Denied food, your body and brain will begin to obsess about it. It's the survival instinct, the constant reminder to eat, one that you try harder and harder to ignore, though you never can. Instead of eating, you simply think about food all the time. You dream about it, you stare at it, but you do not eat it...Food is the sun and the moon and the stars, the center of gravity, the love of your life.
--Marya Hornbacher, Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia
This is a slightly humorous (for those into dark humor, I suppose) name for something that happens to people with eating disorders, or hell, sometimes people on diets who are just plain hungry. Normal people, without food issues (really, do those people exist?), when they diet, they feel the same hunger, they notice their thoughts turning more often to food, but they are less likely to "tempt fate" if you will by indulging these thoughts. They will try to think about something else.
Not so, if you have that certain masochistic personality...you will indulge your obsessions. You will read cookbooks, fantasize about making this or that. You will stare at cakes and cookies behind a glass case for ten minutes, and then order coffee, black. Or (my erstwhile personal favorite), you will drive to the store, and walk up and down the aisles, looking at food, reading the labels, shrieking about how many calories are contained in such a tiny package with the friend who understands that calories are evil, then putting the item back on the shelf. The bakery section is the best.
And when you walk out empty handed, you've proven yourself 'strong'. How silly, to think that strength comes from staring at food you can't let yourself eat!
While porn is a nice example of Look But Don't Touch, food porn is Touch, But Don't Taste.