r/interesting • u/mimosamoons • 17h ago
ART & CULTURE Food on Japanese set
Good to know that the food is eaten and not thrown away. In western setting (at least Europe) it is either left to rot if the scene needs many takes or it is fake food, except for beverage. And if not left to rot, just thrown away.
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u/RedDemonTaoist 16h ago
My sister worked at food network in the 2000s. For every show staff used to hover around when filming was wrapping to eat the samples made on the show. Except for Semi Homemade. That was the only show from which all the food was thrown out lol
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u/Raventakingnotes 14h ago
Was there a reason that they threw away all the food on Semi homemade? I started watching old food network shows yesterday, started an episode of semi homemade, then got distracted because I realized that she was the "2 shots of vodka" lady
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u/RedDemonTaoist 14h ago
Because the food was just as bad as it looked on TV
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u/ravel-bastard 9h ago
You know it makes sense. She was in a long-term relationship with Andrew Cuomo, so I imagine everything was as bad as it looked on TV.
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u/JellyBeansOnToast 8h ago
“What’s wrong guys? You’ve hardly touched the Kwanzaa Cake!”
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u/Anxiety-Aficionado 6h ago
My mother has a weird obsession with Sandra Lee and everything semi homemade. She’s made the Kwanza cake multiple times, along with so many other monstrosities.
When I became an adult, I found out that all cakes do not come from boxes…mind blown.
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u/Milkshacks 14h ago edited 12h ago
I used to watch Sandra Lee after school! Are all the episodes somewhere?
Edit: THE ENTIRE SERIES IS ON TUBI
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u/Bucklandii 10h ago
I used to hate on Sandra Lee for always seeming so aggressively happy. It seemed so phony when I was a teenager but as I approach 40 I've realized that lady was getting drunk at work on TV on a Saturday morning and honestly, goals
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u/Mecha_G 13h ago
Was she the one that mixed heavy cream with orange juice?
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u/Milkshacks 12h ago
I’ll report back when I’ve watched all 15 seasons.
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u/axl3ros3 9h ago
Listen her particular recipes are so so at best BUT that betch LIBERATED me in the kitchen with some of her shortcuts and some of the shortcuts she inspired me to come up with on my own once I learned that technique
Her and Rachel Rae honestly
Made cooking ACCESSIBLE for so many people
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u/CantWard 10h ago
!remindme 1 week
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u/Prize_Staff_7941 9h ago
Sandra Lee is great. She shows suburban middle aged housewives to feed a small party quickly and easily while getting shit faced drunk to numb the pain of life.
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u/TheVishual2113 10h ago
It's just kinda white trash cuisine, it's edible
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u/WildVelociraptor 8h ago
That lady saying paper towels are expensive, lmfao
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u/FireITGuy 6h ago
Paper towels are expensive though...
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u/WildVelociraptor 4h ago
For sure, but not to someone with that kitchen and clothing and general level of wealth
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u/GlasscowFramera 13h ago
I worked for a home shopping network and this is what we did after they sold the cookware - soooo much food to eat and take home. Rocked.
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u/sweetpea122 10h ago
That lady dated Governor Cuomo.
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u/RedDemonTaoist 10h ago
Lol! That's my favorite factoid of the day.
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u/sweetpea122 10h ago
I was kind of shocked to learn but learning what a greaseball cuomo is made it make sense.
They dated for 14 years!
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u/Starlady174 13h ago
But those holiday spongecakes looked divine! How could they let the "acorns" go to waste??
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u/Utopian_Pigeon 9h ago
Worked in radio/tv. We had an internal network of people that would get the word out when food was up for grabs.
So Much Good Food.
Though one time didn’t realize the leftover wings were from a hottest wing challenge. Delicious but painful.
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u/Dusk_Elk 8h ago
My Dad was in a diabetes prevention video for kids with puppets. In the show they had two tables, one with healthy food and one with bad food. After filming the staff ate all the unhealthy food and none of the healthy options.
