According to the annual Waitrose report, social media is vastly changing the way people consume food

More than 50% of people are likely to make more effort when cooking a dish, if it’s for guests or if they think it will appear on social media, according to the new annual Waitrose report.

Certain industry insiders in both the UK and the UAE have also suggested that some restaurants and cafes now create dishes specifically with the idea of encouraging customers to take photographs of the dishes and posting them on Instagram and other social media platforms (dry ice, anyone?).

While other restaurants are going as far as to train staff to help customers to share social media images of their meal.

According to the study, which included 2,000 British respondents, four in ten people care more about the presentation of their food than they did five years ago.

James.P.Hall who authored the report said in The Telegraph that he thought there were several reasons why this was the case:

“There’s a “coarse logic” explanation, which can be described as the Everest principle: we take pictures of our food because we can… Today, though, there’s an extra ingredient: the so-called humblebrag. When someone posts and tags a picture of their dish at The Ivy, are they really showing us the steak in front of them, or are they signposting that they’re at dining in one of London’s most exclusive eateries? The answer seems depressingly obvious.”

With billions of food images shared on Instagram alone, it’s a trend that’s unlikely to change anytime soon.