Cloud eggs. Rainbow toasties. Edible selfies Welcome to the half-baked world of online food
CLOUD eggs. Rainbow toasties. Unicorn frappuccinos. Charcoal burgers. And the Edible Selfie. Welcome to the world of food gone wrong. These new crazy food fads are all down to the internet, and so are obviously the definition of style over substance. Like the selfie pout, Facebook news, doctored holiday pictures, and those people you think are your friends on Twitter, this food is as false as it gets.
In the vain world of Instagram, food bloggers know that what gets you those precious “likes” is mostly looks – after all you can’t taste a picture, can you? This has led to the creation of fantastically colourful and vibrant foods cooked up by some wonderfully imaginative foodies trying to put their name on the map as the next big thing in social media. But despite being a feast for the eyes, these kooky snacks and meals don’t seem to be passing the all-important taste test.
The latest half-baked food fad to sweep through social media, the cloud egg (whipped egg whites with a runny yolk in the middle) follows on the back of ludicrous concoctions such as rainbow toasties (multi-coloured cheese toasties), charcoal burgers (where the bun is dyed black using charcoal and squid ink) and, for the chronically self-obsessed internet narcissist, the edible selfie (everything from yoghurt with your face on top to 3D-printed selfie lollipops).
However, while the internet has swallowed these food fads hook, line and sinker, the reviews regarding taste have been mixed to say the least.
One Instagram food blogger who knows all about these trends is Jacqueline Meldrum, who posts as Tinned Tomatoes, boasting over 12,000 followers on the picture-sharing site, as well as running her own website. Focusing on vegetarian cui- sine, she regularly posts the results of her kitchen exploits, which can often get the saliva glands going.
Having recently ranted about the spread of unicorn food [artificially multicoloured] on her babycentre blog, she has become quite tired of some of the trends coming out of social media.
“I think it just becomes overkill, like when Easter comes and everyone has their cream eggs, there is a saturation point when you’ve just had enough of it,” she said.
“They seem to be one of two extremes – there’s a lot of food trends that are for vegan diets and for raw foods and for juice diets, so there’s that side of things, and then at the opposite end are all these brightly coloured things, like unicorn food, that are all artificial colours and totally unhealthy for you. So, I think, one is just sort of eye candy and the other one more speaks to people who are looking for a healthy diet.”
One example of these unusually colourful treats that has taken the internet by storm is the Unicorn Frappuccino. Social media went wild for the Starbucks rainbow-coloured, sugar-crammed calorific drink originally made up of one store’s leftovers, and the concoction has spread around America since. Thankfully for the nation’s teeth, it has not made its way to the UK due to lack of ingredients.
And while we usually associate artificially coloured foods with sweet treats, savoury snacks have been receiving the dyed diet treatment as well. You may have seen pictures of purple cauliflower, or black smoothies. One London restaurant recently released the rainbow toastie, spawning photos of people tearing their sandwiches apart to reveal strings of bright, multi-coloured melted cheese.
Even when the food isn’t of the outlandish variety, the need for photographers to make their foods appear like something out of an M&S ad lends itself to comparisons with a fashion shoot, something that hasn’t escaped our fashion editor Eva Arrighi. “They’re heavily styled,” said Arrighi. “Food photography has changed quite a lot, there’s quite a lot of fashion bloggers and lifestyle bloggers and people spend a lot of time prepping it. They’ll even confess that some of the stuff is completely inedible by the time it’s been photographed right. It’s carefully curated photography, which I suppose is similar with fashion. It’s an augmented reality that you’re looking at. They do say you eat with your eyes, if it looks attractive you’re probably going to be more interested in eating it.”
Trends come and go, so before you know it we’ll be talking about green doughnuts or coffee ice lollies, God help us all, but like them or not, these food are being “liked”
... a lot.