Turns Out Humans Have Been Obsessed With Food Porn For Hundreds Of Years

This era of food porn has many of us pointing fingers at millennials and rolling our eyes, but it turns out food porn is not a concept born of smart phones and social media. The researchers at Cornell Food & Brand Lab have discovered that humans’ desire to indulge in food porn has been happening for 500 years. The first evidence of it is in still life paintings in which lobsters, bread, exotic fruit and salt were often depicted, but were hardly actually found on people’s dinner tables.

The researchers looked at 750 European and American food paintings from a 500-year period (140 of those depicted family meals). They found that people have always had a difficult relationship with vegetables. Vegetables only showed up in 19 percent of paintings, while fruit stole the show in 76 percent. Bread and pastries made an appearance in 54 percent and meat 39 percent. Salt was the most popular seasoning by far and cheese was the favored dairy product. Shellfish, which was very hard to come by, showed up in 22 percent of paintings ― far more often than in anyone’s home from that era.

What’s the takeaway? That we as humans have always had the desire to feast our eyes on indulgent, aspirational food ― even if it might mean we’re a little crazy.