Is fresh food becoming a status symbol?

Videos of taste tests and manhunts for the Erewhon strawberries in the States have piled up more and more content under the food-porn hashtag ‘Erewhon haul’ over the past few weeks. Perched like a trophy in an award case on a white cushion, the singular strawberry– imported from Japan and retailing for $19 each– has become the recent magnet of the California-based upscale grocery chain for both its absurdity and opulence, standing as a symbol of indulgence. And where luxury is associated with scarcity, food isn’t just a functional sustenance. It’s a status symbol. 

But this isn’t a new concept. Food has long had a connection to social standing, with pineapples being an elite representation of wealth and power in the 1800s, with hosts borrowing the tropical fruit to display at their dinner parties. The pineapple wouldn’t be eaten, but would rather be admired before being transported to the next party to be ogled– it wasn’t about eating the fruit, but rather visibility. It was about signalling your capital and stance in the social hierarchy.

Fast forward to today, and this same dynamic pervades– but rather than remaining on the dinner table, food’s role as a status symbol has only been emphasised through social media and aestheticisation. Rhode’s recent capsule clothing collaboration with Fila saw an editorial photoshoot of Hailey Bieber spilling coffee and a grocery bag of vegetables onto the floor, positioning fresh produce into luxury branding and demonstrating a relationship between wealth and the ability to waste. In the same vein, Nara Smith’s from-scratch recipes of homemade Coca Cola and Cheez-Its, filmed in marble kitchens clad in designer dresses, are more about the privilege of time and resources– transforming cooking into a luxury experience in an economy where having spare time to intricately prepare food has become another position of social signalling. This extends into the category of fridgescape and restocking content, where status is displayed not just through what is eaten, but how food is stored. With rows of pre-cut fruit in glass containers, colour-coordinated drinks, and collections of non-perishables in labelled jars, these videos showcase an excess of choice, time, and the ability to curate consumption as an extension of personal branding. The food is exhibited.

But the Erewhon strawberry, Rhode’s branding, and fridge scape videos aren’t just desirable for their exclusivity– they’re desirable because the indulgence coexists with scarcity, coexisting in an economy where salmon, butter, and baby formula are security tagged in supermarkets, food insecurity is rife, and work-life balances don’t allow time for intricate cooking. As the upper class romanticises farm-to-table and organic diets, they vilify the working class for relying on frozen, canned, and processed foods, whilst pricing them out of the fresh ingredients they’re shamed for not consuming. When Gary Pilnick, the CEO of Kellogg’s, suggested that struggling families should ‘eat cereal for dinner’, the remark wasn’t just tone-deaf, but representative of a divide where food isn’t just nourishment, but a means of moral judgment. 

From pineapples to TikTok hauls and homemade Cheez-Its, food as a status symbol isn’t a hot topic. But as luxury becomes increasingly defined by contrast– abundance against deprivation, effort against convenience– what we eat, how we cook, and how we store our food has become the ultimate status symbol.