Food (Porn)

There's never been a better time to be a foodie than this very second. All manner of stupid shit is available to the discerning gourmand - if you want to serve your roasted heirloom tomato amuse-bouche on a hot slab of pink Himalayan salt, you can do that.

Lucky for you, it's expensive!

More good news - people love writing about food almost as much as they love buying accoutrements to press their roasted cauliflower and brined pork belly bánh mì. Or whatever.

The power and popularity of food writing is exemplified in the Michelin Guide. I have to assume that this thing started where AAA car club ratings are now, but because it's French it became much more important.

No one is surprised that the Michelin Man likes food.

As an aside, there are only three Michelin stars a restaurant can earn. Losing one is a pretty big deal; ask Bernard Loiseau. He confided in a colleague that, after working 17 years to gain three stars, he would kill himself if he lost one. He then did so, amid rumours of his restaurant losing its third star.

So what I'm saying is food writing holds power over life itself.  

You've strayed a bit...

Back to food porn! Anyway with all of these people writing about food, some of them even use pictures to go along with the words they write. This strategy has worked well for magazines for years.

Sometimes the strategy works with hardly any words at all.

Given the strong pedigree of the "words + pictures" format it wasn't very long before an enterprising citizen journalist (or thousands of bloggers) combined the two in their own food writing efforts. Those with good cameras hit on the concept of "food porn". It's kind of popular. Just ask these guys. 

Or these guys or this group of 500,000 pictures over here on Flickr.

Didn't click on those 'cause you're at work? First of all it's too late - they already saw the Juggs cover. Second of all, here's what you missed:

Goat cheese ice cream with fresh cherries and who fucking cares.
Except yeah, I'd eat that.

In fact nearly all food porn (so-called) looks like this. It's all beautifully shot and the background is beautifully blurred and the food is beautifully staged. The lighting is spot on and every dish looks like a centerfold from an alternative universe where food eats people and their subscription to Penthouse is filled with hot food-on-food action. I don't feel like reading what Wikipedia has to say about food porn - although rest assured that an article exists - but it's basically a nice, edgy hyperbole for fancy food photography. 

Amateur food porn is often poorly lit, blown out by on-camera flash and not arousing appealing. 

This is making me uncomfortable...

Stick around, champ, because it's about to get worse! 

I found something. Actual food porn. It hits on the worst parts of both worlds and it's intensely unsettling. And I found it on QVC! Your grandma could be watching it right this second and it's the worst thing I've ever seen. 

If you used the money from your National Endowment for the Arts grant to make an awful sculpture of post-coital genitalia from hot, glistening meats and melting cheeses you'd approximate (closely) what I'm talking about here. 

Perhaps... we should let the pictures do the talking?

QVC, you go right to hell.

Here's the full video. The video is very, very bad. The roast has a certain pliability to it - the way it moves when manipulated forcefully is reminiscent of... something. And then the juices! God, the juices! See how they flow forth when brushed ever so lightly. Watching this roast get rough-handled is probably illegal in Oklahoma, Alabama and Utah. 

Consider too: while the knife is bad, many prying fingers would have been much, much worse.

"So what?" you ask. "Doesn't remind me of anything at all!" 

Get off your pulpit, churchy, and get ready to stick it in some more meat! 

Wham!

Watch the video. As with any... movie, you have to sit through some boring talking before you get to the action. Please do though, it's so much more challenging that way. This one... I'm not even sure if I'm allowed to describe what's happening here. The cheese is sliding out from between these cleft slices of ham and...

No. Don't look at it sideways, either. I'm stopping. My stomach hurts. I feel dizzy. This whole thing is all wrong. I wanted to cleanse my eye-palate with a nice boring picture of maize but then all I could think about was cramming it into that chicken while the roast sits back and watches. Let me try again. 

Bask in the total banality of the provolone cheese slice.

I could look at those cheese slices forever. They're bland and usual and there's nothing pornographic or unsettling about them. 

Goddamnit no! Cheese slices, why have you forsaken me!?

Alright well I guess I'll just wrap this up and...

FUCK.

Meat-faced horror courtesy of http://funkypunkyandplump.blogspot.com/2011/07/my-dinner-guest.html.