Food Porn

It's an official bonafide term that I hear on a regular basis: food porn...more than one clever blogger has aptly named his foodie musings the term even has its own wikipedia entry.  The term illicits provocative notion but in actuality, it demonstrates how far removed we are from our food.

Not that I'm not one to browse the web, salivating over high resolution closeups of morels, homemade pastas and any number of delicious potential meals.  My favorite is a lineup, a buffet if you will of blogs writing about food.  Feast your eyes over the rows of pictures until a delectable dish catches your eye...one click and you are instantly routed to the blogger's entry, usually complete with recipe for your own culinary forays.

But it does beg the question: with all this gastronomic stimulation, how much of this visual feast is really about food?  Has this overemphasis on image-based media turned us into a look-don't-eat culture?  For many, it is easier to flip through the glossy pages of food magazines while consuming a microwave dinner than it is to cook a meal.  By engaging the visual we are essentially negating all the pleasures of what actually makes food sexy.

Food porn takes away two thirds of what is enjoyable about food: taste and scent (with visual stimulation being the third).  Texture too, is lost.  My theory is that the overwhelming bombardment of visual media in our postmodern fragmented society has forced us to create communities where we can (internet communities being a perfect example).  Food porn is sexy because we can all agree on the beauty of an image.  It can be seen and debated.  Taste, texture, scent are less quantifiable and arguably more subjective.

But what is food without taste or smell? After all, even the most artfully styled photograph is merely two dimensional.  Yes, it is everlasting, but perhaps somethings are better left undocumented.  One million pictures could not do justice to my mother's famous pesto: my father's carefully tended garden basil and garlic, perfectly measured from memory, the pasta exactly al dente recalling years of family dinners and special occasions.  Images may capture a memory but they cannot make one if one does not previously exist.  It is the full dimensionality of an experience that does.

Food and sex have long been entwined, in part because both are inherently physical pursuits that engage the full spectrum of our human senses.  So, as much as I love a beautifully photographed dish (I cannot lie, I am an ample documentor of my own culinary adventures), I love eating that dish even more.

Wavo's sexy food of the day: Scapes!  I was introduced to garlic scapes (the green stem that grows from a garlic bulb and ultimately flowers) last night by a friend and I am anxiously awaiting tomorrow's farmers market to purchase them for myself (I can't get them off my mind, they are incredible!)  Perfumed with garlic (one of the sexiest food scents if you ask me), yet resembling a scallion, rich and fibrousy, almost spinach like when cooked.  Their beautiful spiral only adds to the carnal appeal.  Engage your senses and enjoy!