Food comics often not only focus on cooking, but also use cooking to solve problems. Cooking-themed competitions are often an indispensable content in cooking comics.

In order to make it easier for readers to identify with each other, most of the people serialized in Shōnen Chronicles are primary and secondary school students, and most of those serialized in Youth Magazines are novice cooks between the ages of 10 and 20. They will follow the targeted readers. There are different age settings for the protagonists depending on the age group, but most of them have the same characteristics, such as having cooking talent and being able to cook at the same level as or better than the masters without putting in too much effort. However, in the real world, it is very unlikely that a junior high school student would have the skills and cooking knowledge to be as good as a veteran. In addition, typical food comics will have characters such as opponents, villains, seniors, and companions that match the protagonist.

Depending on the work, there are also cooking comics that detail the production process and are as practical as recipes.

Since 2012, from "Midnight Diner" to "The Lonely Gourmet" to "Nobunaga's Chef", Japanese dramas adapted from food comics seem to have become popular.