Flip through TV channels or the pages of any magazine and you'll see glossy images of half-eaten sandwiches, broken bread sticks, stray herbs and scattered crumbs. And these days, that's just what food stylists want.

"Right now, people like messy," says Alison Attenborough, a New York-based food stylist who specializes in editorial work for clients, including Food & Wine magazine, New York magazine and cookbook publisher Clarkson Potter. "People are interested in small butchers, artisan producers, farmer's markets—a more handmade look."

The popularity of cooking shows, the eat-local movement and the growth of casual-dining restaurants are reshaping consumers' views of what makes food look appealing. Where making food look perfect was once a primary task of food stylists and photographers, the new challenge is making messy food look appetizing.

Once common practices, like using Vaseline to glue crumbs into holes in a slice of cake, have fallen out of favor at many magazines, says Delores Custer, a veteran food stylist and the author of "Food Styling: The Art of Preparing Food for the Camera." And stylists almost always use real ice cream instead of molding scoops out of shortening, corn syrup and powdered sugar. To achieve the perfect look, stylists would under-cook food to help it keep its shape, use hair products to add luster to grains of rice and apply powdered deodorant spray to produce a bloom on grapes or mist on a glass. These techniques are still in use, particularly in advertising, but are not as common as they were back in the 1980s, the heyday of the perfect-food look, Ms. Custer says.

At a recent Food & Wine photo shoot, Ms. Attenborough was making recipes by celebrity chef Tyler Florence for the magazine's October issue. She carefully assembled a cheeseburger so that the bacon and red onions would look like they were erupting from the bun. With a heat gun, she melted the cheese to make a corner of the slice dribble down. For a scallop appetizer, Ms. Attenborough intentionally left one fleck of parsley on the table, as if the cook had just finished applying the garnish and hadn't bothered to clean up.

Natural lighting is now the norm at many magazines, says Fredrika Stjärne, Food & Wine's director of photography. She says natural lighting and styling are ways to tone down digital photography, which can make things look super-real. But, she adds, the trend began before digital photography took hold.

A tart photographed for a recipe booklet in the 1980s contrasts with more recent photos. Lou Manna

A more recent photo of a tart getting a dusting of powdered sugar. Lou Manna

Studio lighting is still in use, particularly in advertising. But even there, a more natural look has taken hold, says Robert Baiocco, executive creative director at advertising agency Grey Group, which has represented food brands such as Red Lobster, Smuckers and Pringles.

Whether for editorial or advertising purposes, the point of making natural food look appealing is to get people to buy the product, go out to eat or make a recipe. Brian Wansink, director of the Food and Brand Lab at Cornell University, says the effectiveness of the natural trend lies in its ability to invite the viewer in. "It might enable us more to put ourselves in the picture," he says.

In the lab, Dr. Wansink has studied factors that make food look appealing. In his book "Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think," Dr. Wansink found that props and setting matter. People who ate a brownie served on white china thought it was tastier than one served on simple paper napkin—and they were willing to pay more for it. Another factor is color contrast. A plain red apple is not as appealing as a red apple with a green leaf, he says. And the brighter the image, the higher people's expectations for its flavor.

Still, food stylists aren't relying on science on the job and are more likely to go with their gut.

Ms. Attenborough recalled taking bites out of hundreds of Häagen Dazs ice cream bars to get the chocolate coating to crack in just the right way. She ended up cheating with a cookie cutter. "It was fun. I love Häagen Dazs ice cream," she says.

Write to Miriam Gottfried at miriam.gottfried@dowjones.com