They gave us the Statue of Liberty. We gave them Chef Boyardee.

Franco-American War. Limited palette, limited palate II, from the "Ugly Food" series. © Ryan Schierling

Waiting for the bacon pandemic.

© Ryan Schierling

Stacks and sacks.

(L) Pile of $1 double stacks (R) To-go bag, from the Ugly Food series. © Ryan Schierling

[ Ugly Food is a photo series looking at processed and packaged food that anyone can purchase for one dollar or less. ]

Cosa sucia.

Bean Burrito #6, from the Ugly Food series. © Ryan Schierling

Cheesy Double Beef Burrito #2, from the Ugly Food series. © Ryan Schierling

[ Ugly Food is a photo series looking at processed and packaged food that anyone can purchase for one dollar or less. ]

When you carefully unwrap and lay out more than a dozen assorted burritos from the 79-89-99-cent Taco Bell menu, it's difficult to not be struck by the notion that they all look quite a lot like dirty diapers.

Gallus domesticus simulacrum.

(L) Take-out bag (R) 4-piece McNuggets, from the Ugly Food series. © Ryan Schierling

[ Ugly Food is a photo series looking at processed and packaged food that anyone can purchase for one dollar or less. ]

When is a Chicken McNugget not a chicken nugget? When it's only made of (up to) 44% chicken.

From The Omnivore's Dilemma:

"The ingredients listed in the (McDonald's Nutritional Information) flyer suggest a lot of thought goes into a nugget, that and a lot of corn. Of the thirty-eight ingredients it takes to make a McNugget, I counted thirteen that can be derived from corn: the corn-fed chicken itself; modified cornstarch (to bind the pulverized chicken meat); mono-, tri-, and diglycerides (emulsifiers, which keep the fats and water from separating); dextrose; lecithin (another emulsifier); chicken broth (to restore some of the flavor that processing leeches out); yellow corn flour and more modified cornstarch (for the batter); cornstarch (a filler); vegetable shortening; partially hydrogenated corn oil; and citric acid as a preservative. A couple of other plants take part in the nugget: There's some wheat in the batter, and on any given day the hydrogenated oil could come from soybeans, canola, or cotton rather than corn, depending on the market price and availability.

According to the handout, McNuggets also contain several completely synthetic ingredients, quasiedible substances that ultimately come not from a corn or soybean field but form a petroleum refinery or chemical plant. These chemicals are what make modern processed food possible, by keeping the organic materials in them from going bad or looking strange after months in the freezer or on the road. Listed first are the "leavening agents": sodium aluminum phosphate, mono-calcium phosphate, sodium acid pyrophosphate, and calcium lactate. These are antioxidants added to keep the various animal and vegetable fats involved in a nugget from turning rancid. 

Then there are "anti-foaming agents" like dimethylpolysiloxene, added to the cooking oil to keep the starches from binding to air molecules, so as to produce foam during the fry. The problem is evidently grave enough to warrant adding a toxic chemical to the food: According to the Handbook of Food Additives, dimethylpolysiloxene is a suspected carcinogen and an established mutagen, tumorigen, and reproductive effector; it's also flammable. 

But perhaps the most alarming ingredient in a Chicken McNugget is tertiary butylhydroquinone, or TBHQ, an antioxidant derived from petroleum that is either sprayed directly on the nugget or the inside of the box it comes in to "help preserve freshness." According to A Consumer's Dictionary of Food Additives, TBHQ is a form of butane (i.e. lighter fluid) the FDA allows processors to use sparingly in our food: It can comprise no more than 0.02 percent of the oil in a nugget. Which is probably just as well, considering that ingesting a single gram of TBHQ can cause "nausea, vomiting, ringing in the ears, delirium, a sense of suffocation, and collapse." Ingesting five grams of TBHQ can kill.”

But, hey, the kids go crazy for them.

Imposter cheese.

Imitation cheese (w/ ink transfer from wrapper), from the "Ugly Food" series. © Ryan Schierling

Pasteurized process cheese product has a very low milk solid content, but there is still dairy in the cheese. Imitation, or analog cheese, uses vegetable oils instead of milk solids. The absence of dairy product makes imitation cheese inexpensive to produce, so it's affordable (16 slices for $1), and the shelf life is about six months. 

The only problem is that it has no actual nutritional value.

Salting the earth.

Small fries for $1, two fancy ketchup/catsup packets for free. From the "Ugly Food" series. © Ryan Schierling

Did you know that two ketchup packets have more sodium in them than an entire McDonald's small size order of fries? 

The King vs. The Clown.

Burger King bag; two sandwiches, deconstructed, from the McDonald's dollar menu. From the "Ugly Food" series. © Ryan Schierling

Limited palette, limited palate.

Spaghetti-O, pair from the "Ugly Food" series. © Ryan Schierling

What can you eat for one dollar?

Ingredients: water, tomato puree, tomato paste, enriched macaroni product (wheat flour, niacin, ferrous sulfate, thiamine mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid, high fructose corn syrup, salt), enzyme modified cheddar cheese (milk, cheese culture, salt, enzymes, water, disodium phosphate), vegetable oil, corn oil, cottonseed oil, canola oil, soybean oil, enzyme modified butter, oleoresin, paprika, spice extract, citric acid, nonfat dry milk.

The lowest common denominator.

Spaghetti and Meatballs. © Ryan Schierling

Recently, I decided to revisit a project I started a few years ago called "Ugly Food."

Originally, the concept was a lowbrow response to overly fastidious food and equally fussy food photography. I mean, I cook like mad but I can only look at so many shallow depth of field photos of roast rack of rabbit with ramps and radicchio. It's an easy way to shoot pretty food (and I've done it too) but, I mean, it's the same kind of formula as using a 400mm f/2.8 lens for shooting sports – you open it up to get the nice background blur, point it in the right direction and lean on the shutter. 

So, I shot a series that had to do with some of the messiest food ever – barbecue – and believe me, none of it was pretty. Let's just say that Saveur and Bon Appetit and some of the other glossy food porn magazines weren't breaking my door down to get those nasty shots. (Although NAMPLA* (the North American Man Pork Love Association) keeps inviting me back to their annual barbecue year after year...)

This time around, since the economy is a little, shall we say, depressed, I wanted to focus on photographing bargain basement super-cheap fare – specifically, pre-processed, packaged comestibles and fast food that anyone can eat for one single solitary dollar. Which, almost by virtue of being inexpensive and incredibly low quality, are ugly. Not pretty food. No way.

The first series of large prints are tv dinners, the kind you probably used to love as a kid but wouldn't be caught dead buying nowadays. 

They don't exactly look like the pictures on the fronts of the boxes. 

But, that's the idea – to frame them as aseptic and nearly flavorless (albeit colorful) combinations of miscellaneous protein, starch and vegetable that are deceptively plumped with saturated fat, have ridiculous levels of sodium and are chock-full of chemical additives and preservatives, and yet, are still considered a "value."

More soon.

*As far as I know, there is no such organization. But there should be.

Glamour shots. © Ryan Schierling