I used to follow about 40 food influencers on Instagram. Beautiful plating, perfect lighting, immaculate kitchens. Every dish looked like it belonged in a magazine. I’d scroll through my feed and feel simultaneously inspired and inadequate.

About six months ago, I unfollowed all of them. Not out of spite or judgment, but because I realized they were making me a worse cook.

The Performance of It All

Food Instagram has become about the photograph, not the meal. People are making dishes designed to look good on a screen rather than to taste good on a plate.

I started noticing this when I’d try to recreate recipes from influencers I followed. The food would look right but taste mediocre. The plating was elaborate, but the actual eating experience was underwhelming.

There was one particularly beautiful pasta dish I made—handmade pappardelle with a wine-reduced sauce, garnished with microgreens and edible flowers. It photographed brilliantly. My Instagram followers loved it.

It was also kind of bland. I’d been so focused on the visual presentation that I’d undersalted the pasta water and the sauce lacked depth. The microgreens were there for color, not flavor. The edible flowers were completely pointless.

I ate it alone, feeling vaguely foolish.

The Ingredient Escalation

Food influencers are constantly chasing novelty. Unusual ingredients, expensive equipment, elaborate techniques. Everything has to be the “best” or “most authentic” or made “the traditional way.”

I found myself buying ingredients I’d never use again. A $15 bottle of white truffle oil for a single recipe. Specialty flours I used once. Exotic spices that sat in my pantry for months.

The implied message was that good cooking required constant novelty and expense. That simple, humble food wasn’t worth documenting or celebrating.

That’s nonsense, of course. Some of the best meals I’ve ever eaten were simple pasta aglio e olio or a perfectly roasted chicken. But those don’t perform well on Instagram unless you’re already an established food personality.

The Perfectionism Trap

When every meal you see online is perfectly plated, perfectly lit, perfectly executed, your own cooking starts to feel inadequate.

I caught myself being disappointed with a soup I’d made because it wasn’t “photogenic.” The soup was delicious—a simple chicken and vegetable situation that my partner and I ate enthusiastically. But it looked like… soup. Brown and homey and completely unphotogenic.

I almost didn’t eat it because I was frustrated that it wouldn’t work for content. That’s genuinely absurd, but food Instagram had warped my relationship with cooking to the point where documentation felt more important than eating.

What Changed When I Stopped

The first thing I noticed was how much more relaxed cooking became. I wasn’t thinking about angles or lighting or whether the dish would work visually. I was just cooking.

I started making simpler food. Not because complicated food is bad, but because I was choosing recipes based on what I wanted to eat rather than what would photograph well.

Stews and braises came back into rotation. They’re ugly but deeply satisfying. Roasted vegetables that caramelize to brown and uneven. Fried rice that’s delicious but photographs like a brownish pile.

My cooking improved because I was focusing on flavor and technique instead of appearance.

Cooking from Actual Cookbooks

I pulled my cookbooks off the shelf—actual physical books I’d bought over the years and barely used because Instagram provided infinite recipe inspiration.

Marcella Hazan’s “Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking” sat on my shelf for three years before I properly used it. I’d made one or two recipes early on, but mostly I was cooking from Instagram screenshots and saved posts.

I started working through Hazan methodically. Her food isn’t flashy. It’s classic Italian home cooking—simple ingredients, proper technique, deep flavor. It doesn’t photograph particularly well by Instagram standards.

It’s some of the best food I’ve made.

Same with other cookbooks I’d neglected: “Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat” by Samin Nosrat, “The Food Lab” by Kenji López-Alt, Diana Henry’s “From the Oven to the Table.” These books teach you how to cook, not how to create content.

Relearning to Trust My Palate

Food influencers are often selling a specific aesthetic or philosophy. Clean eating, keto, paleo, whole foods, whatever the current trend is.

I realized I’d stopped trusting my own palate. If a recipe called for nutritional yeast instead of Parmesan because it was vegan, I’d use nutritional yeast even though I’m not vegan and I like Parmesan better.

If someone said you should only use pink Himalayan salt because regular salt is “processed,” I’d buy pink Himalayan salt even though it’s chemically almost identical to regular salt and costs five times as much.

I was outsourcing my taste preferences to people whose job is to seem authoritative about food, not necessarily to cook well.

Eating Became More Enjoyable

When I stopped performing meals for an audience—even an imagined future audience—eating became more pleasurable.

I could make a meal, eat it while it was hot, and enjoy it without thinking about documentation. I could cook things that tasted good but looked ugly. I could prioritize convenience and simplicity when I was tired instead of pushing myself to make something “impressive.”

Food became nourishment again instead of content.

The Influencers Aren’t Wrong

I want to be clear: I don’t think food influencers are malicious or that food photography is inherently bad. Beautiful food photography is an art form, and plenty of talented people do it well.

The problem was how I was consuming it. I’d let it replace actual cooking knowledge with performance anxiety.

For people who can engage with food Instagram healthily—getting inspiration without comparison, appreciating beautiful plating without needing to replicate it—it’s probably fine.

I couldn’t do that. It had become unhelpful for me.

What I Follow Now

I still use Instagram, but I’ve shifted who I follow.

I follow a few working chefs who share technique and process rather than just finished dishes. I follow people who cook home food enthusiastically but imperfectly. I follow some food historians and agriculture accounts that share context about ingredients and food systems.

I’ve mostly replaced recipe scrolling with cookbook reading and food writing. Longer-form content that teaches you how to think about food rather than just replicating specific dishes.

Cooking Is Better Now

I’m making better food than I was six months ago. Not more photogenic food—actually better food that tastes more delicious and feels more satisfying to cook.

I’m spending less money on novelty ingredients and more on quality basics. Better olive oil, good butter, properly sourced meat and vegetables.

I’m cooking more intuitively, adjusting seasoning to my preference rather than following recipes rigidly.

I’m enjoying it more.

The Honest Truth

Food culture online has become divorced from actual eating in many ways. It’s about aspiration and aesthetic and status signaling.

That’s fine if you enjoy it. But if you find yourself stressed about cooking, constantly comparing your food to what you see online, or making dishes that photograph well but don’t satisfy you—it might be worth questioning whether food Instagram is helping or hindering your relationship with cooking.

For me, stepping away was clarifying. I cook more simply, eat more enjoyably, and spend less time worried about whether my dinner would work as content.

That’s worth more than any Instagram post.

For food writing that focuses on actual cooking rather than performance, I recommend Lucky Peach’s archives, Helen Rosner’s work at The New Yorker, and Nigel Slater’s writing—all focus on the pleasure of cooking and eating rather than the performance of it.