Fruits and Veggies Go Psychedelic in the "Food Porn Index"

All photos: Bolthouse Farms

It’s not every day that a company like Campbell’s Soup bankrolls a website full of psychedelic GIFs for the stoner set. At first blush, that’s precisely what seems to have happened with the Food Porn Index, a trippy new creation from Campbell’s property Bolthouse Farms, a purveyor of fruit and vegetable juices.

But look a little closer: The site—and its dancing produce—convey Bolthouse’s claim that only 27.9 percent of food photos on the Internet feature healthful dishes; the remaining 72.1 percent are unhealthy. “There’s an imbalance, and we can all do our parts to change that,” says vice president of strategic marketing Suzanne Ginestro. “The goal of the site, aesthetically, was to be simple, clean, and fun—and make fruits and veggies really enticing.”

And to embrace the absurdity of the Internet. Click on the mushroom tile, and a mass of morels, chanterelles, porcini and other capped fungi will come barreling toward you in dizzying fashion. Unhealthy foods are here, too; clicking a donut launches a ceaseless tunnel of swirling donuts that would make even Homer Simpson a bit woozy.

Other gimmicks are pun-fueled. A click on the beet tile leads to an interactive “beet box,” and the avocado tile a ridiculous game of “guac-a-mole.” Get it?

The campaign is the work of ad agency Tiny Rebellion, which has previously done work for eHarmony and Hotwire. Concept designer Braden Graeber told us that Bolthouse was initially “apprehensive” about the agency’s approach, but ultimately gave his team free rein to go, well, bananas.

"We are all fans of GIFs and internet humor," Graeber said. "Sometimes it verges on the absurd. We wanted to create a fun kinetic design world." Graeber’s favorite of the site’s 24 clickable tiles is the one devoted to melon. One click, and melons of nearly every type appear on your screen in kaleidoscopic fashion, swirling in and out of one another. (Why watch “Dark Side of the Rainbow" when you can have this?)

If healthy and unhealthy fare are indeed duking it out on the internet, the Food Porn Index is certainly an admirable attempt at leveling the playing field.

"This is a pretty notable [campaign] for us because it’s right on the point of our mission: to make fruits and vegetables highlighted and desirable," Bolthouse’s Ginestro summed up. "[We] take tactics from other categories." After all, imitation is the best form of flattery.