Measuring The Unhealthy Side Of Food Porn

According to the Food Porn Index, 78 percent of the images found on social media with the hastag #foodporn are of unhealthy foods.  The Food Porn Index is a new website from Bolthouse Farms that tracks what kind of food we are sharing on social media and asks the question, "Why should junk food get all the glory?"

We know, we know, it's a lot more tempting to tweet a photo of a cheesy pizza or gooey ice cream sundae than it is to brag about carrots on social media. But the choices we make on Instagram may be reflecting our eating habits more than previously thought.

"Through our presence in social channels, it became startlingly apparent that fruits & veggies are severely under-represented within 'food porn," said Bolthouse Farms' vice president of strategic marketing Suzanne Ginestro."What people tweet about and post is a reflection of how we behave in the offline world, and we want to change those habits."

The site just launched this week, and it has been tallying the amount of Brussels sprouts hashtags as compared with pie hashtags (FYI: it's 301,316 for Brussels sprouts versus more than 12.7 million pies) on a daily basis. So will the Food Porn Index make a difference?

"Awareness of the imbalance is the first step to making change and that's exactly what we're determined to do," Ginestro answered.