The Internet, specifically social media had dealt a huge impact on every aspect of our lives. From aesthetically pleasing shots of food, and clothes that someone owns for clout, to setting the trend on what’s the good thing to do, eat, or wear, not only has social media affected our culture, but also Japan’s food culture. Japan Times details the heavy impact and change social media has on what people want to eat nowadays:
The photographic skills of the uploader became very important and, at the same time, there were many examples of food that wasn’t just made for show that became wildly popular because it was ba-e (good looking). Few foodstuffs demonstrate this as well as bubble tea, called tapioca milk tea in Japan. Tapioca had an early peak in popularity in the 1990s, but the big tapioca pearls in the milk tea introduced from Taiwan around 2015 were deemed to be particularly ba-e, and millions of Instagrammers pose with cups of the cute drinks.
While Instagram helped to popularize the notion of regular food as visually attractive, most people (women especially) no longer seem that interested in making highly complicated food. Short and sweet recipes are now the norm, and choi-tashi (adding just a bit of something to packaged food to make it different) recipes are very popular.
image credit: via wikimedia commons