“Foodie”

Foodie.  This summer, amidst the countless philosophical debates (over reality television, pie vs. cake and jorts) my coworkers and I tackled the term “foodie.”  Up until said fateful day, surrounded by stinky sweaty children at our local bowling alley (prestigious job title: camp counselor) I dutifully considered myself a foodie — a food aficionado… i.e. those freaks that photograph their food and describe every mouthful with disgusting, elaborate detail.

The urban dictionary tells me a foodie is “a person that spends a keen amount of attention and energy on knowing the ingredients of food, the proper preparation of food, and finds great enjoyment in top-notch ingredients and exemplary preparation.”  There I am! The UD also tells me a foodie is a supposedly less elitist term for “gastronome” and “epicure.”

Alright I get it, food is food… everyone eats it, it’s a necessary facet of life.  This brings me to one of the most stagnant assertions of our summer conversation — “Foodie?” coworker A stammered.  “Saying you’re a foodie is like saying you’re a ‘breathie.’ Everyone breathes and everyone eats.” …. dramatically drawn out silence.  As a glaringly obvious lover all things food, I verbally assaulted his “breathie” ideology and pressed on defending my passion for food.  This leaves me with my own fairly bold notion — food ignorance.  In this case I’d say my coworker had a serious case of F.I.  — to him, food equals an imperative means to sustain life, and may just so happen to induce a pleasurable dining experience.  For me, and presumably other foodies in the blogosphere, food is so much more.

Just as I admittedly have sports ignorance and can never truly fathom the intensity and steadfastness of sports fanaticism, my coworker of four years couldn’t quite grasp my need to scour online menus to make sure I pick the right restaurant and the right dish, my possibly unhealthy enjoyment of grocery shopping, my love of trying others’ meals (however etiquette-breaching it may be to eat off of someone’s plate other than your own… sorry Grandma), and my incessant foodgawking.

I mean hey, if hours of foodgawking doesn’t translate as food fanaticism, I don’t know what does.  Foodies unite.