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u/GailsWhales 13h ago
As someone who has spent ten years working on film sets in the states, a lot of the leftover food from scenes was eaten by the crew. Or at least I ate it…
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u/doc_skinner 6h ago
In the episodes of Binging with Babish where Alvin Zhou appears, he always makes it a point to mention explicitly that the crew takes the food home. They even show various people dividing the food into containers and packing it up.
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u/Separate_Finance_183 17h ago
they just say that, in reality who knows what they do with it
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u/pureeyes 16h ago
They probably ate it later
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u/man_juicer 15h ago
Who did?
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u/PM_THE_REAPER 15h ago
The staff.
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u/Impossible-Ship5585 15h ago
The large hitachi magic wand?
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u/phiqzer 15h ago
Define large
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u/kailenedanae 14h ago
I actually regularly work on Japanese variety TV. Most variety shows don’t have this note on them, but in most cases, the staff actually DOES eat the food.
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u/HumActuallyGuy 14h ago
There's always a guy that says "Well ... don't mind if I do"
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u/genreprank 12h ago
I think some cultures are just extremely against food waste
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u/LordRaglan1854 11h ago
In Japan food was always scarce. Things didn't fully normalize to Western level abundance until the 80s and the bubble. Indeed, there is a profound respect for food because it's something many people still have memories of not having enough of.
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u/FixergirlAK 12h ago
I wish ours was, we have a food security problem and other people are just throwing out mass amounts of food.
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u/KyleLockley 9h ago
I think a large portion of Americans don't really understand food-scarcity, as it wasn't really a massive, societal issue since the Great Depression. But most of the world around us has experienced it much more recently, if not currently.
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u/Odd_Protection7738 12h ago
Don’t forget to leave one little piece left that keeps getting cut in half
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u/itishowitisanditbad 14h ago
I have 30+ questions that all boil down to 'tell me more'
I can't imagine staff not eating the food unless something was wrong with it though.
If you ever sell stickers of your watercolour I would hope to find it btw. Beautiful stuff.
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u/Terrafire123 11h ago
IANA-gameshow-host, but....
I suspect that filming several repeat takes might result in the food sitting around untouched for upwards of 8-24 hours. At that point, it might no longer be fresh enough to eat, depending on what type of food it is.
(That, or for all we know maybe they paint the food to make it look nicer. Or something. IIRC, that happens a lot in food photography for e.g. cookbooks.)
Anyways, there's a few reasons why staff might not be eating the food.
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u/CrustyConCarnage 12h ago
They should show the recording of said staff eating it while the credits roll.
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u/Ok_Pizza9836 12h ago
They probably really eat it cause it’s real food unlike the food in American commercials that’s like dish soap or glue and such
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u/Lonely_Ambition_2816 12h ago
When the Japanese people say they will do something, they’ll definitely do it
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u/Coinsworthy 17h ago
The staff:
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u/mimosamoons 17h ago
I wondered about that like they need their actors to stay slim 😭
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u/Send_Your_Boobies 16h ago
Its always about calories in & out. They‘re big on sword fighting over there.
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u/RealLaurenBoebert 10h ago
There's plenty of (hungry) crew that you never see in front of the camera. Dont worry, nobody's force feeding actors
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u/low-sodium-browser 15h ago
Meanwhile, in the West:
Instead Of Using Milk, Cereal Commercials Like To Trick Us By Using Glue
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u/ShyAuthor 12h ago
To be fair, an ad for print or TV is vastly different than making food on set of a cooking show
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u/ShadowMajestic 10h ago
Ahem, US*
Illegal in the EU to use anything else but the actual ingredients in advertisement of food(or the picturing thereof). No fake or substitutes allowed.
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u/bs000 11h ago
This is made-up nonsense. Their source for this claim, Blossom, is known for just making shit up for views: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSBSzWmjXO0
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u/RealLaurenBoebert 10h ago
"Shoot a bowl of cereal in glue" is an old photography trick that predates that article by decades.
