Food Porn

I make it a habit to call someone as I get off my train at night and start walking towards my apartment building. There is a small stretch where the streetlights are few and far between and the shadowy hiding places prevalent; a great area for muggers, rapists, and murderers (oh my!) to lurk while they wait to mug, rape or murder. The act of calling someone is less a defense against the dangers of the night and more a “Here’s where to find my body if something happens.” Morbid, I know.

The other night as I was walking home I decided to call the folks, and see how everything was going. Usually my mother is attentive, asking where I am exactly every fifteen seconds or so, but that night she was distracted. “I can call someone else if you want?”

“No, no. It’s fine. We’re just watching the Food Network. Have you ever seen the Food Network?”

“I don’t have cable, Mom. Remember?”

“Well, there’s this man on and he’s making shrimp burgers. Shrimp Burgers! You’re father is drooling.”

He wasn’t the only one drooling, but let’s leave the woman some dignity. I’m sure it’s hard to stay strong when being tempted by shrimp burgers, especially when you are a hardcore seafood lover. Besides, it was all becoming clear to me.

“That’s because you are watching Food Porn, Mom.”

Yes, Food Porn. No, not like that scene out of 9 ½ weeks. And no, I did not come up with the title, though I find it appropriate, a friend did that when I remarked that she sure had a lot of cookbooks.

“That’s because they’re food porn.”

“Food porn?”

“They arouse a sensation and an emotional response.” She shrugged. “Hence food porn.”

Who knew? Definitely a unique way to look at the mouthwatering, oh-dear-god-I-must-have-that-dish-NOW sensation I get whenever I see the cover of Cooking Light (last month’s issue with the potato leek soup and the toasted cheesy bread on the cover almost did me in, I had to go eat something immediately). And perhaps it explains America’s fight with obesity. We are compelled to eat. It looks to good! I know some people who would choose food over sex, and if that doesn’t make food pornographic, I don’t know what does.

I mean, look at this. Really look.



We sold almost 20 copies of this book last Christmas, and I’m sure we’ll sell more this holiday. I heard a rumor that the photography won some sort of award for the photos within. I’m not surprised. Don’t you feel the need to go get some chocolate, any chocolate right now!!! Even though you know that it won’t have the same rich, smooth consistency of the chocolate on this front cover. It’s a need, planted inside you, a craving for something, anything to make that ache go away.

The Food Channel doesn’t need sex to sell its products and cookbooks, to get subscribers for its channel; it just uses close-ups on the dishes prepared by Rachel Ray, Emeril, Bobby Flay, and others.

Loving close-ups of sizzling meat, cool creams, and frothy confections.

Long pans of tables laden with dish after dish of Southern home cooking.

Montages of desserts layered with chocolate and fruit and nuts and more chocolate...

Each picture flashing before your eyes, entering your brain, releasing serotonin, making that dull ache in your stomach cramp in on itself because you want, no NEED that dish or something really similar and my goodness how did you not realize you were hungry? Starving!

It’s a powerful thing. I’ve seen the pictures on the cover of cookbooks convince a person that they had to have that particular book, now damn it! Along with directions to the nearest steak house, seafood place, dessert maker. The actual Food Network has convinced my father that he must find andouille.

Cooking Light’s potato leek cover has the power to make me weak at the knees, a drooling mess of a bookseller.

Food Porn, I’m telling you. Pure Food Porn.

Now if only I could get my boss to let me re-label the cooking section as such.