Blog Post #3-- The Inner Foodie

     When was the last time you truly appreciated food? Maybe it was an exquisite banquet held for a special event, a previous Thanksgiving dinner which had brought the whole family together under one roof, or perhaps just yesterday’s leftover dinner which was consumed for lunch today. No matter what the occasion, everyone has had a meal that meant something truly special to them, either for the flavor, fond memories associated with it, or even a simple interest in the food. A foodie is someone who demonstrates this food appreciation. Foodies are popping up all over the place nowadays, and many of them do not even know it. In today’s day and age, everyone has an inner foodie inside of them just waiting to break free. There are no inherent obstacles preventing someone from opening the gate and transforming into a foodie.

     Food shows, articles, and reviews give us an impression that food can only be truly enjoyed if it has taken hours to prepare and has shrunk your wallet considerably. This is simply not true. Today’s media tries to impose upon us an ideology that only the rich may indulge in dining experiences. As a counterargument, we must turn to the opposite extreme—those who must struggle on a daily basis to obtain the food they need to survive. If anything, these individuals have an even greater appreciation for food. Each meal is treated like a buried treasure which has been found after a thousand-year slumber. It is savored until the very last ounce of gold has been taken, and even then, the memory lasts a lifetime.

     The media’s perception of a foodie depicts someone with a refined taste. According to season six of Hell’s Kitchen, he or she is someone who can tell the difference between roast beef and venison, clams and mussels, and iceberg and romaine lettuces. These tasks may be designed for the elite, but does a lower-class individual not have taste buds too? Can he or she not distinguish flavors while eating? Of course, taste buds are not a physical trait passed down by one’s socioeconomic status. They are nature’s way of giving birth to the possibility of a foodie culture. Ask anyone, and they will be able to tell you whether or not they want their next meal to be seasoned into an explosion of flavor, or simply enjoyed without any seasoning to bring out the unique flavor of the food. Individuals of a lower socioeconomic status may not have the same opportunities, but the same fundamental aspects of food appreciation still apply to them.

     To further exemplify this idea of the term foodie, we must turn to the hundreds of millions of subsistence farmers that raise crops and animals in order to support their family. Many of these subsistence farmers would put the top media foodies to shame. To them and most of the world’s population, a chicken simply, with an oddly relevant cliché, tastes like chicken. In actuality, plain chicken can have a wide distribution of flavors. To a trained subsistence farmer who has spent years of hard labor involving trial and error, a purely corn-fed chicken tastes completely different than one with a diet comprising of a plethora of foods. Some subsistence farmers can tell you the exact diet of a chicken after just one bite. Let’s see Alton Brown or Bobby Flay compete against that.

     But what about the middle, or working, class? Can they be foodies? An easier, but equivalent, question would simply be: are they human? If the answer is yes to the second, the transitive property implies that the first must be true as well. Once again, there are no inherent obstacles preventing someone from becoming a foodie. Socioeconomic status does not directly translate into food appreciation, just food availability.

     One of the great things that food media has accomplished is to appeal to the masses. More and more programs and articles are beginning to focus on the middle class, because that is the group that more and more of their followers belong to. Status used to be reflected solely upon how many famous and well-known people you could bring to back your work. In our day and age, status is represented in number of subscriptions or viewers. In order to reach the top of the media mountain, you have to get as many people behind you as possible. In many ways, it is a popularity contest. This is where the middle class comes in.

     Just like everyone else, the middle class has an inner foodie just waiting to come out. For centuries, this inner foodie was only allowed to come out during special occasions such as weddings, baptisms, or holidays. Times changed. The middle class demanded a change. It got fed up and tired about hearing all of the great food experiences enjoyed by the rich, and it needed something it could relate to. The inner foodie grew hungrier.

     The result? Today, there are countless TV shows, online blogs, magazines, and even feature-length movies that cater to the specific wants and needs of the middle class. Shows hosted by Rachel Ray and others help everyday, normal people create culinary concoctions that are easy to make and do not take too much time away from a busy schedule. Meryl Streep showed the world in her film Julie & Julia that normal people can become culinary masters with a bit of hard work and a lot of heart. There are thousands of web sites including yelp.com which point middle class members in the right direction towards food that tastes good, but does not necessarily have to be expensive. Being a middle class foodie is easier than ever before, and people are jumping on the bandwagon by the millions.

     The advent of the microwave oven and frozen foods did to the foodie culture what the assembly line did to manufacturing. Foodies have existed throughout time, but these two new inventions made it even easier than ever for foodies to come out of their shells. More importantly, they made food appreciation accessible to the masses. Tasty meals can be cooked up in just seconds or minutes, when they took dozens of minutes to several hours mere decades ago.

     How else has the kitchen adapted to make the life of a foodie easier? First off, there are appliances for nearly every necessary process in the kitchen. Blenders can turn even the toughest of ingredients into a fresh pulp for a sauce. Dishwashers make the post-meal cleaning process almost effortless, giving foodies more time to do whatever else they want, including cooking more meals. There are even appliances which slice and dice onions for you: a process that may not have been too demanding, but is one of the most painful everyday kitchen experiences according to anyone that has had to do it by hand. It is easier now than even before for a middle class individual to appreciate food the way it was intended. The concept of foodies may have been created by God, or evolution, or sentient alien beings watching over us, but it is mankind’s ingenuity and innovation which allows foodies to thrive.

     One of the most interesting thoughts regarding food appreciation is tradition. We live in a society that is constantly trying to change in order to be faster and more efficient. Sometimes it is best to just take a step back and take note of the way things used to be. For centuries, traditions have been followed regarding the way a food is prepared or even how it is eaten. These traditions were kept even during the roughest of times. If this is the case, what is keeping individuals of all socioeconomic statuses from maintaining the same traditions that have been practiced for centuries? By just practicing simple culinary traditions, anyone can be a foodie and appreciate food the way it had been appreciated in times long gone.

     So why exactly is the food media such an important factor in the foodie culture as we know it today if there are so many other ways to appreciate food? Ideally, the media should be used as a guide, a beacon which represents one path a traveler can take. The concepts presented via TV, print, and radio are just there to get people thinking about the food around them. Because of this, becoming a foodie is so much more than simply following recipes brought to you and spitting facts about food.

     At the risk of sounding cliché, becoming a foodie is in many ways like finding one’s identity. There is only so much that others can do for you, but in the end you have to figure out by yourself if you want to be a foodie and appreciate the food around you. All of the guidance and tools, including money and social status, that one has are all there to make the foodie life that much easier, but in the end, it all comes down to an individual, personal choice to let the inner foodie break free. Everyone has their own inner foodie that is just starving to see the world. Are you willing to feed yours?