Die foodie die!

Whenever the fact that I have a food blog comes up in conversation, I am often confronted with the following response or a variant thereof, “Oh.  You’re a foodie!”  At that point my eyes narrow and if I had super hero laser vision, I am hard pressed to keep from boring a hole through the offender’s head and dropping them like a pile of fresh, bleeding meat at my feet.

I despise the word “foodie.”

Discounting the fact that it just SOUNDS stupid, I despise the behavior it implies.  Based on what I have observed about the culture these days, a foodie thinks that what they eat is somehow important and they are a unique and special flower as a result.  Thus, a foodie takes a photo of everything they eat.  A foodie writes snarky online reviews of the places they eat at as if their undifferentiated palette were somehow relevant.  A foodie drones on about farm to table, sustainability, technique, terroir, nuance.  A foodie will turn the simple and basic into the purposefully complex.

While foodies annoy the snot out of me generally, my larger gripe is that the word implies that that food is the focus, a solo artist and not a participating player in a larger ensemble.  Make no mistake, it is pretty clear I love to eat, but from where I sit the word excludes two important aspects of living: enjoying one’s food with a suitable, complementary beverage and that both food and complementary beverage are best enjoyed with other human being types, preferably people whose company you enjoy or have not yet bored a hole through their heads with your super hero laser vision, but that is not necessarily required.

And so, I reject the word “foodie,” its ugly, narcissistic implications, its loneliness, its very existence and I hereby propose replacing it with: bon vivant.  I will not bore you with a dictionary definition as many would; it is far too easy to look things up these days, so please go do so. Suffice to say, the Gallic tradition of "good things" and the inclusive, cultural nature of the term more fully approximate my views than some nouveau, made up bullshit term.  

So, if you feel the need to label please use the bon vivant (BV or beeve are suitable diminutives) label and please never, never, never call me a foodie.  I have conducted preliminary experiments related to the attainment of super hero laser vision and I will use it.