A weird question that popped into my head recently after assessing some memories. You know how food advertising and photography can often invoke cravings and desires for certain foods? Well, the strange thing with me is these things not only have a null effect on me, I also seem to be more responsive to artistic (e.g. paintings, drawings) and animated portrayals of food, and I don't understand why.
For instance, one time I was playing a video game where in order to collect a certain item you had to bring an orange to a chimpanzee, and when you collect that orange it speaks to you. Instead of a voice over, however, the orange's "voice" consisted of wet squishing noises, a noise an orange would make. This drove my cravings mad, and I found myself on an orange kick for a while then on.
Just about any food item applies to this realm, from sweets to vegetables to meat. This is very odd to me: How can my cravings be stimulated by something I saw in a video game or cartoon, but largely be unaffected by food photography and advertising?
I can't say but I can totally relate. There's a few scenes in the movie "Spirited Away" with banquets of food and dumplings. Somehow the stylized portrayal of the food just makes it seem even more desirable to me. I can't watch that movie without getting hungry.
ReplyDeleteBy the way check this out, I just ran into a list of best animated food googling a pic for it. (not an attempt at spam)
http://austinbondthenerd.blogspot.com/2011/05/best-animated-food.html