14 Hidden Hollywood Food Styling Secrets You’ve Never Heard Of

Food stylists in Hollywood are practically wizards—except instead of pulling rabbits out of hats, they transform heaps of mashed potatoes into stunning ice cream sundaes. Making food look photogenic and appetizing on screen is a true art form. Mytour spoke to food stylists who’ve worked on everything from Game of Thrones to Taco Bell ads to reveal the secrets behind their craft.

1. MOST OF THE FOOD SEEN ON SCREEN IS ACTUALLY REAL.

While food stylists still rely on classic tricks—like using white glue to mimic milk—those methods are being phased out. Today, directors want actors to engage with real food, and with the rise of high-definition cameras, fake food is too obvious. Plastic food props are now typically used only in background scenes, where they’re less noticeable and scrutinized.

“I only work with real food,” says Chris Oliver, the food stylist behind movies like Gone Girl (2014) and TV hits such as Seinfeld and Big Little Lies. “You also have to consider how a character would cook or arrange a dish. Realistic food isn’t always picture-perfect. I even make imperfect and burnt food when needed.”

In commercial food styling, there’s a growing trend toward presenting dishes that aren’t flawless. Shellie Anderson, who has styled food for brands like Burger King and Ragù, explains that consumers now want food to look more authentic and, consequently, more relatable.

“People are tired of seeing food in TV commercials that doesn’t look like what they get at a restaurant,” she says. “The goal is for food to appear natural, not staged. For instance, you want a burger to look like the cheese has naturally melted and dripped onto the plate.”

2. THEY GO THROUGH A LOT OF FOOD...

When a food stylist needs a single sprig of parsley for a shoot, they might end up ordering 10 bunches. They never know the condition the parsley will be in when it arrives or if they’ll need more than originally planned. Filming a turkey carving scene? That could require up to two dozen birds if the actor keeps messing up his lines.

“It really depends on how significant the food is to the story and how crucial the scene is for the director,” says Oliver.

Food stylists often develop close relationships with produce vendors who help find the exact size, shape, and color of items needed. There are no bruises, dents, or frozen lettuce allowed! But if needed, stylists can hide these imperfections.

Ice cream is notoriously difficult to keep intact since it melts so fast. To avoid this, food stylists often swap scoops for meringue, which doesn’t melt, or sugar-coated butter. Oliver prepares her sundaes a day in advance, freezes them with spoons and straws, and if they freeze solid overnight, they’ll last a few hours on set before being swapped for another sundae from the deep-freeze. Anderson uses cold spray, an aerosol of super-chilled gas typically used for cooling electronics, to keep her ice cream in shape.

3. ... BUT THE FOOD RARELY GOES TO WASTE.

On film and TV sets, leftovers are practically nonexistent. In fact, food stylists often find themselves competing with caterers: Actors are expected to eat the food during scenes, and the crew usually finishes the leftovers. While filming a Chinese New Year scene for Fresh Off the Boat, actress Lucille Soong told Oliver, the stylist for that episode, that she planned to skip lunch so she could truly enjoy her food on camera. “That was pretty flattering!” says Oliver.

Since Oliver works on multiple TV shows in a day, if an item doesn’t get used and stays in her cooler, she simply takes it back to her shop and reuses it on another project. If it can’t be recycled, she’ll take it home to make salsa or jam. “When it’s too old, I just put it in vodka,” she says.

Commercial shoots tend to have more unused food. Anderson shares that anything still fit for consumption is donated to food pantries. “Once, I donated an entire swordfish after a commercial for a fish restaurant,” she recalls. “We never even used it. I kept it on ice and delivered it to a men's homeless shelter. They were thrilled to receive it.”

4. THEY VALUE FOOD SAFETY.

One reason food stylists frequently swap out food on set is due to safety concerns—hot and cold foods need to be maintained at specific temperatures, which isn’t always practical on set. For instance, sushi-grade tuna might be substituted with watermelon because the fish spoils quickly.

Oliver insists that all her team members have a food handler’s license. She also only operates out of commercial kitchens, including the one on her fully-equipped food styling truck. Not all food styling teams do this; some prepare food in their own homes. “The reason I get so much work is that everyone knows I’m a chef and I have a real kitchen,” Oliver explains. “People trust my food. I’ve worked on several movies with Reese [Witherspoon] because she knows if I’m on set, the food is safe to eat.”

5. WOMEN ARE THE LEADERS IN THE FIELD.

While there are a few well-known male food stylists, the majority of top food stylists in the U.S. are women. (Both of Anderson’s daughters are food stylists as well.) This trend dates back many years.

