s put in — wrapped in paper, stuffed in a box, whatever.  That’s part of the convenience of fast food, and the “presentation” suffers because of it.   And that’s the real point:  fast food is fast <\/em>(and cheap<\/em>).  That’s what we want.  Folks are looking at their wristwatches, and watching the employees in back throwing stuff together.  The premium is on speed, not plating, and it’s being thrown together by minimum wage kids, not professional photographers with all afternoon to work on it.  Unfortunately, that’s not what shows up in a picture.  And, yeah, the photographer might be going down to the store to find the ideal hamburger bun, or the perfect lettuce leaf, vs. the slightly squashed buns bagged on the bakery rack or what gets pealed off a given lettuce head — but I guarantee those ingredients cost a lot more than what BK or McDs is charging for the burger. <\/p>\n

That’s not really deception, in my opinion.  That’s idealization, which is what ads do (and which we go along with).  Showing the contrast can be amusing, but unless the “ideal” is substantively promising something that you’re not getting, there’s no reason to expect that level of perfection.  The patrons in the McDonalds ads don’t resemble much the people I see at my local store, either.<\/p>\n

If you really <\/em>want to go someplace where the food resembles its photo, where the garnish pokes out just so<\/em>, or the chips in the taco salad are arranged in a layered, scalloped fashion, or the buns were fresh-baked this morning there in the store, or the meat patties glisten and sizzle even as you’re handed your food — visit a top restaurant, and be prepared to both wait and <\/em>pay for it.  If you want your $3 value meal, don’t expect it to look like a $25 lunch entree, and don’t expect it to be whipped up for you in 90 seconds.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

(via BoingBoing<\/a>)<\/p>\n

<\/small><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Fun site comparing how restaurants advertise how their food looks, and how it really looks when you get it.  Yum! Each item was purchased, taken home, and photographed immediately. Nothing…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[35,38],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11037","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-big-business","category-food-drink"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":133777,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2017\/07\/01\/facebook-looks-to-add-more-reasons-not-to-use-facebook.html","url_meta":{"origin":11037,"position":0},"title":"Facebook looks to add more reasons not to use Facebook","author":"***Dave","date":"Sat 1-Jul-17 8:10pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Articles with more frequent ads in the middle of them.Videos with ads in the middle of them.Videos that start automatically WITH THE SOUND TURNED UP.The problem FB has is that the design of how people use it has maxed out the revenue that they can get from advertisers, and the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":127865,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2015\/09\/01\/one-of-our-favorite-restaurants-is-closing-its-doors.html","url_meta":{"origin":11037,"position":1},"title":"One of our favorite restaurants is closing its doors","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 1-Sep-15 10:20pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Le Central was one of the first nice places I ate in Denver, and its provincial French fare was always extremely tasty. 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