While North American food porn consists of burgers, pizza, chocolate, and more, Yelena Majova, from Qatar Computing Research Institute, used content analysis to determine what constitutes as food porn in other areas of the world.
Majova and her team analyzed 675,000 posts from 322 users on Instagram who have used the #FoodPorn hashtag to share their favourite snacks.
"We can use social media to observe the behaviour of people around the world [...] the associations they make to foods, occasions, and each other, that may explain why [people] use it," Majova said.
As Canadians, some of our food porn Instagrams consist of foods like pizza, poutine, coffee, cake, etc. However, we aren't the only group of people around the world who have made the popular hashtag our own.
What did she find?
- Asian countries have the largest proportion of users dedicated to tracking their #FoodPorn experiences.
- Globally, people tend to Instagram fast food and sweets with the hashtag #FoodPorn. The top three foods are chocolate at 78% and cake at 41%. The top non-sweet foods include pizza, salad, sushi, and burgers.
- The top drink is coffee and the top alcohol is wine.
- Surprisingly, Nutella appears at the number 18 spot of top posts related to food porn.
- The most health-conscious regions are Northern and Western Europe, Austrailia, and New Zealand.
- The highest rate of unhealthy tags came from Brazil, Argentina, and France. Often the tag, #gordice—which derives from the term gordo meaning fat—appeared in Brazil. In France, the tag #gourmandise—meaning gluttony—appeared often.
- Posts having the highest social approval were healthy posts.
Argentina – Dulcedeleche
Dulcedelche, which means candy of milk or milk jelly, is a Spanish dish prepared by slowly heating sweetened milk. It's often used in a variety of South American desserts such as delicious-looking pie. Learn how to make your own here.
Cambodia – Curry
Cambodian cuisine, or Khmer food, share several similarities with its neighbours including India, Thailand and Vietnam, according to about travel. In Cambodia, Indian-based curries are among one of the popular dishes here.
Croatia – Pancakes
In Croatian culture, breakfast is a very important meal. In addition, rich pastries and cakes are popular, as stated by Every Culture. There are many recipes for traditional Croatian pancakes, check one out.
El Salvador – Pupusa
Pupusas is a traditional Salvadoran dish made of a thick, handmade corn tortilla. They are typically prepared with a variety of fillings.
Hong Kong – Matcha
Matcha doesn't always have to be in tea form. If you find yourself in Hong Kong, this blogger outlines the best places to find matcha desserts in Hong Kong
Lebanon – Burger
Burgers aren't always made with beef in Lebanon. According to Food in Every Country, the most common types of meat consumed in Lebanon include poultry and lamb. So try a different kind of ground meat when you make your next homemade burger.
United Arab Emirates – Cheesecake
According to Fortune Magazine, In 2011, Kuwait-based company Alshaya and U.S-based company Overton—which owns the Cheesecake Factory—partnered up and opened 22 Cheesecake Factories over five years in the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and Qatar. This might be why cheesecake is one of the most popular food porn items.
Veitnam – Pho
kaz k on Flickr
Pho is a Vietnamese noodle soup with broth, rice noodles, herbs and meat. It's enjoyed all over the world.
The #FoodPorn hashtag is extremely popular around the world—as evident by Majova's research. It's the way we see food in a digital age. People post online versions of themselves through their social media accounts, and a large part of our online identity comes from understanding what our food choices are—and how we show them online.
People want to document the food the eat, the food they make, and sometimes even to show how healthy they're eating. How else are we supposed to determine if we want to try a new restaurant if there isn't a sexy photo of what we can expect to try? Not only are images of food porn online useful to consumers—it's also useful to restaurants.
If you're interested in reading more of Majova's research—and other popular #foodporn items around the world—you can find it here.