Where a picture is worth a thousand calories

There are plenty of places to find beautifully photographed food on the Internet — on Web pages for restaurants, recipes or candy companies. But food photography can be more than just gustatory Glamour Shots. Here’s a collection of some of the most creative, informative photos of food we’ve found online.

Oklahoma State University hosts a set of extensive food galleries aimed at educating the public about how to recognize portion sizes. The site has separate galleries for vegetables, dairy, meats and oils — and a dazzling array of breads, biscuits and rolls. You can slaver over the Oklahoma State University Food Gallery at www.okstate.edu/hes/nsci/nutrition/NSCI2114/foodgallery.htm

Glamour magazine’s slideshow demonstrates all the extra sides you can eat with your entree — for the same number of calories — should you merely switch to a low fat version of a food. Someone at Glamour must really like raspberries and beer — they show up multiple times as these bonuses.

Salivate over Glamour Health Calorie Math at www.glamour.com/health/articles/2006/12/caloriemath

WiseGeek is a website that tries to give plainspoken explanations of technical questions. One of its archives shows what 200 calories’ worth of a variety of foods looks like, from the least calorie-dense to the most.

My Money Blog’s companion page shows how much each food portion costs, highlighting that fact that many of the least-healthy foods are also the cheapest.

Savor WiseGeek 200 Calorie Portraits at www.wisegeek.com/what-does-200-calories-look-like.htmCompare costs at My Money Blog:

www.mymoneyblog.com/archives/2007/01/what-does-200-calories-cost-the-economics-of-obesity.html

And there’s more! Ever wonder what your fast food looks like up close — really close? Probably not, but you can find out at a website run by Michael Davidson of Florida State University. The university’s Molecular Expressions site catalogs thousands of pictures taken with high-powered optical microscopes, including a gallery of burger ingredients. (No information on how many calories are in one cubic nanometer of a French fry.)

Check out Burgers ‘n Fries Microscopy at: micro.magnet.fsu.edu/micro/gallery/burgersnfries/burgersnfries.html

Most of these links serve as teaching tools, but there’s plenty of room on the Internet for junk-food worship. Feel free to contribute to any of the six discussion topics at the fan site for a famous Los Angeles street snack. Bacon Wrapped Hot Dogs Flickr Group can be found at flickr.com/groups/47726441@N00/

— Chelsea Martinez