Everyone talks about food. It is a relatively recent phenomenon, and around the world of gastronomy, new 'tribes' of people emerge who identify with certain groups through their eating habits.
Recently, I have encountered a very frequent phenomenon at social events: almost everyone claims to be a lover of good food, and almost everyone identifies as a gourmet, sybarite, foodie, food lover, or epicurean. Let us explore a bit the meanings of each of these terms.
The term gourmet comes from France and, curiously, its origin is not in the nobility. In the French language, there are two meanings to describe a person who enjoys fine dining, but with marked differences.
On the other hand, there is the gourmand, who enjoys good food and drink, can recognize quality in the simplest ingredients and the most sophisticated dishes, but these do not necessarily have to be the most exotic or expensive. Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, the father of gastronomy, says that gourmandise is the enemy of any excess.
By contrast, gourmet is a term that was used in France for official wine inspectors, responsible for tasting them. After the French Revolution, among the nouveaux riches, the term began to be used to designate a person knowledgeable about wines, and later the term was applied to people who know and prefer only the most select and costly dishes and drinks. Thus, for example, while a gourmand is capable of identifying the best chilaquil sandwich in the city, the gourmet would be incapable of doing so, as neither the ingredients nor the dish correspond to a certain social status.
History and philosophy have influenced the terms we commonly use in gastronomic speech, such as sybarite and epicurean.
The sybarite is the demonym of Sybaris, a province in Calabria, Italy. It is said that the sybarites were not distinguished for being the most hardworking and, instead, devoted themselves to excesses of the flesh; thus, the sybarite drank and ate in excess.
The epicurean, the person who seeks pleasures and a happy life following the teachings of Epicurus of Samos, is a term that today is commonly used to refer to people who enjoy material pleasures, many of them related to food and drink.
The term foodie appeared for the first time in The Official Foodie Handbook in 1984. It is probably the most ambiguous term of all. While anyone interested in the entire culinary process (from preparation, searching, or consumption of dishes) can be called a foodie, they are distinguished by self-identifying as food geeks: many specialize in an ingredient, a dish, a technique, or even a type of restaurant; there are foodies specialized in knowing the best eggs benedict in a city, or those who only explore street food stalls.
The rise of gastronomy means that today there are many food enthusiasts, but this generates a certain type of belonging, a kind of specialization, because ultimately, there is no official degree of 'sandwich taster' or 'sauce specialist.'
It is very likely that in the coming years new terms will emerge as attempts to designate new tribes of food lovers.
In the end, those that have transcended the centuries, like gourmet, gourmand, epicurean, and sybarite, are the ones that combine in their meanings both objective organoleptic appreciations and subjective appreciations of what gives us pleasure.
— This article was originally published in Spanish by Liliana Martínez Lomelí. Translation generated with AI from the original text.