Effects of "Food Porn"

In class, we have briefly talked about social media users that post pictures of appealing food ("food porn") that they feel their friends would "like". It is interesting that for this behavior, the focus is always on the one posting the picture--and not the actual person that created the dish. There have been several news articles lately about chefs and cooks getting upset over diners tweeting or posting pictures of their food. Their claims for feeling in such a way vary: some say that the act of posting causes the food itself to get cold and ruin the experience, others say that such posts ruin the surprise for others who may want to order the dish. A new and dominant claim, however, is that these cooks believe that the posting of their dishes actually takes away their intellectual copyright.  

Here's a link to a recent article about that: http://www.theguardian.com/media-network/media-network-blog/2014/mar/04/food-porn-selfies-damaging-chefs-restaurants  

I can see an argument for both sides of this issue. As a cook, especially if I was one from a higher-end restaurant, I might be worried that online pictures of my dishes would inspire others to recreate my work. If it is truly an original dish, that's a lot of hard work to do just to have others imitate. Yet I'm sure that a lot of business comes from social media users posting their food. After all, by seeing these pictures online, their friends automatically know where to go if they want to find delicious food. As for the issue of taking away intellectual copyright, I don't see how anything can really be done to stop people posting pictures of food. Even if a restaurant says it's banned, there is no way to monitor 100% of a person's cell phone activity while they're dining. 

Overall, I think this shows how self-oriented we have become in our social media presence. We think not of the cook behind the dish or of his hard work--only that we need to show our hundreds of friends that amazing food that we just had. By posting pictures of this food, we are feeding (hah) our ideal online image: we need to show that we are so great because we can afford to prepare or eat at restaurants that serve the best food--and then we have to tell our friends all about it.