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this post was submitted on 23 May 2024
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I dated a woman that worked in TV ad production. Everything has to be real food.
Yes, everything has to be real. Doesn’t have to be edible, or appetizing.
If I take bread and spray it with scotch guard to make sure the liquid condiment I’m putting on it oozes across instead of soaking into the bread, it’s all still real food. But would you eat it?
If I prop up whipped cream by putting a cardboard cone under it, it’s still real food, but would you eat it?
Just because it’s real food doesn’t mean it hasn’t been modified to be inedible.
I'm saying that you can't use scotch guard or anything like that.
It's been a while, but I don't believe that they were allowed to use cardboard or anything of the sort to prop up or modify the appearance of the product. Instead, they would cook say 100 burger patties, go through dozens of heads of lettuce, slice 100 tomatoes, etc, and pick out the perfect pieces to make a burger that looks the way that they want.
The most that they could adulterate the food was to make a slurry with corn starch, water, and food dye that could be applied with a paint brush to make things look juicy, etc. They would use a clothes steamer to make a pizza look just right. Lots of tricks, but it had to be something that you could just pick up and eat, even if you wouldn't necessarily want to.
Go looking and you’ll find numerous articles, anecdotes, and videos that go into the ways the work with the ingredients.
The important part is that they are not allowed to “misrepresent” the food. Meaning you can’t make it look like you’re getting five pounds of meat when you’re actually only getting one pound.
But there’s nothing stopping them from putting paint on the burger patties to make them look perfectly cooked, or using paper towel and toothpicks inside to hold everything at “the perfect angle” or spraying scotch guard on pancakes to make sure the syrup runs nicer. Because the person watching the ad isn’t getting a “misrepresentation” of the food or ingredients.
It’s a fine line, and people have walked it over and over. The advertisers and food stylists have it down to a science, and because it’s all about the money they go over and above to make sure they walk juuuust inside the line.
I have heard of them slitting the buns and patties in the back so that they can make them look a little bigger in the front.