Food Porn?

There's this term, "Food Porn," that some of you've no doubt heard of. It has two definitions--the more common definition is used to describe close-up, graphic pictures of food preparations often done in a manner to make the food look as intensely desirable as possible. In this age of ubiquitous low-res internet pornography, a more apt phrase perhaps would be "Food Erotica" for such pictures and not food porn.

The term Food Porn is also used to describe haute cuisine dining experiences, exotic cooking shows like Iron Chef, and technical ambitious cookbooks--things that showcase the most elaborate and extreme kitchen achievements. In this context the word is usually used derisively or at the very least dismissively--that just as pornography showcases unattainably built people performing unachievable acts, so too does food porn show impossibly talented people preparing impossible dishes.

This is a bullshit, thought-terminating cliche because:

1. Both pornography and Iron Chef show actual people doing actual things and

2. With the exception of hard to obtain and/or expensive ingredients and hard to physically achieve positions and/or expensive plastic surgery, the vast majority of what is done on Iron Chef and in most pornography is achievable by the average person in the average home. Just because you aren't John Elway doesn't mean that throwing a football around isn't pleasurable.

3. The participants in both pornography and on Iron Chef do enjoy most of their activities, both the product(s) of their labors and the process by which it is obtained. Objectors would have you believe that is not the case.

So if you don't want to try and make trout ice cream with foie gras chantilly because you don't think you'll like it, that's fine, and if you don't want to try out froggy style for fear of penile fracture, that's fine too. But to deny the validity of either on the premise that there can not be anything aspirational for the average person is ludicrous and regressive. Food porn can undoubtedly provide positive inspiration for the kitchen and porn porn can provide positive inspiration for the bedroom, den, conservatory, Volkswagen backseat, or BART station bathroom--whether or not you successfully execute that which you're trying to imitate.

So be adventurous or else you'll just eat meat and potatoes the rest of your life. And hell, meat and potatoes do hit the spot every now and then--but it can never hurt to try new things, at least not very much.