Why food porn on Instagram and TikTok makes us happy: it triggers the same pleasure receptors in our brains as food on our plates

A region of the brain linked to pleasure and reward draws us to look at images and videos of delicious-looking food because it makes us feel good

‘Food is one of the two greatest pleasures of being alive – the other being sex – and we actually have to eat multiple times a day,’ says one researcher

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Food content and the internet go hand in hand, and online users can’t get enough of #food porn, which has more than 267 million posts on Instagram. Photo: Instagram

Published: 5:15am, 27 Jul 2021Updated: 8:59am, 27 Jul 2021

When Winny Hayes joined TikTok, she thought the social video app was mostly for lip-synching and dance trends.

She wasn’t yet privy to its world of food content: creamy vodka pasta, mouthwatering birria quesatacos and anything and everything dropped into an air fryer.

“I was like, ‘This is amazing’,” Hayes recalls. “And now the majority of people that I follow are food content creators: barbecue, pizza, I actually follow someone who only makes bagels. That’s amazing. I’m addicted to them.”

Food content and the internet go hand in hand, and online users can’t get enough. We live in the era of “phone eats first” – that is, capturing images of your food before taking a bite, and the hashtag #foodporn has more than 267 million posts on Instagram. Why are we so addicted to videos of food?

Winny Hayes regularly uploads short videos online for her 1.1 million followers on TikTok. Photo: Twitter/@WinnyHayes

Hayes, who lives in Atlanta, in the US state of Georgia and has 1.1 million TikTok followers, is known for making vibrant, creative meals for her family, composed in short how-to videos that help viewers brainstorm their own meal ideas.