Thinking this is a waste of cake

[sweeneytoddsrazor]

Seens lots of posts on facbook/instagram lately of 1st birthday cake smash photo sessions. Ok LO looks cute but all that lovely cake going to waste. Much rather have a slice of cake and a nice photo minus cake.

I now want cake to smash into my face... is an adult cake smash more MN acceptable? I promise not to waste any cake

It is wrong on so many levels.
Waste of food
Gives children the wrong messages
Older siblings see food being used wastefully
Messy/ making work to clean up the room and the children's clothes
Unnecessary drain on the family's food budget (if that is an issue)
Why not donate the cake/ingredients to a food bank?
Food is a precious resource and should be treated with respect.

But at least BLW has an actual purpose, it’s not just staged for “the gram” (instagram). I’ve known 1 person to do one irl and it does seem most of her parenting is done with social media in mind.

YADNBU OP. It’s an obscene waste of food, people who do it are entitled show-offs, and the photos look really naff.

It seems to mostly be done by the same type of people who have 'live, laugh, love' scrawled on their walls.
Different strokes for different folks.

But I agree with the OP, total waste of food and money.

YANBU OP. There's something really grotesque about a world where thousands of people are starving, and people choose to waste food like this. Both my DD's had a slice of cake on their birthday, and I have some lovely pics of this, but the rest of the cake got eaten and enjoyed.

I don't get it either. I've got friends who've posted pics of their dc cake smash and I've just thought can't you do the same in their high chair at dinner time

I had one done - baby only held onto the top corner of the cake so didnt smash it and we took the cake home and all enjoyed it for about a week it was so big. All the ones I know of you take the cake home afterwards to eat and rarely does the baby smash into it, it's usually the photographer breaking a bit off

But at least BLW has an actual purpose, it’s not just staged for “the gram”

Smashes do have a purpose beyond ‘the gram’

Exploration and enjoyment of food (just like BLW)

Sense of celebration and enjoyment (just like eating cake).

I’ll never understand this particular outrage in a world where wasting tonnes of food in the name of arts and crafts (pasta art/potato printing) and feeding methods like BLW are perfectly acceptable.

British households on average throw out 30% of the food they buy. That’s another point entirely. But as a culture, we’re very relaxed about wasting food. Except if it’s a cake smash, which prompts a lot of frothing.

making food specifically to be wasted is just so, so wrong.

Yup. And inevitably the poor babies are like "You want me to do what?" so it ends up being a photographer putting some icing round the baby's face and geeing them up a bit for photos. Just an idiotic exercise.

Unbelievably tacky and wasteful.

I agree that we're far too wasteful on food as a society. Very little goes in the food waste here, it's mostly scrapings from plates and vegetable peelings.

Nobody walks round the supermarket thinking that they'll buy 10 oranges, 7 for people to eat and 3 to chuck in the bin.

But that's exactly what they're doing with a cake smash - let's but a cake for a baby to make a mess with and then go in the bin. It's totally batshit crazy.

We did one, cake was barely touched and still edible, so it was taken home and eaten. Very little waste beyond some icing, and the clothes got thrown in the wash, like many other outfits on other days.

We meal plan so we don't waste food, and we donate to food banks too, so I'm not sure where this judgey idea of everyone who does a cake smash is a profligate wasteful monster has come from. If its not to your taste, that's fine.

Nobody walks round the supermarket thinking that they'll buy 10 oranges, 7 for people to eat and 3 to chuck in the bin.

And yet they do that time and time again.

I don’t think the fact that it’s passive makes it better. If anything it’s worse. We couldn’t be arsed reflecting on and adjusting our most predictable behaviour.

I’m willing to believe that babies and parents get something out of a cake smash (fun, exploration, enjoyment).

That makes it slightly less heinous in my eyes than the 3 oranges that are grown for nothing, no one gets anything out of, except more waste.

When it happened once , by accident: funny.
When everyone does it and it is highly contrived: tacky, cheesy, cliched, wasteful.