Enjoying food with eyes: Visual hunger concept on gastronomy lovers

Abstract

Food can be “enjoyed†visually. Current technology makes human can “enjoy†the visualization of food without restrictions of time and place. People easily on “enjoy†food by just noticing to its pictures in social media. In many previous studies show that food pictures in media attract people. One of the concepts is visual hunger that describes an individual’s exposure to food images result their natural urge to notice food images and subsequent array from neural, behavioral and physiological responses on somebody. Visual hunger appears even there is an absence of hunger. This study aims to see people’s way of "enjoying" food from the visual (photos or pictures) that appears in Instagram. The study was conducted by in-depth interview on informants living in major cities in Indonesia. The research shows that informants not only see food photos, but also find enjoyment too. There is a desire to taste the food because of the interesting display of photographs. Not only showing the desire on food, the three informants also justified that they are interested in high calories food pictures than the low fat one.

Keywords: enjoy; food; photo; Instagram; visual hunger;