Hacker News Reader

I'm not sure why you say this. It's well known food is often very staged, and inedible substitutes often used in advertisements.

Do you want an advertising picture of a puddle of melted ice cream under hot studio lights?

And why would it be illegal for food?

View on HN

You cannot use stand ins for the product being sold. You can photograph your cereal in glue because milk makes cereal soggy or you can drizzle your chocolate syrup over mashed potatoes because ice cream will melt but neither of those examples would be legal if you were selling the milk or the ice cream. There's some gray area at the margin but this is how the law has been interpreted and what has been enforced for decades.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com