Welcome to Bon Appétit's first-ever Culture Issue! All month long we'll be bringing you stories from the intersection of food and music and entertainment and politics and more. (Psst, subscribe here!)
There’s a world of difference between medical food restrictions and frivolous dietary fads. Ben Schott indexes the more irksome fashions afflicting modern food culture.
Microbiotic - Consuming an absurdly large potion by painstakingly dividing it into seemingly insignificant nano-bites.
Detoxymoron - One who endeavors to compensate for unhealthy overindulgence with unhealthy under-indulgence.
K.W.F. (Kosher While Flying) - Non-Jews who request the in-flight kosher option because the food is better. In prison this is known as K.W.I.—Kosher While Incarcerated.
Hipster Vegan - An urbanite who bravely (if vocally) subsists on limited-edition kale burgers and vegetarian chicharrones.
Scarsdalian - One who remains doggedly loyal to diets from the dim and distant past (e.g., Atkins, Cabbage Soup, South Beach, Blood Type, Zone, etc.)
Omnibore - One who is so proud of eating absolutely everything she becomes as dull as those who eat absolutely nothing.
F.O.M.O.Varian - One who simply has to fork a bite of every dish.
Glutenaught - One who disdains gluten—not for any medical reason, but because it's considered to be A Bad Thing in General.
Beneviolence - Ordering "for the table" dishes only you want to eat.
Menunomics - Tactical ordering to obtain a subtle advantage when splitting the check. Similar to...
...Teetotoll - The financial penalty paid by nondrinkers when splitting the bill with boozehounds.
S'moralizing - Serenely declining dessert before taking a spoon to everyone else's Pavlova.
Bleakend - An "intermittent fast" where you eat like a beast for five days before starving yourself for two.
Pac-Mangeur - One who ostentatiously orders an indulgent dish only to shovel it off onto the plates of fellow diners.
Ventriloquisine - Deploying incessant banter about food to distract from the fact that you never actually eat anything.
Gymathics - The complex calorie calculus by which exercise justifies eating.
Exercise: Thinking about going to the gym
Justifies: Croissant
Exercise: 5-minute warm-up with a yoga ball
Justifies: Chocolate croissant
Exercise: 15 minutes on a recumbent bike
Justifies: The third beer
Exercise: Elaborate posing with free weights
Justifies: Cheeseburger and fries
Exercise: 30-minute jog in the park
Justifies: Tasting menu with wine pairing
Clafoutistocrat - One who insists "the pastries are far superior" in France.
E.W.F. (Eating While Famous) - When emaciated celebrities pose with gluttonous foods in an attempt to portray themselves as "normal."
Dr. No-Ma - One who dined at Noma once and never fails to remind you.
Greenback Juicer - One for whom the success of a cleanse is correlated with the price of the juice.
Bone Brother - One who imagines he is the very first to discover soup.
Flexitarian - "I never eat steak...except when I'm at Peter Luger's."
Spiralizer - One who insists on carving carb-free "noodles" out of vegetables. A subspecies is the Zoodlist—who favors the zucchini noodle.
Fickle-Pickler - One whose dietary whims mutate with every meal.
Sideophile - One who believes that dressings contain fewer calories if ordered "on the side." Not to be confused with...
...Sideophobe - One whose diet involves substituting fries with salad. Not to be confused with...
...Pattyvore - One who orders the burger but doesn't eat the bun.