Before food styling became its own profession in the 1990s, network employees with home economics degrees (mostly women) were responsible for cooking the on-camera food. Later, the props departments took over. “But props guys can’t even make spaghetti,” Oliver jokes. According to her, these men would often go home and ask their girlfriends or wives to prepare the food for the next day’s scene. “Eventually, they’d just hire their girlfriends or wives to do it; keep it in the family,” she says. “I know five food stylists who were once in relationships with prop masters.”

In the 1990s, as networks began producing more multi-camera TV shows, food started appearing more frequently on screen. Actors also started sharing their dietary preferences—vegan, sugar-free, low-carb, and so on. Oliver, who trained at the Culinary Institute of America and worked in restaurants and catering, found herself transitioning into food styling. “Since I was a chef and understood food, I knew how to feed people and make food last on set,” she explains. “And I could charge whatever I wanted.”

To break into food styling today, it's helpful to have industry connections and a culinary background. Everyone starts as an intern, gradually moving up to an assistant, and eventually becoming a stylist. “Not everyone can be a food stylist,” Anderson says. “You need to be able to cook, but also be creative. And you need to work quickly and under pressure.”

6. THEY NOW LIVE OUTSIDE OF LOS ANGELES.

As movies and TV shows are now often filmed all around the globe instead of solely in Los Angeles, food stylists can set up shop anywhere. For example, Vancouver, British Columbia, has become home to a significant number of stylists, thanks to its booming film industry. Labor laws also frequently require production teams to hire locally, so living outside of L.A. can be a major advantage.

Some commercial food stylists, like Anderson, are flown in specifically for shoots. “Food stylists can make or break a commercial,” she says. “And if you’re inexperienced or unsure, it can cause real issues for production.” This is particularly true for international shoots, where stylists lack the familiar resources they rely on. As a result, clients who know Anderson’s expertise, like Taco Bell, will bring her in wherever they’re filming.

7. THEY SPEAK THE LANGUAGE OF CHEFS AND FILMMAKERS.

Food stylists combine kitchen terminology with film-specific language. For instance, 'hero' refers to the food featured in the script and prominently displayed in front of the actor. 'Bite and smile' occurs when an actor takes a bite of food and pretends to enjoy it. 'All day' represents the total amount of food needed for a shoot; if five turkeys are required, they’d say 'five all day.'

8. NOT EVERYONE ASPIRES TO BE A MOVIE STAR.

Food stylists typically focus on specific media such as film, TV, commercials, or print editorial. Many stylists develop a strong preference for one medium over the others. Print editorial allows more creative freedom in a controlled studio, while commercials are dictated by brand specifications. Film and TV shoots, especially those on location, tend to be less predictable and physically challenging. However, regardless of the medium, stylists usually work long, 12- to 14-hour days, and commercials can take up to three days to shoot a 30-second spot.

When working on a film or TV set, the needs of the actors often take priority over the food requirements. After working on one film, Anderson decided to focus exclusively on commercials. 'In commercials, the food is the star,' she says. 'Directors want to make sure I have everything I need. On a movie set, they could care less about the food.'

9. FOOD STYLISTS DO MORE THAN JUST PREPARE FOOD.

Food stylists sometimes face the challenge of crafting futuristic or fantasy-themed items, things they’ve never encountered before. For example, while working on the TV show Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Oliver created gooey, edible slime entirely from her imagination. 'I also had to accommodate the actors’ specific dietary requirements,' she says. 'I had to make vegan slime, sugar-free slime, gluten-free slime, gelatin-free slime ... Slime, any way you want it.'

Oliver is also tasked with creating food that you'd rather not eat. On the set of the TV show Big Little Lies, she made green-colored vomit for actress Reese Witherspoon, using cucumbers and parsley. It was surprisingly tasty, like green gazpacho. In a war film, she had to prepare 400 pounds of 'dirt' for a scene with prisoners of war. She sourced Pakistani soil to match it exactly. Her recipe included ground-up Oreos, graham crackers, brown sugar, and white sugar.

Janice Poon, the food stylist behind the cannibal-focused TV show Hannibal, faced an even more challenging task: creating food that resembled human flesh. She refused to research cannibalism websites, but instead delved into anatomy books. 'I’m just like Dr. Frankenstein,' Poon explained. 'I’m always stitching things together, swapping one type of meat for another, piecing things onto bones ... The key is letting the viewer’s imagination fill in the gaps.' She transformed veal shanks into human legs and used prosciutto slices to simulate parts of a human arm.

