Fair warning: This post contains links to deeply disgusting images. That’s what Mike Adams, the “Health Ranger” and editor of NewsTarget, an online health and nutrition publication, was after when he took extreme closeups of common processed meats. This type of macro photography is usually trained on flowers or insects—you know, nature. Not Jimmy Dean sausage.
Adams obviously wants to turn people away from industrially produced, processed meat, and it’d be hard to pick up a package of Oscar Mayer Cotto Salami after seeing this “huge black chunk of something.” This is macro agitprop—but like agitprop generally, it isn’t playing fair. After all, it seems likely that there’s something about Oscar Mayer Smokies that I’d find repulsive. But a repulsive photograph of a Smokie isn’t it: That just tells me that stupid people shouldn’t be allowed to have really powerful zoom lenses.
“Under magnification, tofu would probably look just as bad,” someone says in a discussion of the photos over at Jane and Michael Stern’s RoadFood.com forum. I’m not sure about that—I think tofu would just look really, really off-white—but I am sure about this: “Me thinks this man is a loopy vegan type who flat doesn’t understand the wonderful world of meat. If he did, he’d know that those fat globs in the Jimmy [D]ean sausage wouldn’t be there after it was fried up.”
This wasn’t very enlightening at all.
the fat looked yummy to me.
i totally agree with grishnackh
The meat made me hungrier… I believe in making homemade and doing as little processed food as necessary.. but I do enjoy some of that Jimmy Dean Sausage from time to time… they taste awesome sliced up (or get the flat ones) heated up, some fresh eggs, and egg muffin toasted and then layer all that with some cheese…heat it up…oh so yummy!!!
…well, that’s what I thought when I saw the fat picture and Jimmy dean sausage linked to it…
Exactly! The sausage looked just about what I thought they’d look like. They aren’t artisan meat tubes, but they are workable ones, handy to have in the freezer for unexpected carnivorous companionship.
If you squish up meat, it’s gonna look nasty. I can only imagine what my teeth, saliva and stomach do to a hunk of sirloin steak. Now I am hungry…
You guys have said it all. I worked as a medical photographer for a very long time, and I know how easy it is to produce macro photographs that’re going to gross somebody out, somewhere, or else the exact opposite. It’s got little to do with real life, though.
I agree. Those photos looked exactly like what I would imagine close-up shots of sausage to look like. All I oculd think while looking at them was, “this is silly.”
I agree. Those photos looked exactly like what I would imagine close-up shots of sausage to look like. All I could think while looking at them was, “this is silly.”
The photos made me hungry.
echh