When I started The Compère, I promised to offer what no one else can: my unadulterated, unfiltered thoughts on the issues that matter to me. So today, my dear reader, that is again what I am about to do, even if I have to ruffle a few (or many) feathers in the process. My target this time? The ever-ubiquitous, omnipresent F word, ‘foodie’.
Ah, even writing that word above filled me with a deep sense of unease. There is hardly any other food-related term today that is able to incite in me the same degree of disgust, disdain, scorn, contempt, derision, abhorrence… you get the point. I might be exaggerating a little. But yes, I am unapologetic. To clarify, however, it is not the word ‘foodie’ itself that I hate, it is the group of people who have pounced on what was originally an innocuous, almost-democratic word, milked it dry, and paraded themselves in its pseudo-glory, like an emperor wearing new clothes. You don’t follow? If it’s because you have never paid much attention to this word, then worry not, for I shall enlighten you in a bit. But if it’s because the title ‘foodie’ is one that you knowingly wear and abuse, then… I am very much inclined to disassociate myself from you.
You’d probably have to be living in a cave if you have not heard the word ‘foodie’. Any millennial, and anyone else who uses social media would have seen this word being used on social media profiles, hashtags, blogs, tweets, and it’s not even that difficult to encounter it on traditional media like TV and radio. Why has this word become so popular, particularly within the last decade?
If this popularity was the result of a new generation of people becoming genuinely interested in good and/or healthy eating, driven by the rising middle classes and dining-out trends in major metropoles (Latin plural of metropolis) around the world, then that in itself would have been fine. But social media and the rising popularity of amateur food photography have instead given birth to a new breed of monsters. This group of self-proclaimed foodies evidently treat the word as some form of social currency. They photograph and post about every single food that they eat, they flock to the newest cafes and restaurants (announcing their presence there on social media of course), they embrace the latest food fads (low-carb, organic, sustainable, gluten-free anyone?), all the while constantly feeling the need to remind the world of how much they love to eat. Why? You already have an inkling, don’t you? These people are driven by their desires to be cool and fashionable, to convince their social media followers that they are leading exciting, fulfilling lives, and that they are eating more delicious, exotic foods than you.
I’ll leave it to the late Anthony Bourdain to sum it up, which he purportedly did way back in 2013:
“Why do you take a photo of a dish in a restaurant and Instagram it? Of that beautiful soup dumpling? To inspire people? No. You want them to feel bad about their food choices. You don’t want them to eat in a nicer restaurant and post photos of better-looking food. You want them to be looking at your pictures while sitting on the couch in their underwear eating Cheetos and drinking a cheap box of wine.”
Anthony Bourdain, during the World Street Food Congress 2013 in Singapore
Unfortunately, I encounter these foodies everywhere I go these days. On social media, online, on the streets even. For every millennial Tom, Dick and Harry I run into, I silently prepare myself for the double-flips my stomach would soon make, and attempt to suppress my urges to roll my eyes, when they eventually declare, “Oh I’m a foodie!” or “Check out my food Instagram!” I would flash these so-called foodies the biggest smile I could possibly muster, perhaps ask them about a few of their favorite restaurants, and then steer the conversation far away from food. Yes, I do try to be civil to people I barely know, though it isn’t always easy. To put it quite bluntly, as someone who loves food in its purest form, who obsesses about what’s actually on the plate and how it got there, I cannot bring myself to forgive those who treat food as nothing more than ‘likes’ on social media, or as a collection of latest trends, or, the worst, as a means to plug their own insecurities. It’s borderline blasphemy.
In my research for this post, I chanced upon an article by a food blogger who kindly summarized the reasons why I dislike people who call themselves foodies (see 11 Reasons Why Foodies Are Marriage Material in Singapore). Why he wrote such an… article, I do not wish to even begin to guess; perhaps he is seeking an unhealthy dose of self-justification, or perhaps he is trying to market himself and his peers. It should be obvious that he is reinforcing the popularly glorified stereotype of a foodie, the very thing that I have come to detest.
