If the mouth-watering food you see in print advertisements and TV commercials looks good enough to eat, think again. Food stylist Joy Shefter begins her day early, grabbing her tools to create tantalizing foods for the entertainment industry. Although her creations are beautiful and appetizing, her methods make her food inedible.
Cereal To make breakfast deliciously tempting, Joy puts cardboard in the bottom of a cereal bowl to keep the fruit and cereal afloat. White glue turns into breakfast milk, and cereal is added on top. If the cereal was done for an actual shoot, each individual piece would be placed on separately. A couple of berries are placed on top to complete the effect.
Hamburger The perfect burger is made by browning ground beef in a frying pan, but only long enough to get the surface brown. The plump, undercooked patty is placed on a bun, and brown sauce is painted on the edges of the burger to make it look darker. Metal skewers are heated and placed on top of the burger to create grill lines. Next comes a layer of lettuce and onion that is secured with straight pins. To make a cheeseburger, a cheese slice is melted with a hair dryer, then set by dipping the edges in ice water before placing it on top of the onion. What is a burger without a tomato? Tomato slices are slit to make them look larger, and then they're placed on top of the cheese. Mustard is added, then glycerin is painted on the lettuce to preserve its fresh and crisp appearance.
Ice Cream Real ice cream would never hold up under the hot lights of a studio, so Joy and other food stylists use an alternative that doesn't melt. Solid vegetable shortening, light Karo Syrup, and powdered sugar are combined to produce a substance that looks very much like ice cream. After this concoction is molded on a piece of parchment paper, Joy uses an ice cream scoop to place it in a soda fountain glass. Next, she adds paper towels to the "ice cream" to bond molasses to the mixture. The molasses will resemble chocolate syrup. Cool Whip topping is then scooped on and a cherry with a curled stem is placed on top.
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