Wait! Don't munch on that Wendy's Twisted Frosty just yet. It could be one of those extremely realistic fake foods for display. You wouldn't die if you accidentally ate a modern-day faux food, since safety is a significant concern for the companies who manufacture them, still, it is not recommended.
Although most people are completely unaware of it, there is an entire industry behind the creation of display foods. And while today these replicas are most often used for restaurants, movie productions and commercials, people have been making fake food since the time of the Pharaohs. Indeed, they couldn't be expected to travel to the next world without provisions!
Recently, replica food came on the scene in post-World War II Japan, when many people who didn't speak the language visited that country. This made ordering food in restaurants difficult, so the resourceful Japanese put artisans and candlemakers to work creating display fake foods to show the tourists what they were ordering. You've probably seen that some Japanese restaurants in the U.S. still use this sales technique.
Another restaurant use of model food is to populate the dessert tray, especially with fake ice cream that never melts. This practice makes for less ruined food (less spoiled food equals lower food costs), and enhanced sanitation. On movie sets, where a scene could take an entire day to film, artificial food is a must, as is use of materials that won't cause a harmful reaction if the actors or crew handle them a lot. For example, in the United States, the use of lead is prohibited, and only FDA-approved plastics can be part of the mix.
A few other places where replicas show up are at trade shows and in the quality control industry. Wholesale food purveyors can construct eye catching displays at trade shows that won't wilt or spoil and at the end of the day can pack everything up and put it away. Another interesting use of model foods is for machine calibration and quality control. This means that production line equipment can be tested without wasting food or making huge messes if things go wrong.
So, how are faux foods made? Believe it not, most of today's fakes are hand-crafted in a comprehensive process. It starts with the real thing, such as a hot dog, which is used as a model to form the mold and for color matching. A special liquid plastic called plastisol is then poured into a mold and "cooked" in a super microwave. After that it is finished in an industrial convection oven.
After substantial water cooling and hardening, the resulting replica hot dog is buffed, hand rubbed and checked for quality. Then the details are hand painted. If you desire ketchup and a bun with that faux hot dog, you can have it your way, too.
Fake foods have certainly come a long way since the days of Pharaoh!
