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The other day, I was scrolling through photos from my London trip—blue skies, plenty of art, a few street shots—and found something odd: almost no food photos. A handful of shots of meals I cooked myself (undercooked, unappetizing to look at mostly), but nothing like the plated-perfection I used to snap before a bite. I am the same person who would take a photo of food before even touching it. And now I don’t. 

So I started thinking about this shift. Where are the food photos?

For a long time, glossy food photos were the softest currency on the internet: harmless aesthetic posts, a way to collect likes. A fork in mid-air, a cake with perfect icing, a sunlit plate. That look was once a compliment to the craft of food photography. Now it reads, more often than not, like a flex: money, mobility, immunity to crises the rest of the world is living through. 

So, when did not posting food photos on social media become a political act? And posting them, cringe behaviour? I’m not so sure, and neither are the well-read people I spoke to over the last two weeks. But the shift is there in the data, in the feeds, in the way people now hesitate before posting that restaurant spread.

A photographer friend told me two years ago, "I don't post anything that feels like a show." He had stopped posting photos of "anything that reeks of privilege", with restaurant spreads at the top of his what-not-to-post list. His reasoning: when inequality is this visible, an image can read as flaunting. He didn't want to be part of that signal.

The new shorthand is simple: you are what you post — and posting a lavish meal in a moment of mass suffering or extreme economic strain reads like a public show of privilege.

The Guardian, a few years ago, noted viral TikToks featuring "fresh-faced youngsters menacingly raising their forks at anyone with cars that have start buttons or fridges that have water + ice dispensers." It reads like satire, but the sentiment underneath isn't joking.

Gaza changed the feed

A friend and creator, Prapti Elizabeth — who has a fairly large audience (about 268–269K followers) on Instagram— told me something I’ve heard often in private: after the Gaza war she began to pivot. She started posting information, donation links, and boycott campaigns; she said the images of starving children changed what she felt comfortable celebrating online. 

Now when a bakery gifts her a Christmas cake she tells them she won’t post it. Some brands “get it.” Others simply ghost. Her voice, one of the small handful that publicly engaged on Gaza when many comforted silence, meant fewer safe sponsor fits and eventually a career rethink.

She isn't the only one. Many creators have been consciously avoiding food posts. Politics meeting optics is the first force that hardened this trend. The war in Gaza changed what some creators felt comfortable celebrating. Images and reporting of civilians trapped by hunger and conflict — and the very real deaths of people trying to access food amid the blockade and fighting — made plain celebrations of abundance look, to many, grotesque.

Those constant reports, those visuals, hundreds of deaths linked to people trying to source food: that reality shifts how people read a cake photo.

The second force: a youth-driven culture shift.

From Sri Lanka's protests to waves of posts in Nepal calling out "NepoKids," social media became a space where unease with wealth, nepotism and inequality turned into meme, movement, culture. These movements have normalised the idea that flaunting comfort is morally fraught.

The Algorithm Agrees

Then there’s the fact that food photos are just not working algorithmically. A 2022 article in Eater reports that creators with five-figure followings say they struggle to reach 1,000 likes on food photos compared to earlier. They blame shifts in feed algorithms and a loss of appetite for pure‐plate posts.

“I AM SICK OF RICH OUT OF TOUCH INFLUENCERS...”

I could go on, but this video with the blunt title rips into repetitive unboxings, luxury hauls and content that treats wealth as entertainment while viewers face precarity. You’ll see why a lot of people now flinch at luxe food content. 

And if you need a person to hang the “eat the rich” backlash on, look no further than the RichTok arc. Prapti directed me to creators like Becca Bloom, who built a huge following showcasing Hermès hauls and caviar for her cats. Her rise collided with backlash when mass displays of wealth began to read as grotesque.

There's a psychological layer too: A survey (reported widely in 2024) found 43% of Gen Z and 41% of millennials report “money dysmorphia”, a distorted sense of financial insecurity fuelled in part by social media comparison. That collective anxiety sharpens resentment toward flaunted wealth.

To be clear: this isn't about policing content. Food photos can still be powerful, culturally rich, aesthetic, meaningful. The difference is whether they tell something more than: "look what I got".

When you point your camera at a dish now, the question isn't whether it looks good. It's what you're signalling. Are you feasting, flexing, or telling the story behind the plate? That calculation — the one that makes people pause mid-reach for their phone, the one that turns a reflex into a choice — is why we're taking fewer food photos. Or at least, why I am.

On My Bookmarks

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