Today, those meanings unfold not only around kitchen tables but also across screens, feeds and platforms, where food has become a dominant visual language. It’s shaped as much by cultural tradition as by global food industries and soft forms of imperialism.
This idea is central to the work of Dina Salha, communications professor and editor of Visual Hunger, a new academic journal exploring the intersection of food, culture and media.
“There’s always been a connection between the food we eat and the stories we tell,” she says. “Our ancestors painted pictures of the hunt on the walls of their caves. The Trojan War started because of an apple.”
Digital food culture dominates life online — and off
If food is a visual language, the internet is now its loudest and most influential amplifier. Celebrity chefs, competitive cooking shows, recipes, reviews and influencers — including mukbang performers who overeat to dangerous degrees — serve an all-you-can-stream buffet designed to satisfy our visual cravings.
Digital food culture influences our offline lives, too. Nearly 8 in 10 Americans decide what to cook based on what’s trending online. Restaurant phrases such as “Yes, chef!” are now part of everyday language thanks to the popular streaming series The Bear and director Mark Mylod’s film The Menu.
Looking for meaning in mukbang
These trends have implications beyond entertainment, says Salha. As food becomes ever more central to digital culture, it also becomes a powerful means to examine how we think about sustainability, identity and global food systems.
“We need to engage critically with the media’s visual hunger for food consumption at local and global levels,” she says.
Her students have taken up that challenge with the enthusiasm of a MasterChef finalist. This year’s class has deconstructed the Chinese government’s crackdown on mukbang videos (part of a campaign to discourage food waste), explored depictions of home cooking in settler colonial contexts and examined the recasting of traditional dishes as competitive endeavours in the Turkish version of MasterChef.
“I’d never thought about how food and media could exist in the same space, so I was immediately intrigued when I saw the course,” says Bianca Polcari, a contributor to Visual Hunger. “I wanted to learn about the intersection of the two ideas, especially since I had long believed that they could never truly intersect.”
“Nothing screams hyper-capitalism more than making money off stuffing yourself with food,” adds student and contributor Drew Williamson. “I’m fascinated to explore the attractive elements of watching a gluttonous display and analyzing what it signifies about our era.”
“Food is intrinsic to our social and cultural structures. It’s how we communicate identity, power, memory, belonging — the whole range of human experience.”
Dina Salha
Eating in class isn’t just encouraged — it’s mandatory
Food is front and centre in Salha’s course, quite literally. Alongside readings and conference planning, students must also build a seminar around a food item that holds special significance to them — and bring samples to share with classmates.
“It can be any kind of food. A stick of gum would count,” Salha says. “What’s key is that students present it from within the context of their own experience.”
For Salha, who grew up immersed in Lebanon’s rich culinary culture, eating together removes the barriers between teachers and learners. That leads to more personal reflections and more insightful group conversations.
“I try to reproduce the community aspect of food to help students feel more comfortable sharing their views,” she explains.
Students appreciate the approach, even if it adds to their workload.
“This classroom is where I’ve felt the most aligned with other people in terms of my values,” says Shems Benmosbah.
“Food is a gateway to a deeper understanding of your peers and the material,” adds Polcari. “Eating together immersed us in our learning and created conversations about the significance of food in our everyday lives.”
A thorny wild plant raises thorny cultural issues
Even topics unrelated to students’ own experiences can elicit insightful reflections. This was the case after a recent screening of the 2022 documentary Foragers. The film explores tensions between elderly Palestinians in the Golan Heights who risk fines and jail time to harvest akkoub (a thorny plant also known as Gundelia that’s akin to an artichoke) for their traditional cooking, in defiance of Israeli agriculture protection laws.
Salha says the laws are typical of a settler colonial system organized to assert control over Indigenous land, ecological knowledge and traditional foodways.
“It was visceral to witness,” says Benmosbah. “Of course, these awful things happen, and we know what side people are on, but it’s still distressing.”
The film offered a stark example of how food traditions collide with questions of land, authority and survival, and how culinary practices can become acts of resistance.
Studying the complexity of human experience
In the “Queens” episode of his show Parts Unknown, the late globetrotting chef Anthony Bourdain said, “When someone cooks for you ... they are telling you about themselves: where they come from, who they are, what makes them happy.”
For Salha and her students, this sentiment captures the heart of their learning. Applying a critical lens to the stories we tell each other through cooking and eating reveals how food can yield remarkable academic discoveries.
“Food is intrinsic to our social and cultural structures,” says Salha. “It’s how we communicate identity, power, memory, belonging — the whole range of human experience. There’s nothing you can’t talk about through food.”
