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Side of slop? Bizarre AI food images jump from online to IRL menus
(www.nbcnews.com)
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this post was submitted on 02 Sep 2026
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You presumably make the food nearly every day.
I would imagine you probably have a phone with a built in camera.
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Do I have to spell it out?
But the food we make is ugly bro!
Food photography is actually an entire branch of photography, and a lot of the photos you have historically seen haven’t been real edible food. For example, the milk in the bowl of cereal on your cereal box? That’s usually white Elmers Glue. Because real milk won’t sit below the cereal, and will be too watery. It also allows them to precisely set the individual cereal pieces (rings, flakes, etc) in place and the glue will help prevent it from floating around.
The ketchup on a burger is usually thick red paint, applied around the edges of the rubber pickle with a syringe. Because they want to make sure the ketchup looks like it’s squeezed around the pickle (rather than being squished into the burger bun), and they want to make sure the ketchup is showing around the pickle juuuust enough to be obvious, without obscuring the pickle.
The funny part about food photography is that the methodology is largely regional. For example, Japanese audiences largely expect a burger photo to have the bun sliding off of the burger, like so:
Originally it was done to prevent the bun from obscuring any of the ingredients. But now it is a sort of cultural thing, where lots of menus do it simply because that’s what the other menus do. But it also means that Japanese burger photography is done using different materials and methods than western burger photography. But to use the second image as an example, that runny egg yolk on the right burger is probably some sort of inedible yellow paint. Because the photographer wants controllable color and consistency, and cooking is rarely consistent enough for that. The glaze on the meat is probably some kind of clear-coat rosin or spray. The egg was probably cooked hard and then sliced with a scalpel to create that perfect wedge slice for the yellow paint to be added. Etc…
If I recall, in the US, anything in a food advert photo that is meant to come with the product -- IE, the toppings of the burger -- must be real food, and cannot be paint or such or that's false advertising. The milk in cereal is provided by the consumer, so they can use the glue there. And while the ketchup is applied via syringe, it is, in fact, ketchup: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mIEhDSWXeF4
What they get away with is the arrangement of the ingredients, things like splitting and spreading a pattie to make it appear larger, fluffing the choice lettuce pieces and tomato slices, using hidden toothpicks to arrange things.
It's possible the Japanese ad you presented isn't food at all, and just model food, like presented in shop storefronts -- looking like the real thing. That steam is definitely added after the fact. It also has a bit of a sheen in spots on the bread that makes me think it's just plastic, but I don't think the same "false advertising" laws apply in Japan.
Right. If you're selling ice cream, the ice cream is ice cream. If you're selling brownies, and there's ice cream in the background, that ice cream is mashed potato.
They'll also make ten burgers and pick the most photogenic one.
Not that it matters, because your burger will never look like the picture.
All true and well said, but if we're talking about some small one person or family operation with a limited budget, I'll take a snapshot from their phone over AI slop every time.
Oh, I agree. My point was simply that if a restaurant is trying to ditch the “mom and pop” vibes and get professional photos for their menus, it’s not something that is done on a whim. It’s not just a “snap a pic with your phone and post it on your menu” type of thing if a restaurant is trying to look like more than a family owned joint.
And that’s before we even get into the actual menu design, because a well-formatted menu is designed to draw customers towards the most profitable items. All of those highlighted and “chefs special” menu choices that are in big bold bright letters in the center of the menu, with accompanying pictures? Yeah, the restaurant has done the math on the raw ingredients and prep time for each menu item, and those featured choices are the items that are most profitable for the restaurant to make. The goal is to encourage people to buy the things that make the most money. Those small menu options that are tucked away in the bottom of the menu like a footnote? Those are the least profitable. A good menu layout can increase dine-in profits by upwards of 10-20%, simply by encouraging people to order the most profitable items.
And while I don’t agree with using AI for the food images, I can see how a restaurant manager would balk at a $10k professional food photographer bill. Especially when that also requires closing the restaurant for a day, (meaning a day of lost profits) so the photographer can work with the cook staff for the photos during a dedicated photography session. Why would they eat that massive cost, when they could generate a “good enough” (meaning the majority of people won’t notice or care that it is AI) image for free in a few minutes? Again, I don’t agree with it, but I can see why a restaurant manager would see it as an attractive alternative.
I can understand how this business may work as I worked in graphics for years.
But still, in my opinion a good menu has no pictures: today we have this and this and this, the price is this.
That's all I need to know and that is how I know the place is good. The moment when a restaurant needs to take pictures of their food to attract customers, I have no reason to believe their food has an acceptable quality level.
If a restaurant has enough employees as to have a manager, why would you ever go in such a place to eat? A restaurant either has an owner or it is a chain, if it is a chain the quality is not going to be good.
That's not acceptable, that's not professional, somebody is going to eat that burrito - are you going to file their permission to use the image of their food? Too complicated.
Maybe they suck at making the food?
Maybe they also suck at taking photos, but if I see food (or anything else) advertised with a slop image, there's a 0.00% chance I'm buying it. It just reeks of dishonesty and laziness, plus I hate ai. With no image, I might actually buy it. I've actually ordered food from many a text-only menu.
The only reason I may order food from a place which has pictures in their menu is if it is some kind of exotic cuisine which is mostly unfamiliar and thus I'd need a picture to understand what I'm ordering.
Otherwise, AI or not, there's no way a restaurant with pictures in their menu is going to be decent.