Food is natural. Food is a necessity. Food is something we use every day. So does that mean that it can’t be a form of art? By no means. By Webster’s Dictionary art is “something that is created with imagination and skill and that is beautiful or that expresses important ideas or feelings.” I don’t know if you have ever spent the time to make a beautifully crafted meal, but food can embody every bit of that definition.

I grew up with a mother who has a Masters in food and textiles, and she spent a large part of her life as a home economics teacher. So growing up I learned to cook and bake and one thing I learned is that it indeed is an art form. The majority of creating a recipe is based off of feeling and the style of combining ingredients. You know what end result that you want, but a cook will have to use different styles of stirring or heating the food to make it end just the way the cook wants. I would really compare this to a painting or sculpture. An artist may know that he wants to paint a landscape or a persons face, but they may have to mix the paint several times to find just the right color for the sky or eye color. This is the same as a cook mixing salt into a soup until it is just right.

Some people complain that someone can make a lot of food by just following a few steps and “presto” there it is. This is true, but it completely ignores the creator of the recipe. Elizabeth Telfer agrees with this notion in her article “Food As Art” when she exclaims, “I have argued that we can compare the creator of a recipe to a composer, and the cool who follows one to a performer.” (p.2) If this is not enough to convince someone that food is an art form, just look at this masterpiece.

Tefler, E. (2002). Food as Art. In Neill, A. & Riley, A. (eds.) Arguing About Art: Contemporary Philosophical Debates (2nd ed., Chap. 2). New York, NY: Routledge.