10. THEY PACK SOME SERIOUS GEAR.

When on set, food stylists must be ready for anything. Their toolkit includes an array of items such as tweezers, scissors, paint brushes, knives, offset spatulas, wet wipes, syringes, rulers, Q-tips, and spritz bottles.

“Think about your kitchen: all of your mixing bowls and utensils ... I have all that, but in multiples, in my kit,” says Anderson. She also carries a torch to quickly cook burgers and cold spray to preserve the life of ice cream. Other stylists may have glycerin to add shine or Kitchen Bouquet sauce to enhance color. Poon often uses a white ceramic knife, which allows her to see her work better on dark sets and make less noise, ensuring the actors aren’t disturbed.

Food stylists frequently work in unpredictable environments. Oliver takes her 17-foot, cab-over truck to shoots, which comes with a lift gate and wheels so she can create a mobile kitchen, even in the middle of the desert. Inside, the truck is equipped with a full commercial kitchen, including a six-burner stove, refrigerator, microwave, grill, freezer, prep tables, storage, TV, and a generator.

11. THEY’RE SKILLED AT IMPROV.

When production begins, the prop team sends out memos to actors or their representatives to inquire about food allergies and dietary restrictions. As professional chefs, most food stylists are more than happy to work with these limitations, crafting convincing alternatives. "I find out what they will eat and make it happen," says Oliver.

For instance, Poon once created a believable vegan version of 'raw meat' for Hannibal using only grains. "I made lamb tongues out of bulgur and water," Poon shared with HopesAndFears.com. "It’s like making a Lebanese kibbeh. You mix cracked wheat with water to create a mush that holds together. The texture is a bit 'nubbly,' so I added pink food coloring, shaped them into lamb tongues, steamed them, and they were my little lambs' tongues."

Occasionally, a director will change their mind at the last minute. What was meant to be a spaghetti dinner might suddenly turn into a breakfast spread. In such cases, the food stylist may need to adapt, squishing the meatballs into sausage patties. Food stylist Melissa McSorley recalled an incident with NPR where a director unexpectedly decided to cut into a birthday cake she had made – but the cake wasn’t real.

"We had to cut the Styrofoam cake with a saw because none of my knives could handle it," McSorley explained. "Then we had to layer in actual cake to make it look real, and send people off to various markets to find white layer cake so the background actors could seem like they were eating it."

12. THERE’S ALWAYS THE SPIT BUCKET OPTION.

Professional actors often nibble at the food in front of them but avoid actually eating it, knowing that multiple takes will be required; they could end up eating the same dish, like birthday cake, for hours. On the other hand, some actors dive right in. For a scene in The Guilt Trip (2012), Barbra Streisand had to pretend to be in a steak-eating contest. Oliver recalls they went through over 300 pounds of meat during the three-day shoot, and Streisand was all in.

"But there’s one part toward the end where she has to eat fast and deliver a line without choking,” says Oliver. “So I swapped the steak for seared watermelon. She took a bite and it pretty much dissolved in her mouth, allowing her to get through the line. If you listen closely, you can hear the crunch of the watermelon in the scene."

However, sometimes the spit bucket is the only option. In season one of Game of Thrones, Emilia Clarke, who plays Daenerys Targaryen, had to eat an entire horse heart. In reality, she had to eat 28 of them. These were made of solidified jam that tasted like "bleach and raw pasta," as Clarke described to The Mirror. "It was actually helpful to be given something so horrendous to eat, so there wasn’t much acting involved. Luckily, they provided a spit bucket, because I was throwing up in it pretty often."

13. SOMETIMES THEY’RE SURPRISED BY THE FINAL PRODUCT.

Sometimes, food stylists are taken by surprise with how their work is used in the final product. Professionals like Oliver, who juggle multiple projects, often can’t stay to see the outcome. They might later discover that the gorgeous spread they created ended up in the background, or worse. For a scene in Seinfeld, Oliver was asked to prepare a flawless, gleaming turkey. "Later, I was at home watching the episode, and they had placed the turkey on Kramer!" she recalls. "I couldn’t stop laughing, I was literally crying. I never imagined my turkey would end up with a guy's head on it."

Food stylists sometimes throw amazing dinner parties, showcasing their skills not just on set but in their personal lives too.

You might assume that being surrounded by food all day would make food stylists weary of making everything look perfect. However, most food stylists are passionate about cooking, and on their days off, they love hosting parties. "People always expect beautifully presented food," says Anderson. "And I never let them down."