The term "food porn" coined to market cooking as acts of servitude and satiety

It's not a healthy trend when food is marketed as if it were a habit-forming drug. Who substituted the term "food porn" for gluttony, excess hunger, satiety, and mealtime arousal to scent and sight of eating colorful food arrangements as eye candy? How about the art of using food as a substitute for drug addiction by some in the business of marketing foods through styling and photography?

Food satiety is the correct term. See the abstract of the study, "High-fat feeding promotes obesity via insulin receptor/PI3K-dependent inhibition of SF-1 VMH neurons." The body becomes insulin-dependent as certain foods promote obesity by targeting a particular insulin receptor. Food porn hits the diner at the molecular level. See the abstract of the study, "Unraveling the central nervous system pathways underlying responses to leptin." Leptin regulates energy homeostasis, that means balance, as its absence in rodents and humans causes severe obesity.

Marketing is designed to arouse the desire to savor the taste of high-fat foods

Marketing also sometimes uses words such as "pawn stars" and "hardcore pawn" in TV shows to attract ratings rather than using terms of endearment in an occupation such as "pawn shop families" that have a double meaning sound that make people raise an eyebrow or giggle. The term "food porn" is just another word for satiety to get people attracted enough to food to want to buy more from the same eatery. Now a new study on satiety from the University of British Columbia is shedding light on why enticing pictures of food affect us less when we're full.

Usually the term "food porn" refers to food photography and food styling for the camera, to turn food into eye candy for the purpose of attracting the eye and brain to look at the food, admire it, and spend money to eat it. The visual presentation of food, the cooking process, or eating used in infomercials and advertising focuses on visual media.

Grilled and fried meats as well as exotic desserts are emphasized in food porn

Style is everything when it comes to food focused on servitude and the glamor of appearance of the food as eye candy, design, and arrangement in photography. What's emphasized in food porn are meats and fats cooked and displayed in various ways, exotic meals, desserts that look decadent, all with the purpose of arousing the desire to eat and to glorify food as a substitute for sex.

The presentation is by food photography and styling which is presented in ways similar to glamor photography. That's why some people are aroused to eat by the site of a whole suckling pig or a roasted lamb's head and others are repulsed by eating anything with a face, even a boiled shrimp/prawn with those staring black eyes served that way overseas.

If you look at the origin of the word, check out the book by feminist critic Rosalind Coward in her 1984 book Female Desire in which she writes: "Cooking food and presenting it beautifully is an act of servitude. It is a way of expressing affection through a gift... That we should aspire to produce perfectly finished and presented food is a symbol of a willing and enjoyable participation in servicing others.

Food pornography exactly sustains these meanings relating to the preparation of food. The kinds of picture used always repress the process of production of a meal. They are always beautifully lit, often touched up." (See page 103).

Food porn usually attracts males when meat is presented rather than vegan foods and sometimes markets meat-eating or hunting the meat as more masculine than eating vegan style

The term is a backlash against low-calorie and vegan foods by marketing. Food porn is pro-high fat content foods, carnivores, and any type of food that's not on a reversal diet list to unclog arteries. The term usually is applied to high calorie foods, fried or grilled meats, and foods usually listed as unhealthy by vegans and those on reversal diets (for unclogging arteries). The idea behind the movement is to market high-fat foods such as pork, bacon, burgers, duck, poultry, ham, steaks, and anything that comes from a creature with a face, including whipped fat, butter, cream, and dairy products such as cheese and ice cream.

The origin of the term was attributed to the Center for Science in the Public Interest. Check out the column, "Right Stuff vs. Food Porn," in the Center's Nutrition Action Health letter in January 1998. Food porn also refers to the attractiveness and presentation of food by certain types of food styling for the camera and advertising. Some celebrity chefs also use flirtation in presentation.

The Wikipedia site for the definition of "food porn" also mentions the TV commentator, Nigella Lawson. The type of food styling and photography sometimes described by the term "food porn" scares some vegans since so few TV shows and infomercials focus on healthier trends in eating other than demonstrations of various food processors, juicers, or blenders. You find few demonstrations of raw foods cooking and dehydrating vegetables, fruits, ground seeds and nuts in cookies for example, as a way to show children how to prepare healthier foods without using high heat frying and grilling.

When food porn holds no allure

What's sickening about gluttony is being satiated and depressed from eating foods that upset the body's balance and hormones. Check out the January 28, 2013 news release, "When food porn holds no allure: The science behind satiety."

