Even when you are starving, you never miss to Instagram a perfect-looking picture of your food, do you? Oh, you have to admit that you click a dozen of pictures until you get the perfect one, then apply some of the filters using various apps, before Instagramming it with a million of #foodporn and #omnomnom hashtags.
If you are not one of those people, you definitely have a friend who is addicted to foodstagramming all the time, which might be driving you crazy. Well, let them do their thing because it will make their food taste better. You might be like “What are you talking about? How will clicking pictures make it better?” The research says that clicking pictures of your food before eating it can make it taste better.
I know you are thinking that this is just silly science, but a study mentioned in the Journal of Consumer Marketing found that taking a moment to capture a snap of your meal may increase attitudes and taste evaluation of the food before it is actually consumed. The study also found that consumers who clicked pictures of the food were more satisfied with the food than the consumers who didn’t.
The reason behind this can be the time taken to capture that photo with all the natural light and wonderful filters than the picture itself. The study shows that the delay that comes along while posting the picture, or with just a moment taken to click it, changes the person’s perception about the meal. Especially posting photos of healthier foods on Instagram might make us perceive them as more interesting. You are more likely to think that a bowl of salad is super interesting if you are about to click an awesome photo of the artistically garnished bowl before digging in.
The act of delaying, for greater eating enjoyment, seems to be perfect for photographing your meal for an Instagram post. So every time you have your meal, get your smartphone, place your plate in the suitable position (you need natural light, remember?), click a dozen of pictures, and hope that one of them is good enough for foodstagramming. It is also associated with a sense of urgency, as your food is getting cold, your fellow diners are waiting (silently wanting you to stop behaving as a millennial), and you are starving.
Let us hope that researchers don’t come with a good reason to post duckface selfies!