And then we have a second group of self-proclaimed foodies, the ones who think that their experience and knowledge of food grants them some form of superiority. They frequent expensive dining establishments, they’ve tasted exotic, rare ingredients, and as a result they believe only a certain class of foods can satisfy them. These are the ones who take pride in eating beef that is ‘wagyu‘, or pork that is ‘jamón ibérico‘, and believe that eating caviar and lobster or drinking expensive Bordeaux makes them more refined than everyone else. In a slightly milder, more common form, there are those who simply think that they understand food better because they’ve tasted more kinds and eaten at more restaurants. They demand single-origin, 100% Arabica coffee (because anything else is inferior?), seek ‘artisanal’ produce (whatever that is), and flaunt their extensive knowledge of food, which they believe to be backed by the culinary TV shows they’ve devoured and their Yelp review history. This second group of foodies is commonly labeled as food snobs, though it is rather ironic that the term ‘foodie’ has come to be associated with snobbery and elitism, as I will explain in a bit.
At this point, you would probably want to question, surely all foodies aren’t that bad? Surely not all of them are attention-deprived, trend-chasing, pretentious snobs who post food porn on Instagram and shove their holier-than-thou attitudes down your throat? To which I would reply, probably. I may be painting a somewhat extreme picture to set an example, and not all foodies are guilty to the same extent. Nevertheless, the above trends exist, and I’m not the only one to have noticed. Journalists and chefs alike (in other words, industry insiders) have come out to denounce the term, while businesses and tourism organizations have jumped at the chance to utilize ‘foodies’ to their commercial benefits. There’s hardly a better indicator of a word losing its original significance than the moment it becomes a marketing buzzword.
Now, before I continue with the current problems of the term ‘foodie’, we must delve into its origins and initial associations.
The Origin of the ‘Foodie’
While the word ‘foodie’ has exploded in popularity in recent years, it is by no means a recent invention. In fact, it is said that former American restaurant critic Gael Greene was the first person to use the word in print in 1980. She wrote in her column “What’s Nouvelle? La Cuisine Bourgeosie” in New York magazine, describing a restaurant in Paris:
She offers crayfish with white feet or red… three ways, tends stove in high heels, slips into the small Art Deco dining room of Restaurant d’Olympe — a funeral parlor of shiny black walls and red velvet — to graze cheeks with her devotees, serious foodies, and, from ten on, tout Paris, the men as flashily beautiful as their beautiful women.
2 June 1980, New York magazine, “What’s Nouvelle? La Cuisine Bourgeosie” by Gael Greene, pg. 33, col. 3
Greene went on to use the word several times in 1982 and 1983. Across the Atlantic, however, in late 1981, Ann Barr, then features editor of London magazine Harper’s & Queen, invited readers to comment on an emerging trend of food obsession. Several responses apparently singled out food critic Paul Levy at the same magazine, and in the issue of August 1982 Levy edited an anonymous article, poking fun at himself and defining the term ‘foodie’ rather mockingly. “Foodies are foodist. They dislike and despise all non-foodies,” so the article went, and it was even recorded as such in the Oxford English Dictionary. Subsequently, in 1984, Barr and Levy published The Official Foodie Handbook, which according to the New York Times chronicled the “habits and habitats” of foodies around the world. There was no turning back – the publication of the handbook sealed the word’s entry into the English lexicon, and Levy staked a claim to the word’s paternity.
What is a ‘Foodie’?
But what exactly is a ‘foodie’, you ask? In the Official Foodie Handbook in 1984, Barr and Levy defined a foodie straightforwardly and innocuously: “A foodie is a person who is very, very, very interested in food.” Simple enough? Just wait.
