Last month, news of a single strawberry hit the internet like a meteor. The item, flown from Japan to LA, was being sold in-store at Erewhon for $20. Encased in a vial like a giant diamond, the red fruit went viral after TikTokers such as @alyssaantocii taste tested it, with 18 million people tuning in to watch. She claimed it was 'the best strawberry' she'd ever eaten. The video triggered a catalyst of copycat videos (including from Demi Lovato), discourse around 'dystopian capitalism' and satire of the infamous berry. Turns out Alyssa's aunt and uncle own Erewhon and she'd started a viral marketing campaign brands can only dream of.
Except it's not just overpriced strawberries. In 2025, food is seemingly designed primarily to be seen, rather than eaten. We've had the Duchess of Sussex's one-skillet spaghetti, Dua Lipas controversial pickle juice Diet Coke and a UK shortage of pistachio nuts thanks to people trying to make their own versions of the Dubai chocolate that amassed 64m views on TikTok.
In many ways, the current trend towards fetishising food isn't new. In the late-2010s, 'what I eat in a day' videos exploded online, and lifestyle and wellness influencers would share snapshots of their vibrant acai bowls, with identically sliced strawberries and a perfect line of chia seeds adorning them. Since then, food videos have been an iron-fortified pillar of social media and a well-trodden route to virality. A big reason behind this is people’s desire for authenticity and transparency more generally, says Dr Gillian Brooks, a senior lecturer in strategic marketing at King’s College London. ‘Because of this, viewers crave the user-generated content we’re seeing, ’ she says, such as ‘what I eat in a day’ videos, non-professional recipes, ‘honest’ recommendations and cooking mishaps that now proliferate the internet.
What’s new is that other industries, namely beauty, have cottoned on to this fact and are co-opting our cravings for something tasty to market their own products. Hailey Bieber perhaps started it with her ‘glazed donut’ skincare – a term to encompass the dewy, hydrated base look she popularised. Since then, Milk Makeup has adopted its famous tagline for its Cooling Water Jelly Tint (‘so juicy, it’s almost good enough to eat’), while just last month Rhode’s caption for new blush and lip tint trumpeted ‘a bite of berry’.
‘It’s a strategy designed to evoke multiple senses and create a vivid, emotional connection with consumers,’ says Professor Jaideep Prabhu FBA, a professor of marketing at Cambridge Judge Business School and fellow of the British Academy. He explains that ‘sensory-driven marketing uses language, imagery and product design to stimulate not just sight, but also imagined taste, smell and touch’. By drawing on these very well-known reference points, companies invite us to experience the product before we’ve even bought it.
Does it matter that engaging our base desires for the mouthwatering makes us much more pliable to the source of this emotion, even if it’s a newer version of a lip gloss we already have? Some might say that it’s simply the new marketing ploy to get our purses to open much more freely.
But on the other hand, these viral food moments reinforce the idea that food isn’t something to be eaten or enjoyed physically. Just as fruit platters and rice bowls carefully crafted to be pieces of art leave some users with the dangerous idea that food should look beautiful and eating it would ruin that, so viral foodstuffs fetishise what’s supposed to be a simple pleasure. When did you last sit down for a meal without someone grabbing their phone to capture content?
At a time where Ozempic is nearly as normalised as Botox, and smaller bodies have returned to the mainstream, presenting food as something to idolise and mimic doesn’t sit in isolation. We’re being encouraged to chew on the memory of food, rather than enjoying it first-hand. We’re divorcing taste from the pleasure of food and funnelling it into capitalism instead.
Yes, craving a new chocolate lip tint and adding to basket can be delicious. But it’s just not the same as that first bite of a salted caramel Gü pudding.