Food – It’s All About Sharing

Random thoughts on a Saturday morning . . .

I’m trying to figure out why users of social media, myself included, feel the need to post photos of their food. Whether it’s something we’re about to eat in a restaurant or at home, why this sudden urge to photograph it and share it with our friends and followers? Pictures of family, friends, dogs, cats, rats riding the subway – I get it. But food? We all know what a salad looks like. So why the compulsion to snap a photo and post it on Instagram before digging in?  I have more images on my phone of pre-eaten meals, than of Anya, my dog. It’s become an exercise in self-control to not hit share now and I can’t stop wondering, how did this happen? It’s not as if I even cooked anything. The most I do with food is assemble. I have zero culinary skills, unless you include using the microwave, so it’s not like I’m showing off what I just nuked.

Perhaps, because eating is universal, we feel by posting pics of our food that it’s a safe way to reveal some personal details of ourselves. Hence the term, you are what you eat.

Or, maybe I just think too much. That’s probably it.