I don’t just eat to eat

‘Are you a foodie?’ In all likelihood, this query has been directed your way in a casual conversation.

The question can be daunting. Yes, you like a good Italian meal at a fancy restaurant, but you couldn’t for the life of you tell the difference between gorgonzola and prosciutto. And sure, you enjoy watching Nigella Lawson whip up goodies in her kitchen — or do anything for that matter — but  you don’t actually remember any of her recipes.

Fortunately, none of that should disqualify you from calling yourself a foodie. After all, you’ve been eating since you were born. So it’s only natural you have an opinion on it. And this fact has made talking about food, more than eating or making it, the cornerstone of a burgeoning food culture where people hungry for conversation-starters throng food festivals and gourmet stores. Suddenly, foodies are everywhere, and they want you to know all there is to know.

The sociology
To be a foodie is to have a surefire ticket to fitting in. Food lends itself well to ‘intelligent’ conversations. Criticising a badly cooked cut of meat doesn’t require quite the same level of intellectual tenacity, as say, discussing potential roadblocks to the extension of the Kyoto Protocol.

And Facebook updates about that new restaurant you went to last night and what you thought of the food there not only ensures comments from friends who get to offer their two cents, but also tells everyone that you’re on top of food trends.

The psychology
Food can make you popular, too. Often, professionals with high disposable incomes and a moderate writing talent become food bloggers, waxing eloquent about food adventures in different parts of the world, weaving nostalgic narratives over easily relatable food memories. With every post, they cement their  identity based on preference for certain types of food, and restaurants based on their location or ambience. All food bloggers operate from the same need — to give others a glimpse into who they are.

The ideology
As food becomes a defining marker of lifestyle, declaring preferences has become a way to assert one’s individuality. And with the endless choice of cuisine and places to get it, there are countless identities to choose from.
The meat lovers measure the worth of a restaurant by the way it cooks its steak. The well-heeled travellers only deem worthy those restaurants that recreate to perfection dishes they’ve fallen in love with on their journeys.

There are those for whom food triggers memories of home and childhood and results in a lifelong search for those elusive flavours. Any restaurant that claims to offer authentic regional cuisine inevitably draws people with even loose ties to the region (say, a Bengali who’s never been to Kolkata) shaking their heads disappointedly over a meal that’s ‘just not the same’. Health foodies are a resented minority, often basing their identities not on what they eat but on what they don’t.

Finally, the science
In the field of science where reason prevails, links between food preferences and personality have thrown up some implausible results.

After 24 years of study, a certain Dr Alan Hirsch of the Chicago-based Smell & Taste Treatment Foundation  tested 18,000 people’s food choices and personalities and found that food fixations reveal a lot about one’s character.

Lovers of potato-chips are classified as aggressive and driven, a fact that might make sense to somebody who’s ever tried to reach for the last chip in the presence of a processed potato enthusiast. Cheese lovers are allegedly people of integrity, except perhaps when it comes to admitting they can polish off a whole can in one sitting. And people who like vanilla ice cream prefer secure romantic relationships.

Eventually, whether cultivated or inborn, a foodie is a product of a world where former divisions are getting erased, but, ironically, people’s need to distinguish themselves and declare it to the world is growing more acute. So as long as there is that need, what you eat will tell people who you are.