Actual contents may vary

You know I like to photograph my food. And I also love seeing how other people do the same, whether that's creating an encyclopedic resume of bento boxes or a record of a decade of inflight meals.

So I was majorly excited by an article on the Guardian's food blog about a German project to compare the images on food packages with their contents.

Not only has journalist and author Samuel Mueller photographed 100 food items—packaging, plus the dish itself—he has gone to the trouble of posing the latter to mimic the former. So if the illustration on the packet shows a chocolate snack bar plunging into a refreshing glass of milk, Mueller approximates it in real life as best he can:



While some, like the above, look relatively similar to their artistic rendition, others suggest someone is pulling the wool—or in this case, the herring salad with beets—over someone else's eyes:



Of course, part of the humor comes from the fact that everything's in German, which means one shouldn't be surprised at the appearance of the contents of a can labeled Mischpilze hell or the congealed gloop that comes from the Würstchen Lunch line.

Surprisingly, German packaging must legally include the phrase Serviervorschlag in the same way that, in the US and the UK, images on food packages carry the phrase "serving suggestion."

Of course, sometimes this makes no sense at all.