Why Food Porn Is So Appealing, According To Science

We've all been there. Scrolling through Pinterest, Instagram, or TikTok, sucked into a black hole of mouthwatering food picture after food picture after food picture. Maybe it's a slice of deep-dish pizza with the world's longest cheese pull. Maybe it's a burger stacked high with five patties and all the condiments you could dream of. Or maybe it's a fluffy donut the size of your face. No matter your course — or craving — of choice, all of the photos and videos you see on social media can be summed up in one millennial-coined term: food porn. The word (or rather the hashtag #foodporn) was first popularized a few years ago and, according to Whatever Your Dose, is defined as "images that portray food in a very appetizing or aesthetically appealing way."

If you've found yourself drooling over yet another picture of pancakes dripping in syrup or craving a basket of fried chicken after your favorite restaurant posted something on Instagram, you aren't alone. A new study recently revealed that the reason you're so affected by the food porn on your screen could be thanks to science.

It may not be your willpower that makes you prefer a slice of pizza over an apple after you've spent some time on Instagram. According to a study published in August in the journal Current Biology, the visual frontal cortex in your brain responds differently to different foods. Researchers at MIT found that in some cases, subjects' brain activity reacted more intensely to pictures of processed food (think: "junk" food) than unprocessed food (think: "health" food). 

It's not the first time studies have been done to see the impact of so-called food porn on our brains. Research in ScienceDirect in 2016 reported "dramatic physiological and neurophysiological changes seen in response to food images." The article went on to say that people may even be more interested in looking at visually appetizing pictures of food than they are interested in focusing on the food they're actually eating. According to a nutritionist interviewed by Whatever Your Dose, scrolling through food porn can also stimulate the production of the hunger hormone, and that "those who engage with more food porn have a greater risk of consuming larger amounts of high sugar, high-fat foods."