http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FakeFood

Actor: Just remember this: Theatre is an illusion. Bourbon is Tea. Champagne is Ginger ale. Everything is something else. Now, when it comes to food, there's just one rule: everything on stage is bananas. Mashed potatoes are bananas mushed up. Even steak is bananas pushed together.

Prop Boy: But steak is brown.

Actor: You leave bananas out, they get brown. Frank Langella , Those Lips, Those Eyes You leave bananas out, they get brown.

Food seen in commercials has often been improved for the purpose of shooting the commercial. Lettuce will always be crisp, hamburger buns perfect and full, cake light and fluffy. Ice cream is never melting, unless that was the point. As good as the food may be made to look, however, actually eating that specific example is probably hazardous to your health.

Advertisement:

For starters, the food may have been coated in shellac to ensure that it stays looking good no matter how many takes are done. This is somewhat reasonable, as heat from any lamps being used can cause things to wilt.

If the food comes in standard proportions, they may have to keep those proportions due to Truth in Advertising laws... but they can still engage in trickery. Arrange the items on the plate so that (at the angle chosen for the shot), where the view is blocked by other food, there's nothing behind it - but people won't realise that! Cut a wedge out of the hamburger patty, so you can spread it out a bit, making it look wider (this one's almost universal in fast food advertisements). Use camera angles and zooms that make it look larger than it actually is - essentially, the Hitler Cam as applied to food. And you can always just put those standard proportions on a really small plate.

Advertisement:

For a good example of the last of those tricks, watch a Dairy Queen ad for their Peanut Buster Parfait and compare how large it appears with what you actually get in the restaurant. You will notice that you rarely see an actor's hands in the picture to give you a sense of scale.

The items used for photo layouts and "beauty shots" are often not even edible. Ice cream sundaes are often constructed of scoops of lard or mashed potato covered in motor oil, or other toxic-yet-pretty trickery. Likewise, "steam" rising from "hot" food is often smoke from a hidden cigarette, and ice cubes will really be deftly sculpted chunks of acrylic.

Note that, in general, truth in advertising laws require that the product being advertised should be the same as the one shown (though some of the tricks described above are still applicable), so, for example in a commercial for chocolate syrup, the syrup will be real, but the ice cream onto which is is poured is just as likely to be made of plasticinenote In the director's defense though - YOU try keeping ice cream from melting for several takes under hot studio lights.. The cereal shown in the bowl is, indeed, the product, but the pouring stream of milk is almost always watered down glue.

Advertisement:

Examples:

open/close all folders

Advertising

Played with in this Dutch PSA. The items look like food- but they're poisonous.

Anime And Manga

In the Oh My Goddess: Adventures of the Mini-Goddesses manga, one of the strips depicts a certain voice actress as having a fetish for touching fake food samples and gets Squicked if they turn out to be real. (This is based on Belldandy's voice actress' real life tendency for such a habit.)

Subverted in Glass Mask. Maya is playing a character that's supposed to eat manju on stage. Some of the other actors, who aren't happy to be performing with her, switch the real manju with mud balls. Which Maya then eats anyway, since to do otherwise would disrupt the play.

In Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, cyborgs who do not need to eat can still eat food that looks real but isn't. It's still edible and nutritious, but tastes awful, at least to normal humans and to the Major, who finds the fake sandwiches (made from gluten and amino-acid-based micromachines) disgusting, while Batou chomps them down several at a time. It's mentioned earlier in the series that, because of their Cyber-Brains, full-prosthetic cyborgs can alter their brains' perception of how the "fake food" tastes, allowing it to register in their augmented brain as having the same taste as the real thing, which is presumably what Batou is doing. He also mentions in 2nd Gig that cyborgs sometimes miss the experience of eating, and that's why they make novelty food specifically for people who are cyberized.

Film

Literature

In Incompetence, Harry mentions that he once knew someone who photographed food for a living. Among the tricks used to make the food look more appetizing include secreting a boiled tampon on the plate.

Live-Action TV

Other Internet

The owner of Candyblog swears that they always use the real candy she reviews in the photos of her reviews . Gratuitous Food Porn! The Food in Real Life blog owner reviews convenience foods, comparing the photo on the box to what's actually in the box and how it tastes.

swears that they always use the real candy she reviews in the photos of her reviews . Gratuitous Food Porn! Showcased on this site: Ads vs Reality

Parodied by this CollegeHumor video, a Photoshop "tutorial" on how to spice up Chinese restaurant menus. Featuring the "Aging Filter", which makes photos taken in the 2010s look like they were taken in 1977 by an incompetent photographer, or a texture feature to make chicken look like overcooked mystery meat.

Theatre

On stage, food props are almost always real food of some kind (if not the food they're supposed to be) because actors have to eat it onstage. It usually is intentionally made to taste awful so the actors won't eat too much and it can be reused multiple nights. Alcohol, however, is almost invariably fake because of the hazards of the actors getting drunk in the course of performing the show (usually, dark liquors like whiskey will often be iced tea, lighter drinks like beer are apple juice, and wine is, of course, non-alcoholic grape juice. Obviously these can be subbed out for something more to the actor's tastes, all the way to simply water with food coloring.) Which is very conducive to the classical practical joke of replacing your victim's prop drink with some Gargle Blaster. And theatre people love practical jokes.

In some productions of Oliver! applesauce stands in for the gruel eaten by the workhouse orphans in the opening scene. It's easy to "set up" (no cooking required), easy to clean off of prop bowls and spoons, is readily gobbled by a group of 8-14 year-old kids, and looks "truly disgusting" from the audience.

Western Animation

In The Simpsons Krusty the Klown is often seen to be disgusted with what he actually has to eat during commercials for his restaurant chain, and spits it out when the camera is off. This may have been a reference to George Foreman, in which leaked footage showed him spitting out food cooked by his signature grill (which is actually what they do when people eat for a shot, since after 30 takes he would have been throwing up with all he ate otherwise). Even better, it's shown that despite being Jewish Krusty has no problem putting his name on pork based products and eating them himself.

During Total Drama Action, one of the challenges was to find a key Chris had hidden amongst a pile of styrofoam prop food. Owen eats his way through the pile, not realizing it's fake, and ends by burping up the key.

In the debut episode of the Chipettes in Alvin and the Chipmunks, the Chipettes are getting ready for their first American shows and they're all on edge. Eleanor immediately runs to the fruit bowl and starts eating. Theodore walks over and comments that he eats when he's nervous too. Eleanor asks how he can tell that she's nervous. He then tells her that she's eating wax fruit.

Real Life