I'm trying to reconcile this (which I've heard before) with what other people are saying about advertising laws, and I've got two hypotheses. 1. Not all food p

I'm trying to reconcile this (which I've heard before) with what other people are saying about advertising laws, and I've got two hypotheses. 1. Not all food photography is advertising. For example, food magazines: They're not actually selling what's on the cover. They're well within their rights that the covershoot consists entirely of wax models of tomatoes rather than real tomatoes[1]. The same would apply to the Food or Recipes sections in generic lifestyle magazines. 2. The things that are "not the food itself" is interpreted very broadly. As others have noted, you can use white glue for milk if you're hawking cereal. If you're selling tomatoes, you can probably still dip them in wax varnish to make them shine, and add "water" drops made of epoxy to sexy them up[2]. [1] That is to say, "real" wax models, not Roma tomatoes. [2] I mean "sexy" literally. It's called "food porn" for a reason. The photographic techniques and cinematographic styles are apparently very similar.