8 Disgusting Tricks Advertisers Use To Make Food Look Better

Have you ever noticed how delicious food looks in advertisements? Even foods that you don’t normally eat or crave. Somehow, pancakes seem more fluffy, burgers look more fresh and a glass of Coke makes your mouth water. It turns out there’s a reason why the food in advertisements looks too good to be true.

Check out these eight tricks advertisers use to make food look better:

1. Engine Oil Instead Of Maple Syrup

If you’ve ever had a stack of pancakes, you know how quickly the syrup disappears after you pour it on. Pancakes soak up syrup too quickly to photograph, so photographers use engine oil to pour on pancakes instead. Another commonly used trick is to cover the pancakes with a water-repellent spray that creates a protective layer.

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2. Burger Patties Covered With Shoe Polish

Burgers in advertisements are almost raw. They’re roasted for a short time in order to look large and juicy. Photographers often cover them in shoe polish and create grill marks with ho skewers in order to make them look more appetizing.

3. Liquid Soap To Create Foam

Have you ever noticed that milk, coffee and beer look much better in T.V. commercials and magazine ads? Photographers have a special trick to create a natural-looking foam when creating ads for these drinks. They use liquid soap!

4. Antacids To Create Sparking Drinks

You’ve probably seen a Coke commercial while you’re sitting in a movie theater. That giant, sparkling, fizzy drink on the screen makes your mouth water almost instantly. Carbon dioxide bubbles in soft drinks disappear quickly, so photographers drop heartburn antacids into the drink. This creates a chemical reaction causing bubbles to appear.

5. Glue Instead Of Milk

When you pour cereal into a bowl of milk, the cereal quickly soaks up the milk and sinks to the bottom. For milk or cereal advertisements, photographers replace the milk with white glue. This allows the cereal to stay on the surface and be easily photographed.

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6. Deodorant To Make Fruit Shiny

No wonder fruit looks so shiny and appetizing in advertisements. Photographers have a special trick to make apples, strawberries and other produce look fresh and delicious. This trick is simple: a deodorant spray or hairspray.

7. Mashed Potatoes Instead Of Ice Cream

Ice cream melts quickly under hot studio lights. Too quickly to photograph. Photographers replace it with colored mashed potatoes or a paste of starch, icing sugar, corn syrup, fat and other ingredients. That ice cream might not look so appetizing the next time you see in an advertisement!

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8. Artificial Steam

You’ve probably seen the steam coming off of a cup of coffee, a juicy steak or a baked potato during a commercial. It turns out these food items aren’t even hot! In pictures, steam can easily be created using Photoshop. In videos, photographers can use a steamer which they pass over the food a few times, or cotton balls! To create steam using cotton balls, photographers moisten the cotton balls and place them in a microwave. Next, the put them inside a dish, creating a few minutes of steam for the photo shoot.