Today’s post is all about the food so don’t read it on an empty stomach!
“People who love to eat are always the best people”
Julia Child
Food and Travel
Food is an essential part of our travels – everyone can agree with that. Almost all travelers love to try different dishes, experiment with new foods, mix flavours and spices to see what new food combinations they can discover. We all (travel bloggers) seem to be curious about foreign cuisines and there is nothing better than indulging in a Belgium waffle, Italian pizza, Chinese baozi, Japanese sushi, Polish pierogi, Czech trdelnik or Indian curry, right? More adventurous and passionate food lovers (like Cez and myself) can go a little bit extreme with eating, for example, when trying Chinese bees, fried Thai cockroaches or Vietnamese bugs.
Food obsession in bloggers’ world
In today’s post, I would like to focus on traveler-food relation. What I have noticed, when looking through various travel social media channels, is that we (travel bloggers) are getting more and more obsessed with the food. When I check out Pinterest updates daily, all I can see are pictures of food – delicious looking cakes, perfectly cooked meat, fruity smoothies, jars of candies and bowls of morning cereal topped with berries and nuts. When I check out Facebook updates, the majority of photos illustrate (guess what) food, but this time it’s mostly street food and restaurant dishes. I won’t even mention the Instagram mostly filled with pictures of Starbucks coffees (like I have never seen one in my life:)). Although we follow only travel related accounts on all social media channels, I have a feeling we belong to a culinary, not travel, circle. I don’t mind it. I actually love it. I could stare at photos of food all day long if I could. I love the vivid colors of some exotic dishes, the texture of local specialities and the shape of some fruits I’ve never seen in Europe before. All in moderation though.
Don’t you think we (including myself) often go overboard on food, bombarding others with what we eat when traveling? If so, why do we do it? Is it because we strongly believe that the way to people’s heart is through their stomach or we just fancy looking at something that gives us the pleasure (in this case pleasure of eating)?
Is every travel blogger a foodie blogger nowadays?
Recently, we came across two terms: “foodie blogger” and “foodie traveler”. A foodie is a gourmet, or a person who has an ardent or refined interest in food and alcoholic beverages. Since food has played such a great role in traveling and we all blog about the food we eat in different parts of the world, can we call ourselves foodie bloggers as well? I guess most of budget travel bloggers can identify with the following behaviours:
- Obsessive taking pictures of food before and after each meal (at least 10 different photos of the same food item).
- Daily food binges when travel (we can’t just take pictures of food, we need to try it all for the sake of “food research” for our blog).
- Having a list of favourite foods around the world (the list is getting bigger and bigger every day).
- When we are hungry, we get grumpy and sightseeing is not that much fun.
- We smile when we have a first bite of something sweet when visiting a foreign country.
- We are all coffee lovers (or at least most of us).
- Posing with food in every single picture (most common pose “I pretend I don’t know that you are taking a picture of me while eating”).
Social media triggers
I have never been so passionate about the food like right now. When I started my very first travel experience (London 2008), I was mainly focusing on history of places I was heading to, top spots and monuments, local galleries and museums and never ever cared much about the food I was eating. Actually, I thought that taking a picture of your full English breakfast in London or croissant in Paris was silly, embarrassing and stupid. I was like “Everybody knows what croissant looks like so why should I take a photo of it!?!?” I didn’t have a blog back then though. Since we started blogging and joined the travel social media channels, we noticed that posting photos of food is something natural, normal and yet compulsory.
Once I started focusing more on food when traveling, I discovered a real food passion. Right now, I can’t imagine my week without having something unusual to eat in China and when I travel in Asia, I am excited about the new dishes I am about to try.
Are you also obsessed with taking photos of food when traveling and posting them on social media channels? What do you think about this phenomenon?
