Instagram and social media now are populated with colorful dishes, extraordinary desserts, succulent roasts, dishes so tempting that you eat them with your eyes first.
And it is now depopulated by the hashtag #foodporn, so much so that the photographic aspect of food is having great success and grip among network users.
Scientists and psychologists are studying the phenomenon of the #foodporn on the human brain, trying to give explanations and interpretations to this rampant phenomenon.
In short, food is eaten not only with the mouth, but first of all, and often only, with the eyes.
A kind of alteration of the senses due to an increasingly virtual world and relationships.
The sense of sight, according to studies and experiments conducted in this subject, stimulates the other senses and, more importantly, reaches the brain first, activating specific areas.
This aspect is actually not new, and all advertising has always been based on these studies.
In 2012, for example, Prof. Jeannine F. Delwiche of the department of Food Science at The Ohio State University showed that visual stimuli can alter, sometimes amplifying, the perception of the sense of taste, but also smells and tastes.
The phenomenon of #foodporn, beautiful, perhaps filtered, images on social media starring beautiful dishes stimulate the brain's reactions every day, in a kind of bombardment to the senses, causing an increased desire for food.
The hormone involved would be ghrelin, which is responsible for the sense of hunger that registers high peaks immediately after seeing pictures of food.
Even the chef, who are increasingly refining their serving techniques and often photograph their dishes by posting them on Instagram (read the article here).
The question is: Will it be enough for them that the dish is only beautiful? Or rather: does beauty decree its perfection?