A quick search with various dictionaries gives slightly different definitions. The Cambridge Dictionary defines a foodie as “a person who loves food and is very interested in different types of food”. Then, the Merriam-Webster Dictionary states that a foodie is “a person having an avid interest in the latest food fads”. Notice the difference? Finally, we have the Oxford English Dictionary, which puts forth the following definition: “A person with a particular interest in food; a gourmet”. Now, this is where it gets complicated.
It should come as no surprise that there exists other words to describe people who love to eat. After all, the human lust for good food did not begin in the 1980s. Before the birth of the word ‘foodie’, there were words like ‘gourmet’, ‘gourmand’ and ‘epicure’. ‘Gourmet’ is said to be derived from the French term for a wine broker, and can refer to both high quality, sophisticated food (often haute cuisine), and a person with refined, discriminating tastes who consumes said food. ‘Gourmand’, on the other hand, apparently carries connotations of excessive eating or drinking. Meanwhile, an ‘epicure’ is similar to a gourmet, though the word seems to focus on the pleasure one derives from eating or drinking.
It is important to note that the word ‘gourmet’ today is associated with refined, extravagant cuisine, often involving rare and expensive ingredients. Such an association makes sense from an historical standpoint, as fine dining was reserved for the aristocratic classes in Europe, and food was not as easily cultivated and transportable, resulting in certain prized ingredients being scarce and exclusive. Therefore, ‘gourmet’ has often carried snobbish, elitist connotations, and has been applied to a very selective group of people. It wasn’t always the case, interestingly enough; in the 18th century, according to Wikipedia, both ‘gourmet’ and ‘gourmand’ carried disreputable connotations of gluttony, and ‘gourmet’ was only rendered respectable after Almanach des Gourmands, essentially the first restaurant guide, appeared in Paris from 1803 to 1812.
Anyhow, at the time of its conception, the term ‘foodie’ was widely seen as the modern-day replacement for ‘gourmet’, but without the stuffy, elitist associations. It came at a time when growing incomes provided a larger proportion of the world’s population access to better food and lifestyles. People suddenly had choices, and wanted to eat better. Thus ‘foodie’ became a more democratic way to approach food, while repudiating the elitist image of gourmets. Levy himself, one of the fathers of the term, acknowledged its universal reach in a much later blog post on The Guardian in 2007:
What started as a term of mockery shifted ground, as writers found that “foodie” had a certain utility, describing people who, because of age, sex, income and social class, simply did not fit into the category “gourmet”, which we insisted had become “a rude word”.
14 June 2007, The Guardian, Word of Mouth blog, “What is a foodie?” by Paul Levy
It separated out those who ate their lamb overcooked and grey from those whose choice of cheese was goats; it dismissed those who did not care what they ate so long as the wine was served at the correct temperature; and it applied to shopping as well as to eating, to domestic cooks and eaters as well as to those who worked in, profited from or ate in restaurants; to foodstuffs, to brands, to reading matter; and above all, to women as well as to men.
The moment the issue hit the news stands we knew that the word “foodie” was a cocktail stick applied to a raw nerve, and that a book should follow.
The Evolution of the ‘Foodie’
Recall that when the word ‘foodie’ was launched into public consciousness by The Official Foodie Handbook, it was applied to a selective group of people who were distinguished by their extreme obsession with food. As the years went by, however, it was inevitable that more people would self-identify with the term, due in part to its accessible nature. As I mentioned early in this post, if the term ‘foodie’ was embraced by a new generation of eaters to describe their newfound passion for food, its various ilks, its preparation and related industries, and remained simply that way, then I wouldn’t have had any issues with it. However, as more and more people began to declare themselves foodies, the word and its associations began to evolve in nefarious ways.
