When I was telling my boyfriend about this, apparently on Discovery some years back they had a neat thing about how the food for that kind of thing is made. It's usually plastic, or Crisco with food colouring, varnish, paint and the like.

In Canada, however, this is illegal, and when you are seeing images on menus and the like, the food *had* to have been real at some point. Which means the food looks less good, but it's real.

/themoreyouknow