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I am SO, SO glad to hear that I'm not the only person on earth who doesn't like the word "veggies"!

I think the word originated at a time when people in this country started becoming interested in food again. Maybe the early nineties? When popular things like truffle oil and sea salt started showing up in stores. And places like Sur La Table and Whole Foods began opening. The Food Network began an era of celebrity chefdom and people started looking at real chefs as respectable professionals. I even saw a television clip of a young Emeril at Brennan's? telling the interviewer that people like himself and the restaurant owner are a distinct group of people known as "foodies."

It is a diminutive, but I think it had it's time and has outgrown it's "innocence" as it seems to not really have a definition. Maybe it never did but pretty much anyone can call themselves a foodie. It doesn't seem to really have any value. But I think it's a fun word for many people and what's wrong with fun? I'm not one to rain on anyone's parade.

I usually reserve the word foodie for people I consider something on the order of pretentious about food. You know where everything has to be the trendy thing. The olive oil must be from Greece because it's the best (not necessarily because it is the best as tastes vary from person to person but simply because someone important said it was the best).

Can I please pick "none of the above"? Because honestly, I don't care. Foodie, epicure, whatever. It makes no difference to me.

I feel like there's something of a snobby connotation with the word foodie, and THAT is why I don't like it. I'm just more of an enthusiastic eater... certainly not any sort of expert.

I've always been partial to the word 'epicure', but I've got a thing for weird and seldom-used words.

It sounds silly and trendy to me.

The word doesn't bother me, though it really doesn't seem to mean anything any more. Some self-proclaimed foodies just like to eat food and don't seem to know much about it, while others are snobby about all things food. I don't mind when people use the word to describe me, but I just call myself a food fan.

It's so interesting to me that so many of you have a snobby association with foodie. To me,
a snobby food lover is a gourmet,
someone who likes going out to eat in fancy places is an epicure,
those who like finding hidden places a chowhound

and those who love to cook and eat food in all its many forms are foodies.

It's not perfect - it's annoyingly diminutive. But at the same time, it's a useful shorthand for "people who like to cook and eat food"

And then there's our discussion group at church who eat 'nibblies'. I always want to buy snacks when it is our turn.

My husband came up with the term "fed-head" and it stuck to me.

I usually just say that I'm a food person, meaning that I like to both eat and cook. But that's only when I feel like I need to explain myself in some way to someone, like when I excitedly pipe up with some weird food fact during a conversation and get strange looks. Or when someone asks what I did over the weekend and I say that I made stock---again, to answer the looks.

I feel like "foodie" has become a snotty shorthand that some people often use to distinguish themselves, which makes me think they care more about status than food. But it's not always the case. My boyfriend characterized himself as a foodie when we first started dating (he offered a choice of three restaurants for our first date), and I think he just wanted to convey in a quick way what I mean by "food person."

In the end I think that, as with many popular terms, it's all about intentions.

It's kind of like people who call themselves flexitarians. Why do they need a label? I'm passionate about food, ingredients and cooking but I don't know that I need to give it a name. Food lover?

Foodie kind of makes me cringe. I don't like veggie, but I do like Gordon Ramsay's term: "Veg". Maybe it's the "ie" on the end that makes me cringe.

I can not stand the word. I think it has been overused. I usually ignore the weird looks from my friends in their twenties when I tell them that over the weekend I made jam and baked bread.

I hate the term foodie. It seems overly pretentious. I usually just call myself "hungry" and, at times, "adventurous," "curious" and "enthusiastic" about what I eat. That usually gets the point across without the, "I only eat certified grass-fed Angus Kobe beef dressed with hand-pressed extra-virgin olive oil bottled in small batches from Greece."

Foodie, to me, also implies someone who eats anything, which definitely isn't me. You can be a food-lover and not love all food. I'm looking at you, zucchini.

I like food, both eating and cooking. But I'm not an in your face person about it. Same thing about design and books. You can have things in your life that you enjoy without being labeled as a fanatic.

I think I associate the word foodie with people who are fanatics. The kind of people who talk your ear off about some obscure ingredient prepared absolutely authentically in some exotic location or their experiences organically gardening with the Amish. Replace food with baseball and you get the idea: someone who tells you about a new set of baseball statistics that are going to revolutionize MLB and how they choose shortstops, or rants about how metal bats have changed EVERYTHING.

I just say I love to eat. Foodie has become so overused. I have a coworker who calls herself a foodie based on the fact that she loves to dine at super expensive restaurants. But her cooking is crap.

When I think of a true foodie, for some reason the image of Anthony Bourdain comes to mind. Someone who seems truly passionate about food and loves to explore food in a variety of contexts.

I rather like "gastronome," perhaps for the M.F.K. Fisher connotations.

I call myself a KitchenNut because I love all thing cooking-related, not just "foodie." In the past, I've associated "foodie" with a general holier-than-thou attitude about food. I don't really have a reason why, and I certainly don't hold it against anyone; I just don't consider myself that. I am Not a Foodie (a post I had made previously on my blog)

hate the word. foodie = yuppie. who wants to be that self aware that you make a label for yourself?

It was a catchy term for about two weeks back in the early 90's.

Now, it's just annoying. Kinda like the word "sublime".

:)

www.thebitterfoodie.blogspot.com