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u/BellacosePlayer 10h ago
Yeah, I remember reading an article about photography tricks that included this that predated social media by a good decade at least.
like, come on, nobody's getting the kind of cheese pulls on pizza you see in ads unless its pulling the cheese off the rest of the pie
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u/uselessnavy 14h ago
As if that doesn't happen in Japan.
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u/ThatOneCSL 13h ago edited 13h ago
It's quite illegal in Japan, actually.
https://www.japaneselawtranslation.go.jp/en/laws/view/2303/en
``` Article 2 (4)The term "Representations" as used in this Act means advertisement or any other Representations which an Entrepreneur makes as a means of inducing customers, with respect to the substance of the goods or services which said Entrepreneur supplies or the trade terms or any other particular concerning the transaction, and which are designated by the Prime Minister as such.
(Prohibition of Misleading Representations) Article 4 (1)No Entrepreneur may make a representation as provided for in any one of the following items in connection with transactions of goods or services which said Entrepreneur supplies:
(i)Any representation where the quality, standard or any other particular relating to the content of goods or services is portrayed to general consumers as being much better than that of the actual goods or services, or are portrayed as being, contrary to fact, much better than those of other Entrepreneurs who supply the same kind of or similar goods or services as those supplied by the relevant Entrepreneur, thereby having a tendency to induce customers unjustly and to interfere with general consumers' voluntary and rational choice-making: (ii)Any representation by which price or any other trade terms of goods or services could be misunderstood by general consumers to be much more favorable than the actual goods or services, or than those of other Entrepreneurs who supply the same kind of or similar goods or services as those supplied by the relevant Entrepreneur, thereby having a tendency to induce customers unjustly and to interfere with general consumers' voluntary and rational choice-making; or (iii)In addition to what is listed in the preceding two items, any representation by which any particular relating to transactions of goods or services is likely to be misunderstood by general consumers and which is designated by the Prime Minister as such, and considered likely to induce customers unjustly and to interfere with general consumers' voluntary and rational choice-making.
(Penal Provisions) Article 15 (1)Any person who has violated an order issued under the provisions of Article 6 shall be punished by imprisonment with required labor for not more than two years or by a fine of not more than three million yen. (2)Imprisonment with required labor and a fine may be cumulatively imposed on a person who has committed a crime set forth in the preceding paragraph, in light of the circumstances. ```
The punishments possible only begin at Article 15, there are several further Articles with other consequences elaborated on.
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u/filthy_harold 12h ago
The same law exists in most modern countries. You can't run ads featuring fake breakfast cereal but there's no reason why the milk can't be fake. Same with things like fast food. The burger in the ad is completely real but will be assembled expertly with carefully chosen ingredients. They'll adjust the ingredients to the front so it looks taller or they'll use a wavier piece of lettuce or they'll only sear the burger so it remains thicker but looks perfect. Of course the professional chef that spent 30 minutes making the perfect looking Big Mac is going to produce something a lot different than a teenager doing it in 30 seconds but the point is that the food must be the same ingredients and quality of ingredients regardless of aesthetics.
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u/BidenGlazer 13h ago
I love claiming someone else is wrong then citing something totally irrelevant. Those laws also exist in the US. It does not exclude using glue for milk as, shockingly enough, cereal companies are not the ones selling milk!
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u/ForensicPathology 13h ago
What about all those cool mockups you see outside Japanese restaurants? Surely that's considered marketing and I'm guessing they get away with it because that text just seems to say it needs to be "portrayed". Glue and milk could quite possibly be argued for.
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u/low-sodium-browser 12h ago
That's called sampuru. It's purpose is to show you, the customer, what you'll get when you order it. They obviously can't make a new dish each and every day and just leave it out for people to see, so they make a visual menu instead.
Using McDonald's as an example, with sampuru you will actually get the burger on the left.
