I'd like to thank everyone who left comments on my post about the word foodie and also thank you to those who emailed me personally . It does surprise me a word can invoke such passionate responses. It appears people actually hate the word, and I hope I'm right in saying, not the foodie him/herself. Although my research did bring up a blog with a scathing post on a man driving a Mercedes with the personal number plate FOODIE and some quite hateful comments from the readers.
This might be a good time to reveal I drive a 15 year old car with a personal number. Can you guess? Well WINO was already gone so I have FOODIE. And I love it. I can't tell you the number of people over the years that have approached me in the car park of various foodie food outlets and asked to buy it. All appeared quite normal. Food loving normal people. And I could never remember a number plate which consisted of a series of random numbers and letter.
Perhaps it's an age thing. After all I've been using the word for a good twenty or so years to describe people who are passionate about food and where it comes from. I've never attached any sort of elitist meaning to the word. Although Ed attaches an entirely different meaning to the word - almost the opposite of elitist.
English is an evolving language and over the years the meaning of a word can change entirely. Take the word gay. Fifty years ago it meant carefree, twenty years ago it came to mean sexual orientation and now today I have heard the current generation to use it as meaning something they don't like. Perhaps this has happened to the word foodie and todays meaning is entirely different to twenty years ago.
I tried to think of a word I dislike, hate, despise. Nothing came to mind. I thought of words like war, poverty, bullying, mean spirited. I dislike, hate and despise what they portray, but I don't actually hate the word. They are just words.
This will be my last comment on the word and I have no problem with people continuing to express their opposition. Constructive debate is always healthy. I only ask you think carefully how you word your opposition. I'm a sensitive soul a bit of a wimp and did find some reactions quite hurtful.
I will leave you with a final comment from Jennifer, a blogger who's writing I admire, and seems to sum it up perfectly.
I think it's a fun word, and rather tongue-in-cheek, because if you can
call yourself a foodie, you can also giggle over the so-called
pretentiousness of the whole concept of being food-obsessed, and
therefore it isn't pretentious at all.
