foodie

thumb|Food truck rally|Food truck rallies may draw foodies, who congregate to sample the goods.A foodie is a person who has an ardent or refined interest in food, and who eats food not only out of hunger but also as a hobby. The related terms "gastronome" and "gourmet" define roughly the same thing, i.e. a person who enjoys food for pleasure; the connotation of "foodie" differs slightly—an everyday person with a love for food culture and different foods. Some, such as Paul Levy, say the foodie can still be a "foodist". Foodie in slang can be used to describe someone who searches out food and bases their schedule around that endeavor.

== Usage == The word foodie — not as elitist as a gourmet, more discriminating than a glutton — was first named in print in the early 1980s. The term came into use almost simultaneously in the United States and Britain. Gael Greene is sometimes credited as being the first to use the word; in June 1980, she wrote in New York Magazine of a character who "slips into the small Art Deco dining room of Restaurant d'Olympe ... to graze cheeks with her devotees, serious foodies." Immediately afterwards, foodie was defined in the British press. Ann Barr, features editor of the London magazine ''Harper's & Queen'', had asked readers to comment on a then-new obsession with food.