By the early 2000s, it had become apparent that the foodie club had lost all its exclusivity. In 2006, Slashfood, a popular food blog with useful tips and recipes (it has since shut down) posted an article, musing about how anyone could be a foodie:
In previous decades, words like “epicure” or “gourmet” were used to apply to the same type of person. The words are out of favor now, and bring to mind stodgy, snobbish people who are only willing to consider a restaurant that has truffled pate on the menu. This is because good food was hard to get and expensive in years, decades and centuries past. People didn’t have the resources to buy virtually anything they could want and often wouldn’t have the means to cook it. Now, both times and terms have changed.
Anyone can be a foodie.
10 February 2006, Slashfood, “What is a foodie, anyway?” by Nicole Weston
The question is, if anyone and everyone can be a foodie, then does the word have any meaning left? The lack of objective, quantifiable criteria, and the fact that foodies are very often self-proclaimed, makes it impossible for us to impose any standards at all. You like to eat? You’re a foodie. You post photos of food on Instagram? You’re a foodie. See the problem? Is there any point to a classification if everyone is included?
I take no issue, let me state, with the increasing public awareness and love of food. If everyone obsessed themselves with food and its related subjects like I do, then I would actually be overjoyed (though that would create a whole new set of issues). The problem is, I’m confident that most foodies are not – it doesn’t take much for me to peer beneath the painstakingly-executed veneer (i.e. Instagram) of most foodies to realize that they don’t actually understand or love food at all. What, then, is the word ‘foodie’ supposed to represent? Let us not forget that all humans are born with taste buds, and can distinguish (generally) good food from bad. So, who doesn’t like good food? Who doesn’t like to eat? If a cursory interest in food is all that it takes to be a foodie, then why not just call them ‘human’? In other words, it is the very ubiquity of the word ‘foodie’ that strips it of all its meaning.
Then, add in the fact that people are (ab)using the word ‘foodie’ to gain social currency or portray themselves as superior, and what do we get? A recipe for disaster, I’d say.
Since many others have also written about the problems with ‘foodie’, I thought I would save myself further trouble at this point, and defer to their words.
British journalist and former restaurant critic John Lanchester discussed in the New Yorker what has gone wrong with food in our culture (he also contemplated how food has been politicized, but that’s another story):
Once upon a time, food was about where you came from. Now, for many of us, it is about where we want to go — about who we want to be, how we choose to live. Food has always been expressive of identity, but today those identities are more flexible and fluid; they change over time, and respond to different pressures. Some aspects of this are ridiculous: the pickle craze, the báhn-mì boom, the ramps revolution, compulsory kale. Is northern Thai still hot? Has offal gone away yet? Is Copenhagen over? The intersection of food and fashion is silly, just as the intersection of fashion and anything else is silly…
Everyone’s a critic, they say, and that’s certainly true of the food world today. Of course, everyone has always been a critic, in the sense that customers have always made the most basic judgment of all: Do I want to come back to this joint? But there’s a contemporary development with respect to volume, in the dual sense of quantity and loudness. The volume of all this critical chatter is turned way up, and it’s harder than ever to ignore. Food is my favorite thing to talk about and to learn about, but an interest that is reasonable on a personal and an individual scale has grown out of all proportion in the wider culture.
3 November 2014, The New Yorker, “Shut Up and Eat” by John Lanchester
Meanwhile, Jennifer Wolfe over at CNN wrote about how chefs in America have come to hate foodies:
“The foodie feels empowered by their passion for food, which creates a false bravado of how knowledgeable they think they are about food. The ironic part is they’re simply being spoon fed something from a food personality: ‘Well I saw something on the Food Network, and why don’t you have it?’”
As in any group, there’s a small percentage of fanatics who generally ruin it for the rest.
