100% meals deduction for food blog?

[Ovrea]

If I have a food blog, can I consider the meals I have at a restaurants deductible 100% if they are NOT for a business meeting but to understand, review, or assess a particular dish or cuisine? For example I want to showcase something on my food blog, and I go to a restaurant to learn more how they prepare their recipes. Can I consider this a necessary and ordinary expense since I have to go to the restaurant in order to be able to replicate a recipe at home that I will later showcase in my food blog. I am not simply going to the restaurant for a business meeting, but specifically to observe how the restaurant does things. Thank you.

[ToddL99]

Is your food blog a legitimate business or a hobby? The IRS lists nine factors which are used to distinguish between a hobby and a business; business expenses are deductible and hobby expenses are not.

Unless you are generating meaningful income from your food blog (or can clearly demonstrate an intent and ability to do so), food expenses (grocery or dining out) are not deductible expenses.

Costs incurred in both your personal life and your business life are rarely deductible as business expenses. Food, drink and clothing would come under this category. 

A common example of this would be "uniforms" - if you can wear the "uniform" as clothing outside of your workplace, you cannot claim a business deduction for the cost of that uniform. High-powered businesspersons must often spend a great deal of money on business attire, but they can wear the same clothing for non-business purposes - not deductible. Military people, however, are usually restricted on when and where they are allowed to wear their uniforms - deductible. 

(If having a food, wine and liquor blog was a way for taxpayers to deduct the cost of those items, there would be MANY more of those blogs than there are already).

[Ovrea]

Thank you for the extra input. For the sake of the question, please consider the food blog a legitimate business based on the IRS definition.

From the IRS publications it's clear that meals that fall under the IRS definition of "Business Meeting" are 50% deductible.

What I meant to ask with the question is more specific: would meals that do not fall under "Business Meeting" but under what could be considered "R&D for the food blog" (in the food blog industry, this activity of discovery is called "recipe development") be considered 100% or 50% deductible? In addition, in which TurboTax category would these fall since there is not an "R&D" or "recipe development" category in the self-employed section?

Thank you!

[CatinaT1 · Accepted solution]

This is a supply expense.