Food for thought

The phrase “You are what you eat” has developed into something much more complex than just your favorite CrossFit junkie’s personal anti-gluten mantra.

In a society that increasingly feels as though it spins on an axis of social media consumption, food (more specifically, the online photographic evidence thereof) has become just another tool for communication.

Where we dine, what we order, whose name we tag in that second cup of artisanal coffee, how often our posts overlap in the Venn diagram of our friends’ feeds—all serve to communicate, in varying degrees, how in the know we are, how adventurous, how connected, how basic our tastes, even how accepted we feel among one another. That is, inasmuch as we would like ourselves to be perceived. After all, no one picks out Instagram filters for that pallid, amorphous slab of “pwede na” for 1 a.m. Spam.

Anthony Bourdain puts the psychology behind food porn bluntly: “Why do we Instagram pictures of our food? It’s not to share… You say ‘Look at what I’m eating, bitches’… You want them to be eating a bag of Cheetos on their couch in their underpants. It’s a passive-aggressive act. That said, I do it all the time.” Photos by Ralph Mendoza, Styling by Sam Potenciano, Modeled by Patricia Henson