In a related breaking news story, most wives and girl friends do not look like the TV ads when served in Victorias Secret lingerie either…..
TV advertisers have been putting Elmer’s Glue over the breakfast cereal for decades.
Heck, the contents of most canned foods don’t look as appealing as the picture on the can label.
i have gone to Taco Bell and asked them to put as much cheese on my taco as they show in the picture... they do... once i took my taco back to the counter because it was so “not filled.” at that time i was a pretty regular customer... the manager had all three of my tacos done again, and they were nicely filled :)
We don’t eat out as much as we used to because we now live in “Northern Mexico”, otherwise known as the Houston area and I don’t trust the cleanliness of the third world workers. I recently read that photos showing ice cream dishes often use mashed potatoes to represent the ice cream
Do they mean small propane torches, not small blow torches?
That’s how it’s done, and movie stars get made up before they get photographed, and politicians get a new suit and a haircut, and ads for cars tell you only what they want you to hear and leave out the details that you won’t like, and people make up the attributes that they post on “dating” sites, etc etc.
I look past what they want me to believe and try to find out for myself what things are really like.
They hire models with small hands to hold their burgers for the ads too.
Food is one of the tougher things to photograph and actually make look good. With actual fast food off the line its pretty much impossible because it starts out looking like crap.
I’ve done food styling and photography in the past. It’s heavily idealized. Anything that’s glistening has been sprayed with glycerine. Actual water droplets on fruit, etc. or a hot, juicy-looking steak are not going to stay that way long enough to get the shot. So, something more stable like glycerine is used. There is an entire industry centered around creating unbelievably realistic looking artificial food for this very purpose.
People putting food together in a restaurant are not going to struggle to get that absolutely perfect piece of lettuce for your hamburger, or that vine-ripe, flawless red tomato for your salad. They work with what they’ve got under severe time constraints. Some restaurants are better than others for delivering upon expectations.
Decent places get close but it’s very seldom going to be picture perfect. That takes a whole ‘nother type of focus that you’d only get in a fine dining establishment that strives for presentation and makes enough money on the sale to afford the time and effort to get it that way.
Many years ago I read that steam rising from a hot burger or steak doesn’t photograph well so they blow cigarette smoke onto the food for commercials.
I’ve done food photography. Not as hard as weddings but it’s hard. I doubt you could eat just about anything after its been made to look pretty for the camera. Heck, it took 2+ hours to get a plate of pasta right once.
\
there’s a reason that a meal at a three star place, one that DOES look like a photo, can set you back $750 for two before wine.
I had a favorite curry rice restaurant when I worked in downtown Tokyo. The owner/chef made a great curry rice for a reasonable price, but operated on a shoestring. He rented a floor above a fancier restaurant and had a small display at the entrance to the stairs, so he put out the actual food. He probably ate it before he closed the shop for the day.
Several decades ago, Campbell soups were accused of adding marbles to bowls of soup in their advertisements. The marbles would force the meats and veggies to the top, making the soups appear to be more filled with them.
I once was in a Taco Bell and a customer came back to the order counter with some sort of Burrito thingy she just had been served. Looked awful and was just plopped on a serving dish. Taco Bell was pushing this particular item at the time. The customer told them that she wanted her food to look just like that picture (pointing to advertisement on counter). They took it back and reserved it. I didn’t see what it looked like as I had to leave.
I hear they use oatmeal as a “meat filler”, unless that is an urban legend..
Why don’t most actors and actresses look like they do on TV?
The food in an advertisement has been made up - airbrushed, etc., until it has little to do with the real appearance of the prepared food. The only limitation on doing this is that the food actually has to be edible for a VERY broad definition of edible.
McD’s still makes me belch, no matter how pretty their stuff is made to look. ( never used to. And Burger King sill no problem)
I’m glad they mentioned gelatin. It’s put in any drink to make the whipped cream or whatever stay on top. Woe to the person who tries to drink it after the shoot.
There’s also something for melted cheese—I don’t think I ever learned what—as melted cheese congeals immediately under the lights.
Once at a shoot for some kind of dip, an idiot said, “Looks like cement.” The client was standing right there. All at once it looked like cement to everyone and had to be done a different way. $$$
I did the same thing one time with a bunch of stuffed tomatoes. The way they were arranged, it looked like a tomato parade. Everyone cracked up and that was all anyone could see after that point. Fortunately, I was the client that time so I didn’t get the stinkeye from anyone.
One major rule: Don’t ever let the person who cooked the food be the stylist. They know it has good ingredients and tastes good, so they are incapable of seeing it with fresh eyes.