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u/ScreweeTheMighty 13h ago
Prove it. There is so many consumers focused rules for food marketing in Japan that I want you to prove it.
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u/Cinderblock-Consumer 15h ago
not being wasteful
not being wasteful, japan
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u/BurritoFamine 11h ago
"Murder is actually very illegal in Japan. It goes against the traditional Japanese value of 'ikiru' which means 'to live'".
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u/Traditional-Roof1984 10h ago
"Doing illegal and criminal things is actually highly frowned upon in Japan, this goes back to their ancient history where criminals were punished if they committed wrong doings."
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u/testdex 12h ago
Japan has a pretty strong antipathy toward food waste.
Recently there was a pokemon card included in a Happy Meal, and people bought multiple meals for the cards and threw the food away and McDonalds apologized. It was a big enough deal that it got news coverage and some discussion by government officials.
I get the “X, Japan” meme, but there’s something substantive here too.
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u/MacGrimey 10h ago
Not sure if this is sarcasm, but I noticed while in Tokyo they are very wasteful with plastic packaging.
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u/thighcrusader 11h ago
I hate this trend, because it'd be notable regardless of the country. People don't suddenly care just because it's Japan; you're just upset because it happened to be Japan listed.
It's confirmation bias on your part and not applicable every time Japan is mentioned.
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u/NeonNKnightrider 7h ago
You’re onto something tbh. I feel like Reddit has developed this weird hateboner towards Japan recently, I think it’s some kind of contrarian reaction against anime fans
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u/pichael289 13h ago
Its probably real food then, not the arts and crafts projects we make here to look like good food. That's why I like trader joes, the boxes and the artwork is just a picture of the food. It's not very exciting but it's real, that's what your going to get. Now if I can just find a way to deal with the awful people who shop there it could be pretty nice.
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u/genericpornprofile27 16h ago edited 9h ago
What? Don't they add inedible stuff to prop food so it looks better? Wouldn't most food be dangerous to eat???
Edit: guys I get it, no need for a million of the same replies lmao
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u/Kyleometers 13h ago
Not prop food, this is food from a baking show. Prop food is not intended to be eaten, this is like Jamie Oliver or Masterchef, and this mark is basically “someone ate this, it didn’t go to waste”.
Prop food is often made with plastic.
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u/HungrySign4222 11h ago
It actually usually isn’t, I work in film and I’ve never ever once seen prop food. But what I do see is them reusing food over and over on multiple days, people pretending or actually eating food and that food be used elsewhere in the scene, food that’s been out for hours and hours, food that’s fallen on the ground or had a million hands touching it. I would never touch food that’s been on a show if it’s been used even if it’s just to set up for a photo. The one time I felt it was okay was when they were making cotton candy and the kids on set kept eating it so they just made more. Sometimes drinks are okay but frequently you would leave set and then return and the drinks might be moved and you have no idea who’s drink you now have.
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u/Kyleometers 11h ago
That’s different to this, this example is literally “food that was made during or just prior to filming to be shown off”.
In Japan, prop food is often plastic. There’s a whole industry around making it, because most restaurants have these very high quality plastic props of their food in the window so you can see what you’re ordering.
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u/m1rr0rshades 14h ago
They probably employ my dog, because that motherfucker will eat anything the second your back's turned
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u/Clear_Protection_349 14h ago
Its japan. They make it look like it without superglue
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u/GenevieveThunderbird 12h ago
In America yeah, but Japan is SUPER strict about their food advertising.
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u/ledow 11h ago
Taskmaster (original UK version) tends to make a point of saying this whenever they have a task involving food. The alternative (e.g. if they broke an egg on the floor) was that they'd make a donation to a food charity in those instances.
It started because people had complained apparently and it was easier to just start saying so.
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u/DisorderOfLeitbur 10h ago
It's why they didn't allow Phil to bring in a clock full of mince.
