Food has played more than the role of a basic necessity for growth, survival and movement. Food is engraved with cultural, political, social and economical connotations and has become a platform for social interactions. The identification of a person, his personality, his religion, region and much more can be derived from what he consumes. Today with the advent of many social media platforms like WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook food in its function has undergone tremendous transformation. In “Food-ography: Food0and New0Media” Patrizia0Calefato, Loredana0La0Fortuna and Rafaella0Sceizi focus on the recent developments in food photography and how it becomes a medium for self-expression. Gourmet photography, photos in social media with hash tags and vivid backgrounds have led to thedeconstruction of food imagery. These platforms enable people to share the images of the food they order thereby announcing tothe world that they are able to own and relish what is placed on the table. These images along with the hash tags and filters propel others to explore similar or the same experiences and thereby recreate what is shown to them. People are drawn into an online platform where they are forced to prove their social, economic and cultural standing in society.

Food thus proves to be the key to deeper and multiple interpretations of meanings portrayed in the social media. This use of food as semiotics is discussed and defined by Roland Barthes, Eivind Jacobsen, Fabio Parasecoli and many more, who in their works analyse how food propagates ideologies of power and gender, thereby transforming food into what Barthes calls as “SIGN”. The paper entitled “ Food Culture as a Fashion Icon in Social Media: A Study of Foodporn” attempts to analyse how food has become a platform for social, cultural and political tension and negotiation.  This study provides an insight into how food transforms itself into a system of communication, body of symbols and images and marker of opposition.

Keywords : Food, Dialectics, Culture studies.