We've all been there, looked at the menu or commercial and thought, "Hmm, that looks good, Let's go there for dinner tonight." What we see on our plates when our order is put in front of us has little resemblance, if any, to what we saw pictured. What we fail to realize is that any food that is, "styled," by a food stylist before it is photographed is going to look better than the food that is actually put in front of you to eat. It's what food stylists do, it's show business, plain and simple. They do not want be caught with grey meat, limp lettuce, pale tomatoes poorly toasted buns or any other unappetising looking versions of their product. Photographers and food stylists manipulate the food to it's best advantage, not necessarily it's healthiest nor best taste before it is photographed.
They use Crisco mixed with sugar and food coloring for ice cream that does not melt under the photographers lights and they brown their turkeys just enough to puff the skin up and then color them with all sorts of home made concoctions.Their list of tricks is endless. They soak their leaf lettuce in ice water until the very last minute so that it stays perky, they use an electric charcoal barbecue starter to enhance the grill marks on the meat and they melt cheeses with hairdryers so that the cheeses does not burn or run down the plate. They go through about two hundred heads of lettuce to find the one that offers the right mix of green and crispy freshness when sliced. To melt the cheese on pizza they use steam, a commercial cloths steamer keeps pizza cheese from going into bumpy wrinkles and they use an eyedropper to create bubbles on the edge of the cup so that the coffee that has been sitting for three hours looks fresh poured, they add dish soap to keep the bubbles alive.
Fruit is waxed or oiled and sprayed with water to keep it fresh and dewy looking. Turkeys are presented to the photographer just oven warmed to puff up the skin and then sprayed with a concoction of bitters, honey and other coloring agents to make it look golden brown. Aspirin is added to a fizzy drink, it keeps the fizz going longer. Charcoal briquettes are sprinkled with baby powder to make them look ashy. Motor oil is used as a great looking substitute for pancake syrup, it's for the picture only, it stays thick and does not soak into the pancakes,though it looks great this is a huge, "Do not eat."
These stylists arrive at a photo shoot with enough baggage to fill a full sized van. They wheel in trolleys of specialty toasters, spray bottles filled with their own magic elixirs, cutting boards and knives, hair dryers, electric barbecue starters, steam machines, wood blocks for propping up the food for presentation, eye droppers, tweezers, small and large paint brushes, dish washing detergent to make those coffee bubbles last, Elmer's glue and red, red lipstick. They bring plastic ice cubes to keep drinks looking unmelted and fresh no matter what the temperature while the outside of the glass is treated with Rain-ex or liquid silicon, Rain-ex is the stuff that is used on car windshields to repel water. The glass is then sprayed with water that beads up on the treated glass surface to look like a lovely frosted concoction. They order chipped dry ice delivered to the shoot site to slip beneath foods to create the illusion of hot steam. Yes the hot food is made to look hot with cold and the cold food is faked too. They bring in ice powder and use it instead of crushed ice or as snow as it will not melt. They carry Fun-tac, that blue clay like product favored by school teachers to hang papers in the classroom, it is used to insure the placement of fruit that wants to roll or the spoon that insist on sliding into the gravy. This list is only for starters, there are many more manipulative tricks that are used to tempt the customer to buy.
So, no, it is not the same food that you are served, what made you think it would be? Did you really think that that, made up, and air brushed beauty on the cover of Glamor or Vogue was that perfect in real life? It's advertising. It's the projected image of choice, not the actual product. As long as Madison Avenue with their advertising agencies exists you will not be served the actual product that is presented in the picture. After reading this I would think that you would know better then to want to eat it.
The food that is photographed is mostly not for human consumption as it has been styled beyond the edible stage. It is most often discarded. The extra, unused, lettuce heads and the less than perfect other vegetables (No, they are not bruised or gone bad, they had a less then perfect shape or blush, shine or stem or a million other reasons they they were not selected for the photo shoot.) are usually donated to a food bank or homeless shelter so that they do not go to waste.