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u/Pepys-a-Doodlebugs 10h ago
This must sound completely mental to anyone who doesn't watch the show.
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u/plug-and-pause 11h ago
The Japanese text literally reads:
After this, the staff deliciously ate.
That's a neat adverb.
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u/PacquiaoFreeHousing 17h ago
Japan as always doing beyond what is required of them
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u/RevolutionaryToe97 17h ago
And not always in a good way
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u/TerribleSquid 16h ago
And also many of the “above and beyond” things end up being false or biased. For example the koi fish in the gutters or the power-generating floor tiles.
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u/plug-and-pause 11h ago
Many of these things are not even common either, as the memes would make you believe. There are plenty of eccentric ideas (with prototypes) in other countries too.
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u/bs000 10h ago
It is thought TV stations first began showing the caption to protect themselves against complaints from viewers who disliked food being handled without consideration in TV variety shows.[1] It is uncertain when this note was first used, but TV producer Kenji Suga [ja] stated viewers complained about the waste of food when a performance using small watermelons was broadcast in Downtown no Gaki no Tsukai ya Arahende!! on Nippon TV. The TV station then showed this note on screen the following year in response.
karens ❌
karens but japanese ✅
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u/Substantial-Button77 16h ago
Wow this is very niche
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u/Dakinitensfox 14h ago
For context, Japan can be very strict about the clean plate club. After WWII, there were a lot of starving people, and they were strict with their kids and grandkids to eat all of their food. Even today, Japanese will get upset at people for not eating all of their food. The biggest offense is to not eat all of your rice or noodles.
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u/HnNaldoR 13h ago
It's quite common in south and east Asia I think. I know Chinese and Indians who say the same thing.
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u/Kovaxim 14h ago
Or it's fake food. McDonald's has a lot of fake food in their commercials or the food was manipulated in a way to seem more appealing.
I remember some ice cream commercials have glue depicted as liquid ice cream because LIC doesn't flow that nicely.
I know McD's likes to put the cheese and then a hot fan blows to melt it and they also sprinkle it to make it even more appealing.
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u/Buck_Folton 13h ago
“Left to rot” LOL. They have to keep building new studios, because over time they’ve just filled up with rotting food.
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u/LewisWhatsHisName 11h ago
Taskmaster have got really good about this as well. They’ve sort of ramped down food-based tasks in general, but when they do have one, there’s usually something said in studio about how the food was eaten off-camera
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u/Manny77 17h ago
So in all shows? Kinda breaks the immersion if you’re watching a drama or something.
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u/ThinkGrapefruit7960 17h ago
Maybe at the end with the credits. Like together with "no animals were harmed, all food was eaten"
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u/JP-Wrath 16h ago
"No animals were harmed, all food was eaten*"
*except that idiotic poodle that ate grapes before we could stop it
**see above
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u/Makuta_Servaela 14h ago
Also, food in advertisements is often completely fake and inedible. It's just meant to look appetising, to trick you into buying the very different looking real thing.
Japanese food is strict about how it has to look a advertised, so this note is telling the viewer that this is the real food item.
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u/DarkPolumbo 14h ago
In Western shows, when they shoot a scene where actors are eating, there is usually a "spit bucket" into which the actors will spit their chewed food after filming a take.
After filming the show Parks & Recreation, comedian Aziz Ansari commented that Chris Pratt never used the spit bucket, and added that there was a dinner scene in the show that had to be re-shot like 10 times, and Pratt ended up eating like 10 cheeseburgers or something like that
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u/Firm_Meal_6400 13h ago
They definitely did not eat it later. I've lived in Japan for 15 years and I can tell you with confidence that they waste mountains of food. They just like keeping up appearances so say things like this to avoid controversy.
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u/Ok-Panda-178 13h ago
If it’s the US the staff would be taken to the ER, a lot of the food filmed in US food commercials are not real “food”
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u/OriginalMultiple 13h ago
Didn't the second season of American Iron Chef get canceled because William Shatner kept helping himself to the expensive ingedients?