26 January 2011, Eatocracy, CNN, “Chefs and the (other) “F” word” by Jennifer Wolfe
Over at The New York Times, Mark Bittman offers less vitriol towards foodies and instead advocates for greater social-consciousness among the group (though he did cringe when a woman introduced herself as a foodie at a dinner party):
As it stands, many self-described foodies are new-style epicures. And there’s nothing destructive about watching competitive cooking shows, doing “anything” to get a table at the trendy restaurant, scouring the web for single-estate farro, or devoting oneself to finding the best food truck. The problem arises when it stops there…
We can’t ask everyone who likes eating — which, given enough time and an adequate income, includes everyone I’ve ever met — to become a food activist. But to increase the consciousness levels of well-intentioned foodies, it might be useful to sketch out what “caring about good food” means, and to try to move “foodie” to a place where it refers to someone who gets beyond fun to pay attention to how food is produced and the impact it has.
24 June 2014, The New York Times, “Rethinking the Word ‘Foodie'” by Mark Bittman
Finally, Roberto Ferdman at The Washington Post put out my favorite article on the subject, in which he discusses one of the biggest problems with the usage of the term ‘foodie’: irony.
The problem with the word “foodie,” which many have hopefully gleaned by this point, boils down to a simple truth: You can’t possibly call yourself a “foodie” if you’re actually a “foodie.” There is a great irony in describing yourself as a food insider in a way no actual food insider ever would. The act itself precludes you from being part of the world you want to associate yourself with. The word doubles as a compliment and an insult, depending on who utters it…
There’s nothing wrong with food populism. It’s this very trend, after all, that has helped buoy the food movement, which is slowly reversing how disconnected we have all become from the production of our food. But some things have clearly been lost in the collective trek toward announcing whenever possible how much we like to eat.
1 March 2016, The Washington Post, “Stop calling yourself a ‘foodie'” by Roberto A. Ferdman
There are reasons why almost all chefs, pâtissiers, winemakers and other industry insiders do not call themselves foodies, and it is not because ‘foodie’ is an amateur, hobbyist term, and it is certainly not because they aren’t as obsessed with food as are modern foodies. I’d like to believe that chefs et al. take their food seriously, in a way modern, “fashionable” foodies shamelessly claim to do but in which they rarely succeed. I don’t think this irony existed back when the term ‘foodie’ was used to describe a very small subset of the population, ones who were willing to go the extra, extra mile in their pursuit for food experiences. But with the bastardization of the term today, with self-proclaimed foodies scrambling to get reservations to the hottest new tables, cooking with the trendiest ‘superfoods’, and marketing themselves as ideal dates, I have to question if we are now actually more connected with what we eat, or if we have lost ourselves in the spectacle.
If not ‘Foodie’, Then What?
If we were to accept that the word ‘foodie’ has come to lose what it should have represented, should we then advocate for its replacement? Clearly, if the world started using a new word to refer to the exact same thing, we would be stuck in the same place. A rose by any other name would smell as sweet (or in this case, revolting).
I’m not advocating for a return to the old, elitist days, where gourmets of the highest class monopolized the riches of foods. Not that such a return is possible anyway. What I’m truly advocating for is a much greater degree of self-awareness – understanding not only what we are eating and how it is made, but also our natural, social, political connections to food. It doesn’t take a genius to realize that food is much more than nourishment (a subject of a future post), but for some reason I can’t help but feel that many modern foodies have a disquietingly limited conception of food. It makes the inner activist in me weep.
You may be tempted to ask, do I not post photos of food on Instagram, and do I not turn my nose up at cheap, poorly-made food? I can’t deny that I do both of these things occasionally – I particularly can’t help being picky in my quest for perfection – but I think it’s more important that we examine our overall relationship with food in an honest manner. That we ask the difficult questions about what we eat, and what we can do to make it better for ourselves and the environment. And that we acknowledge there is so much of food that we do not yet know.
And so, I will never call myself a foodie. I’d rather not be called a gourmet either, though I may accept it a little more willingly. If anything, I’d prefer to be called a gastronome, related to the broadly defined term ‘gastronomy’, which encompasses multiple disciplines related to good food and drink. And I hope that you, my dear reader, would think twice before jumping onto that overcrowded, foodie bandwagon.
Note: cover stock photo is from Dreamstime.com and is for previewing purposes only.