Tempting online recipes: savers or liars?

I was invited for a dinner with friends and everybody had to bring something. Unfortunately, I did not have any inspiration. As a young Erasmus student of the modern society, I don’t travel with my recipe book (in fact I never had one). Scrolling my Facebook page, I suddenly thought about these small cooking online videos. Halleluiah, I was saved. They always show easy recipes of nice food to share with friends. Are they going to turn me into a little Chef?

Since a year, many different Facebook pages only dedicated to online recipes have been launched. Tasty, launched by Buzz Feed is the most famous one, with nearly 74 millions of fans and 7 alternative pages (Tasty Miam, Proper Tasty, Tasty Japan, Tasty dessert…), TasteMade is the Number One concurrent with more that 21 millions of fans and different according to countries (Brazil, UK, Spanish, Japan), Demotivateur Food is the French proposition with more than 2 millions of fans. Many other pages are launched and most of them are in exponential growth since they started. The hunger of the fans does not seem to decrease.

But two questions remain: do people really cook the proposed recipe or just watch the videos? And why are those videos so famous and appreciated? I decided to understand what were the keys of this success while trying myself one of the recipes.

• Auto-Play format: This format diffused on social networks as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram allows the video to start by itself when you scroll your wall. If you follow the page or if your relatives share or like a video, it will starts automatically and will be seen by a larger amount of people. They are everywhere and have decided to show up.

• Brevity seams to be one key of theses videos. 30 seconds to one minute: this is the perfect timing to catch the audience’s attention. Indeed in our zapping era, content has to be efficient and quickly satisfy us. These videos know how to manage it, they are never boring and once one started, you feel curious to watch it until the end, and see the beautiful result with the delicious final scene. 

However, my own experience teaches me that when you really look for a good recipe to cook it and don’t just want to entertain yourself, this online recipe approach is not that time saving. Indeed, you have to look all the video to see what the ingredients inside are, the utensils required or the time of preparation needed. No indication is written to help you to be efficient in your research. I think I watched 40 videos before choosing the one I liked, and loose good thirty minutes.

• Attractiveness Content: All the videos are really attractive. Beautiful colours, delicious food, we cannot watch it without getting hungry. The reason why? They use sexy food: melted cheese, grilled bacon, whipped cream and chocolate, how to resist. 

But you will understand by yourself, sexy food does not rhyme with healthy food. Most of the time, salad is used as a final decoration and these recipes can’t be used as everyday meals. There is no preventive sentence against obesity on their Facebook pages, and homemade food could be misinterpreted.

• Visual power: The first person perspective of the videos involves immediately the spectator. The situation is shown as real as possible and gives you the motivation to do it at home. Audio-visual specialists make the technical production of the video, based on stop-motion. Each step is choreographed and the light and the angles of plans are dynamic and entertaining. Public need the images to learn, to understand and to have pleasure.

• Creation of communities: The videos are really engaging. On each of them, you can find several thousands of comments. People interact with the company, they ask for some advices or for more videos and a community manager frequently answers. Discussions between consumers also appear, they share the recipe with some friends, but also exchange tips, new recipes, and details about how to do it or share their results and experiences with people they don’t know. This community is dense and varied. Indeed, food is an appreciated subject; people love to eat and love to talk about it. There is no barrier, no knowledge required to participate in this community, but on the contrary, a strong emotional investment.

A lot of sexy food, a pinch of brevity and a spoon of tips; this food channels have definitely found the recipe of success. They manage to make us enjoy their meal with pleasure while imputing us from two primordial senses: the smell and the taste. I believe that more people look at the video that actually cook the recipe, and it is an even greater achievement as they satisfy us only with the eyes.

We collectively consume this media that reached our habits even into the kitchen. Even if these videos will not turn us into little Chefs, they certainly make us rediscover the curiosity, the desire and the pleasure of cooking. People could soon film themselves cooking or, do it online on a direct platform that allows everybody to talk and see each other. I am thinking, we could also all have an online dinner together after? My meal is ready!