The word foodie is established enough that people use the title as a self-identifier ("I'm a foodie"). But it can also denote an obsession with food.
The term has bled into news stories, blog names and radio call-in programs. As such, people either love the concept or hate what it represents. Nobody is ambivalent about foodies. But as strong as people feel and as ubiquitous as the word has become, a single set of standards or definitions doesn't exist.
Blogger Pim Techamuanvivit (of Chez Pim) hopes to change that with her new book The Foodie Handbook: The (Almost) Definitive Guide to Gastronomy. While it's filled with didactic information in the form of recipes and cooking information, it's also interspersed with advice on "How To Be a Fabulous Foodie," which (according to the Amazon product page) includes "how to out-snob your friends and boost your food credentials with trivia and facts such as ten things to eat before you die."
And that gets to the heart of some people's difficulty with foodies. At their best, foodies have interesting insights about food and the ability to share knowledge they've gained from cooking
experiences. At their worst, they laud access to famous chefs or food
personalities and essentially use food knowledge as a way to
demonstrate superiority.
This juxtaposition sums up why many
people aspire to be thought of as foodies and why others find them
insufferable.
Helen Rosner, on Eat Me Daily, suggests that a foodie handbook doesn't really make sense:
"She's
trying to sell this book as an objective guide, which just doesn't
fly ... Being a foodie isn't something you do for show, it's what you are
even when no one is looking," says Rosner.
That sounds like the first step in a handbook.
[Image via Flickr: mst7002]
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