Decades ago, food styling was widely considered a form of visual trickery. A stylist’s job is to buy, cook, and arrange food for the camera, but the profession is better known for making food look unrealistically beautiful, but the reality is that this “food” becomes totally inedible.
Why? the producers of this “delicious” effect use different techniques and products in the process: from brushes, oils to even cleaning products and waxes. They are responsible of vanishing all imperfections, but most of the food you see in photos isn’t as fake as you might think (food stylists say).
Elaborate trickery still plays a role in some advertising, where food has to sit for long periods of time under hot lights as everyone involved in the shoot weighs in on the image. We listed some techniques and popular products that stylist use to make food look great:
1. GLUE
Real milk tends to make breakfast cereal soggy and rather unappetizing in pretty short time, but we have a friend: White Glue, it looks like milk but it isn’t. Yogurt or shampoo have also been replaced by this trick.
2. SPONGES, COTTON BALLS & TAMPONS
It’s important for hot foods to look hot. The way to do that is to show steam billowing off. Instead of stopping every few shots to nuke the staged food, photographers will often soak one of these items in water, microwave it, and skillfully hide it in the shot.
3. A BLOW TORCH, A BRANDING IRON & SHOE POLISH
Most of the time, meat products aren’t actually cooked because cooking can cause them to shrink and dry out. So items like steak and hamburgers are carefully seared with a blowtorch. Afterwards, grill marks are added with a branding iron and, as a finishing touch, some shoe polish or varnish may be applied to provide a nice, succulent color.
4. HAIRSPRAY & SPRAY-ON DEODORANT
That ripe, delicious bunch of grapes you see in that ad have that matte look to them because they’re coated in a healthy amount of one of these grocery store spray can staples.
5. GLYCERIN
If a product is cold or icy, you can bet the version in the TV commercial is covered in glycerin. The substance is used to provide gloss and sheen.
The truth is, the delicious-looking culinary concoctions we see in print ads and television commercials would be anything but appetizing if they were on your plate, but the reality is that advertised foods rarely look exactly like the real food they’re selling.