Today in food styling, we went over the syllabus and had a short lecture on some common food styling and photography tips! We also discussed in depth about ways that food stylists intentionally make food appear better in advertisements, on food labels, in magazines, etc. than it really looks. For instance, glue is used in replace of milk for cereal photographs. Chicken and turkey are commonly only partially cooked so that they don’t shrink or dry out. Mashed potatoes can be used for ice cream or to stuff a chicken or other meat so that it looks more plump! Some of these things I had never heard of or would ever think of!

Apparently, there are certain things that are frowned upon in food styling. For instance, if you are selling something like chocolate syrup, it is WRONG to replace the fudge syrup with anything else. You can replace the ice cream it is on with mashed potatoes or use fake cherries, but the syrup HAS to be the real deal if that is what the advertisement is for. Therefore, it is wrong for a food stylist to do a set up for Chips Ahoy! chocolate chip cookies and then use a cookie that is not a Chips Ahoy chocolate chip cookie. This is considered cheating and will earn a bad reputation.

Food stylists can also “stretch” the truth with their products. For instance, if a food stylists is displaying Chips Ahoy! chocolate chip cookies but decides to one by one place every single chocolate chip in the cookie to make the cookie look absolutely perfect- this is a stretch. The REAL cookie from the package that we buy at the supermarket will NOT look that perfect.

Food stylists can also “enhance” their products. This is very common and acceptable. For instance, a food stylist can gently dust off the crumbs on top of their cookie for the photo. This is not altering the product drastically. This is considered enhancing because the product has not really changed. A food stylist is also allowed to warm up their cookie prior to photographing in order to give the chocolate chips a nice, warm sheen. This is also considered enhancing!

After learning about what’s allowed and frowned upon in the food styling world, the class went to the demo kitchen and we were all given random breakfast products – a donut, a nutrigrain protein bar, or in my case – Nature Valley Granola Cups. We were then told to examine the picture on the package and then compare it to the actual product and determine whether the food stylist and photographer enhanced, stretched, or cheated when designing and photographing the image. I decided that my product had been a little stretched. On the package, my granola cup had a very thick chocolate coating on the bottom. My real granola cup had a very thin, almost sloppy one. The package presented a cup with nuts spread nicely across the top. My granola cup had nuts on only half of the top of it. Obviously, the food stylist re-dipped the granola cup in chocolate to make a more perfect, thicker chocolate coating on the bottom. He or she also arranged the nuts on top to look more evenly dispersed. The product still resembled the photographed, but it had been slightly stretched.

All in all, today was an excellent day in class. I am already ready for next Monday when we get to make our own “mashed potato ice cream” and photograph it! Can’t wait!

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