The plate arrives at the restaurant, we look for the best light, take a picture with our smartphone and post it. Only then do we start eating. The phenomenon is summed up by the expression “camera eats first,” one of the defining features of today’s digital food culture.

Food photography is now among the most widely shared forms of content on social media, helping create the digital foodscape — the online environment where we discover foods, recipes and restaurants, and where our desires and perceptions of food are shaped.

This is the environment in which food porn thrives: images of food designed to be visually irresistible, with saturated colors, melted cheese, rich creams, burgers and perfectly lit desserts. The food does not necessarily have to be tasted. First and foremost, it has to make us want it.

This phenomenon was also discussed at the latest congress of S.I.S.A., the Italian Society of Food Sciences, in Rome. The conference was Chaired by Silvia Migliaccio of the Sapienza University of Rome, who is also President of SISA.

Food as Identity

Humans have never eaten simply to satisfy a biological need. Food expresses identity, culture, belonging, social status and tradition. Digital transformation has not erased these meanings; it has also moved them onto the screen.

Showing what we eat means telling the world who we are, where we have been, what kind of lifestyle we want to project and which community we want to belong to. The dish thus becomes food, experience and content all at once.

In today’s food universe, it is not just taste that matters, but also the story behind a product, where it comes from, how it is prepared, the restaurant where it is served and the possibility of turning all of it into an experience to be shared. Chefs, food bloggers and creators all contribute to building a digital food culture.

Why Do Those Images Make Us Hungry?

This is where anthropology meets neuroscience and public health. Images of food can influence attention, memory, desire and the intention to eat, functioning as “food cues” — stimuli capable of triggering desire and, in some cases, cravings.

A study published in 2025 in BMC Public Health found a strong presence of images of snacks, sweets, fast food and other calorie-dense products on social media: Up to 70% of the images analyzed on Instagram featured highly caloric foods, while only 21% showed lower-calorie, healthier foods.

The relationship, however, is not automatic. Seeing a photograph does not necessarily mean eating more, and studies examining actual consumption have not always produced consistent results.

The Problem Isn’t Photographing Your Dinner

Taking a picture of your food is not, in itself, a problematic behavior. The issue is the broader digital food environment, characterized by a constant stream of images selected and optimized to capture our attention.

If that environment consistently favors highly caloric foods, oversized portions or ultra-processed products, it may help make them more familiar and desirable. But the same visual power could be used in the opposite direction, making healthy foods more appealing, too.

Food porn, then, tells the story of a society in which an important part of pleasure takes place before consumption: We search for a restaurant, look at the pictures, imagine the taste, photograph the dish and share the experience.

Food today can be nourishment, pleasure, memory, identity, status and digital content all at once. The question, then, is not whether it is right to photograph what we eat, but how much of what we want to eat still comes from hunger — and how much, instead, comes from what we have just seen on a screen.