The themes of consumption and desire have always been interlinked and have been going on for centuries. From representing something sensual to just depicting something artistic, food has played an important role in the world of romance. Now this has evolved even more. It is not just about those sensual moments anymore. It has become way more important in the dating world. Now, the question is how food became an online dating identity.
We often borrow food-related words while we are talking about sex. We often hear people referring to their partners to be “yummy,” and some people at some point have described the amorous yearning as their “cravings.” I have heard my friend talking about her long-distance boyfriend, saying, “I am going to eat him up when I meet him.” Again, it is needless to lay out how you can ‘spice things up’ in your sexual life with the help of food. Or should I explain?
It is no surprise that food plays a major role in romantic scripts, and there is always a scope to incorporate food into explicit sexual behavior. It does not matter whether it is fine dining, a quintessential movie and dinner date, or a takeout, dates are most of the time centered around food. And now, in the era of online dating, food plays an important role when choosing a date or knowing your romantic prospects through the choice of their food.
Match Your Cravings
There are various dating applications like Bumble and Tinder that ask users to mention their favorite food and their go-to restaurant, and there have been many “chicken parm guys” or some “spaghetti girl” all over the dating apps. I think it is evident from here how food has taken over dating apps and how food has become an online dating identity.
Rebecca Jennings from Vox mentioned in the investigation last year about “Taco Tinder” that dating apps are using food to function differently or making an attempt for better functioning through food as “advertisements for a stranger’s entire personality.” On dating apps, it seems people put something they often eat or which is their first preference.
Meredith Golden, a coach and dating expert, says, “Food is easy to talk about, and it’s also pure hedonism. When people talk about topics that make them happy, the person they are chatting with is perceived in a positive light as well.”
In an interview with Insidehook, Golden, who is a professional ghostwriter on dating app profiles and also drafts messages for her client’s matches, said that she has noticed people mentioning food, including ramen, craft beer, guac, cheese, and without a doubt, tacos.
And it is not just about the food, they also mention the habits and trends that mention how they consume those. She said, “A lot of singles like to mention their keto lifestyle. I’ve had so many conversations around keto and intermittent fasting.”
Food Chats Are Effective
Golden is not the only one who is noticing all this food talk in dating apps. Zoosk, the online dating platform, conducted intensive research on how food chat affected the lives of the users who are dating through the platform. Mentioning the food preference in a dating profile has a way of getting more inbound messages for getting matches.
Mentioning specific foods like guac and chocolate has a more successful message rate while mentioning yams decreased the message rate by almost 70%. The platform also saw an increase in messages by 82% for self-processed foodies. They mentioned the term in their dating profile and made the magic happen.
This is good news for almost 200,000 users who are using the application, the league’s “foodie” group “The Engagement Is Real.” In an interview with InsideHook, their chief of staff, Marko Krosnjar, said.
Initiate A Conversation About Food
But food talk does not always have to be through dating apps. According to Golden, “Food isn’t just relegated to dating apps and dating culture. It’s traditionally an easy subject to break the ice or advance a conversation.”
Mostly, we talk about food in these dating apps because it is something easy to talk about and is a great conversation starter. Along with water and air, this is a very fundamental aspect of our existence that we share with every other human, both online and offline.
According to Golden, “The difference now is that with the apps, if a single list on their Bumble profile that they love donuts, that single is going to have an inbox full of conversations about … donuts. The dating apps magnify the subject because suddenly it’s not just one conversation about donuts but donut conversations on steroids.”
This is not something bad, but while we are on the internet, spending most of the time about what is a personality trait and what is not, the Twitter chorus mostly tends to agree that disliking or liking something popular does not even come close to making the cut.
Wrapping Up!
Be it a valid personality trait or not, mentioning food preference in general or as something specific has become a constant for people who use these applications for their dating life. They have a tendency to align themselves with food as a parameter of choice.
When we are discussing the internet, where the main motive is to get validation from unknown strangers, it is obvious that things will be basic, and it is inevitable.
When you mention your love for ramen, it does not make you, or anyone, for that matter, stand out from anyone in the pack. But it is okay. Your dating app does not need to be the window to the deepest darkest corner of the soul. You can save it for your first date or the fifth one, whichever you prefer.
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