As The Stir learned from photographing fast food in real life, an artful food designer and good studio lighting works wonders on a couple of pieces of lettuce and some shredded chicken. Because those pretty pictures don't always live up to their promise, here's a similar experiment with frozen entrees.
How do the real TV dinners hold up to the ideal?
Can I say something here about the food styling on these boxes? Because the food in real life doesn't look great, but it doesn't look delicious on the boxes, either. Food photography has come a long way since 1985. Pick up any food magazine today and it all looks warm, real, homemade. But the food on these boxes looks fake. Why are food manufacturers trying to entice us with plastic-looking food?
What do you think frozen entrees should look like?
Written by Adriana Velez for CafeMom's blog, The Stir.
More from The Stir:
Avocado Popsicles & Other Craziest Popsicles of All Time
Record-Breaking Cake as Big as a Football Stadium
Gelato University? Sign Me Up!
Whoppers Are the New Weapons of Mass Destruction
Hot Beef Sundaes & Other Wacky Festival Foods
Follow The Stir on Twitter: www.twitter.com/The_Stir
John Robbins: How Bad Is McDonald's Food?
The Stir: Fast Food Lies: Meals That Don't Live Up to Their Ads
|
Post a Comment
- Tampon & sanitary napkin packages do not contain coupons for horseback rides on the beach or hang gliding.
- Cans fo Crisco do not contain fried chicken.
- Taking Cialis will not cause your laundry room to morph into a forest complete with babbling brook or transport you and your partner to a pair of claw-foot bathtubs on a deserted beach.While I agree that the photos on the package are an overly idealized version of what you get in the box, showing the photos of the items that consist of meat & vegetables in a sauce tossed together with noodles or rice right out of the box is deceptive. The meat & vegetables can be prepared and frozen together before heating, but the rice or noodles cannot - they must been heated separately to complete the cooking process, then mixed together immediately before eating. If they weren't, they would come out of the microwave soggy and mushy.
The fact remains that the photo you see on the package is not the food contained therein. Very often fake, models made of plastic, rubber and any other combination of inedible items is photographed, with the wisps of steam you see rising either added by a chemical reaction (the model is sprinkled with drops of a liquid chemical that reacts with air or water and produces wisps of fake steam) or painted in using photo shop. For decades consumer rights advocates have called for laws requiring packaged foods to bear photo samples of the actual contents, but the legislation never makes it into law.
I'll stick to real food made by me.
Now, depending on if you make your own sauce from scratch (mom does) or use a decent couple of jars of sauce, that will run you another $5 (scratch) or about $5 for two jars of fairly decent sauce.
Noodles; another $2.
So while STILL economical, even for a family of 4 to get two meals out of it, it does not cost like $5. Just saying.....
Product pictures are like Republicans...all show and no go...and if you believe the product pictures on the box, or what Republicans say, then you deserve what you get either way...