Instagramming my food for a month made me realize who my real friends are

It was a moderately foggy August afternoon. I sat at my kitchen table, scrolling and double-tapping through the ‘gram, and thoughtfully munching on some baby carrots.

While perusing my Explore feed, a beautifully composed picture of strawberry ice cream caught my attention. I gazed at it longingly for a moment, and then I had an epiphany mid-bite: What would happen if I made an Instagram for my food?

Would I eat more healthily? Would I improve my plating skills? Would I annoy my friends? Hell if I knew.

I immediately made an account with the handle @jamie.eats, followed an inordinate amount of people who probably did not want me to do so, and promptly posted my first photo. It was time to live like a foodstagrammer.

I found that I needed to work on the composition of the photos, so I experimented with succulents as garnish.

I gave cooking advice and helped people learn from my mistakes.

I introduced my followers to new kinds of cuisine.

I even recommended food storage options to diversify my feed.

After a week or so, my Foodstagram was thriving. The colors were brighter. The filters were stronger.

My plating skills developed into those of a learned artist.

I found that even I was starting to believe the bullshit captions I was spewing.

After noticing that photos with circular formations received the most likes, I made concentric plating a priority but claimed it was for health reasons.

Man, was this addicting. And despite some of my more *ahem* alternative posts, I was actually starting to eat healthier. A beautiful foodsta requires color, and the more colorful my meal was, the more healthy it was too.

Actually, no, I didn’t start to eat healthier at all.

I experimented with a minimalist aesthetic when I had limited resources.

The general response to my Foodstagram ranged from “pleasantly quizzical” to “I must disassociate myself from this strange girl.”

But when people responded positively to my posts, I sure knew who my real friends were.

Most importantly, I learned that instagramming my food was bizarrely fulfilling. It gave me a platform to be an expert with no expertise, and as far as I can tell, my followers accepted my knowledge as the gospel truth.