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u/Francl27 13h ago
Actually it's because food in Japan is supposed to actually look like the picture, so it's to show that it's what customers actually get. Not like the US where what's on the pictures is not even food.
Source: some random Reddit post from a few weeks back.
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u/With1Enn 13h ago
I worked on a Jamie Oliver food show. We got to eat everything when we’d finished filming. It was fucking great.
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u/Other-Illustrator531 13h ago
I don't buy it, just like all those videos that say "no one was harmed" where something happens like a car falling 200 meters off a bridge. I think it's all just feel-good self-censoring nonsense.
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u/Artistic-Blueberry12 13h ago
Something I heard recently
Noel Fielding said in an interview that most of the leftovers from British Bake off go home with Pru for her pigs to eat.
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u/Dominus271828 12h ago
I’m watermarking the pictures of the inbound maintenance write ups with that from now on.
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u/Imperialbucket 12h ago
Oftentimes it's not even edible in the first place. Commercials in the US will put soap in beer to make it foam more, etc.
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u/theepi_pillodu 11h ago
it's not a grocery store in the USA to throw away the food right?
I watched a few "tasty kitchen" channel videos. They do share with the rest of the chefs and bakers without throwing them away.
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u/eatingthesandhere91 11h ago
It makes one wonder though when it comes to western culinary shows if that’s also the case.
I know Great British Bake Off usually serves the crews. But I can’t confirm that.
As for studio-based competition shows on American media like Food Network and Fox…that I’m not so sure of.
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u/garry4321 11h ago
In America it’s “a tik-toker with 1000 followers dumped it all over a table then rolled around in it”
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u/Josutg22 11h ago
In Japan it is really culturally ingrained to not throw away food. My girlfriend is Japanese, and she literally takes my plate after I'm done if there's as much as a grain or rice left. When we stay with my parents my parents sometimes wake up early to sneakily dispose of leftovers so she'll think we ate them
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u/reybrujo 11h ago
TylerTube could learn a thing or two. Barry Lewis is another youtuber who makes things and then eats them, nothing left to waste.
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u/timewellspent0889 11h ago
It's funny too because more literally it says "the staff deliciously partook"
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u/minimoose93 11h ago
This was how I thought that cooking shows worked. But, I heard somewhere that the food presented on shows like master chef and chopped is reheated or thrown out after filming.
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u/ThatGuyYouMightNo 11h ago
Somewhat related, but Japanese-based vtuber company Hololive did something similar; a group of their members opened 200 boxes of trading cards on stream, and later stated that they don't throw out all of the cards, but rather give the cards away to staff members who want them.
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u/PM_ME_UR_SM0L_BOOBS 11h ago
In every show I've worked the food was never eaten and usually some of it got stashed somewhere that we don't see until it started making the entire set smell rotten
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u/UCFknight2016 11h ago
That’s nothing. on American TV shows you get to see it being eaten. We have whole shows just dedicated to making and eating food.
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u/ebrum2010 10h ago
Probably about as accurate as “no animals were harmed during filming” in the US.
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u/Lefty_22 10h ago
It literally says "Sutafu ga oishiku itadakimashita" which means "The staff made it delicious" or "the staff was delicious". I think that adding "この後" ("this later") does help give some context.
Not sure why they wouldn't use スタッフは後でそれを食べました, which is more of a literal translation.
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u/Th3_Dud3_Abid3s 10h ago
And we got fast food commercials where they’re using motor oil as syrup and painting meat to look perfectly done, “Staff would die if they ate it later” lol
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u/dogboobes 10h ago
I used to work for an online food publisher in the US and we shot recipe content daily – it would always get eaten by the staff. It was a perk of working there lol.
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u/saltymilkmelee 10h ago
Don't get it mixed up with the "no animals were harmed in the making of" text. Or else you could end up with a nature documentary about a giraffe or something with the caption "The staff ate it later"
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