“We’ve known that insulin plays a role in telling us we’re satiated after eating, but the mechanism by which this happens is unclear,” says Stephanie Borgland, an assistant professor in UBC’s Dept. of Anesthesiology, Pharmacology and Therapeutics and the study’s senior author, according to a January 28, 2013 news release, "When food porn holds no allure: The science behind satiety."

In the new study published online this week in the journal Nature Neuroscience, Borgland and colleagues found that insulin – prompted by a sweetened, high-fat meal – affects the ventral tegmental area (VTA) of the brain, which is responsible for reward-seeking behavior. When insulin was applied to the VTA in mice, they no longer gravitated towards environments where food had been offered.

“Insulin dulls the synapses in this region of the brain and decreases our interest in seeking out food,” says Borgland in the news release, “which in turn causes us to pay less attention to food-related cues.” Those eating foods before an exam need to keep in mind that high surges of insulin in the blood dulls the mind. Eating lower on the Glycemic Index means less sugar spikes often followed by high insulin surges in people who get high insulin levels after eating food that brings out high insulin spikes hours after eating.

“There has been a lot of discussion around the environmental factors of the obesity epidemic,” Borgland adds according to the news release, pointing to fast food advertising bans in Quebec, Norway, the U.K., Greece and Sweden. “This study helps explain why pictures or other cues of food affect us less when we’re satiated – and may help inform strategies to reduce environmental triggers of overeating.”

The VTA has also been shown to be associated with addictive behaviors, including illicit drug use. Borgland says in the news release that better understanding of the mechanism in this region of the brain could, in the long run, inform diagnosis and treatment. Read the study at the Nature Neuroscience journal website. The study is available in the journal Nature Neuroscience. Also see another study, the October 2012 study or it's abstract, "The drive to eat: comparisons and distinctions between mechanisms of food reward and drug addiction."

You may also want to learn more about what's in your food

Check out the site, "When You Learn What's Really in Your Food, You May Stop Eating." For example, ABC News, has investigated what's in common foods people eat. For exampled, according to the article by Madeleine Davies, "When You Learn What's Really in Your Food, You May Stop Eating," fruit, shelled candy, and aspirin are "coated in shellac." And the shellac comes from a natural source, a resin secreted by the lac insect. Shellac used to varnish furniture also is used to coat pills, candy, coffee beans, and to wax fruits and vegetables.

The ABC team also investigated what's in chicken and found that chicken is pumped with antidepressants, unless you see a stamp of "organic chicken" on your supermarket chicken, which is rare to find on most commercial supermarkets. If you check out a study from Johns Hopkins University that tested bird feathers, you'll see a list of banned antibiotics, feed additives, antidepressants, allergy medications, arsenic, and an active ingredient that's in Benadryl as well as caffeine and various other prescription and over-the-counter medications fed to chickens.

Lanolin from sheep's wool is used as a softener in various foods and labeled as "gum base." But the manufacturers aren't telling you that a generic term, gum base may refer to lanolin, not to any chewing gum. Investigators also found finely ground wood chips in cereal. For example cellulose put in cheese and various cereals, used as a fiber is put into various salad dressings, snacks and in some organic products because cellulose is classified as organic.

This type of investigation was reported by the Wall Street Journal, according to the article, "When You Learn What's Really in Your Food, You May Stop Eating." For example, ABC News, has investigated what's in common foods people eat. For exampled, according to the article by Madeleine Davies, "When You Learn What's Really in Your Food, You May Stop Eating."

Besides obvious food additives such as rennet, which has an enzyme from the stomach of newborn calves, used to curdle cheese and pepsin, taken from the stomach glands of pigs, rennet isn't halal or kosher and isn't vegan either. What's more surprising is the feathers in your bread.

The article goes on the explain how duck feathers are pressed into a form and the L-cycsteine extracted from the feathers, which in turn are used to soften dough that goes into bagels, cookies, bread, pies, and other foods made from dough. You can check out the 2007 investigation by the nonprofit Vegetarian Resource Group that found that about 80 percent of L-cysteine was derived from duck feathers instead of vegetarian sources of various types of dough softeners.

And the article also explains how beer brewing uses collagen known as isinglass made from the swim bladders of fish. How isinglass is used is that it affects the yeast, causing the yeast to fall to the bottom of the brew pot so that the beer brew is clearer instead of foggy.