From fruit to burgers to kitchen appliances, there are a lot of food-related tattoos out there. What tasty tat would you choose?

There is a tattoo trend afoot. We’ve had dolphins, ancient symbols, “ironic” sailor tattoos and now I give you … the food tattoo.

Before I go any further, I feel like I should state straight off the bat that I don’t like tattoos. On me. I’m not a huge fan of them on other people either, but it takes all sorts. Working in fashion, I have a low boredom threshold – I want new and I want it now. The thought of deciding on a tattoo today that defines me so much that I feel the need to have it scratched into my skin yet will still hold true in 10 or 20 years time strikes fear in my heart. Call me fickle.

When Lulu Grimes of Olive magazine Twittered these food tattoos I thought it was a pretty funny joke. But it turns out these are real tattoos. As in, these people are stuck with them forever.

Don’t get me wrong, I love food. I spend much too much time planning what I will eat next and have many favourite foods. Most of them involve cheese. But, never in all my days of scraping the last crumb of Stilton off the rind, have I considered marking my love of the stinky cheese in a permanent fashion.

The shaven-headed man pictured above loves fried breakfasts so much that he sports a full English on his shiny pate. At least he could grow his hair back to cover it up, although the thought of a baked bean peeking out of his parting makes me feel a little nauseous. A woman has a cherry-topped cupcake on her foot, but look a little closer and the cherry is a skull. Sinister. And weird. Yet another shows a piece of toast, complete with smiling face, spreading itself with jam. The toast looks happy enough, I wonder whether the owner of the tat is quite so jolly?

There are dripping slices of pizza, rashers of bacon, angry-looking leeks, shrimps and, inexplicably, a blue cupcake sitting on the toilet.

I just don’t get it. Some of the tattoo owners appear to be advertising food joints like the American burger restaurant Wendy’s. What’s the motivation? Is brand loyalty alone enough? And what do you do if you get a meaty hot-dog inked on your arm and then turn vegetarian? Turn it into a gherkin?

And what about your chances with the opposite sex? Eating food can be sexy. Removing your clothes to reveal a carton of milk holding hands with a cookie or all the ingredients needed to make hummus, not so much.

Maybe celebrities (they love a tattoo, don’t they?) could get in on the branding action. Amy Winehouse could get a bottle of Tanqueray gin inscribed somewhere (if she can find the room). Stella McCartney could get a veggie burger. Justin Timberlake could get a Big Mac to go with his McDonald’s jingles.

But what should you never, ever, no matter how drunk you are, have tattooed onto yourself? Anything in the line of Ginsters pasties, Spam, sausage rolls, and rice pudding, surely.

It’s impossible to decide which is the worst, but possibly, given the rampant spread of swine flu, the idea of engraving my flesh with a butcher’s diagram of a pig, complete with all the different cuts, comes close.

If I was forced, upon pain of death, to have a food tattoo. I would a) probably choose death, b) get the smallest thing possible, like a poppy seed to actual size, and c) have it removed.

What food would you get tattooed?