Let us imagine beautifully fried chicken wings with that perfect golden brown color, hot chili sauce and juicy grilled sausages. What about melted cheese and savory roast beef with a generous topping of butter? And finally a warm fudge brownie with melted chocolate inside covered by a tempting scoop of cool vanilla ice cream? Doesn't this sound wonderful? Doesn't it make you happy when you visualize this?
Maybe you can conjure these images with no effort at all because today you are familiar with all of these wonderful foods. Even though cooking shows on TV began with the introduction of homemade recipes for mothers and housewives, the trend is now toward stylish broadcasting of chefs and their cooking. Dr. Yoo Tae-jong describes it this way in the book “Food Matching” published in 1992, “In the past we usually ate with our stomachs. Now, we eat with our mouths.” The stomach means unconditioned hunger and thirst, the mouth means the tongue and the sense of taste. But now I can say we eat not with only our mouths but also with our eyes and ears.
Today we can watch a myriad of food shows on a range of media ranging from YouTube videos, magazines, TV programs and even dramas. These programs and videos serve many different audiences. Some programs only feature the fantastic, the tasty foods and upscale restaurants. Other shows focus on preparing and cooking food. There are dramas where eating is a central element of the plot, there is a professional food channel, and the YouTubers continuously make and upload videos about grilling, baking and eating food.
Some people say this is “foodism,” which means considering food itself deeply and almost spiritually. In modern society people are very stressed and tired of endless routine and competition in their daily lives. And so they are looking for ways to find joy and pleasure and making food a hobby as they are doing is catching on. This is foodism.
It's natural enough for this to happen. Eating is a basic need of existence, vitality and health, and it's significant to have a chance to contemplate the value of food. Eating is or should be one of the most joyful experiences of life, and in that sense, foodism has not developed in a shallow way.
Of course, the interest of these shows and their following among the younger generations began with the dissatisfaction of eating junky, mostly delivered instant food that lacks taste and is poor in nutrition. Contributing to this awareness are the cooking competitions and trying to find restaurants where people can enjoy the cookery.
However, as this fundamental instinctive content grows and becomes popular, people have started to develop and expand. Storytelling has given a boost to the growth of foodism. Food shows have expanded their target and have changed direction as they rearranged their purpose and added style in following the trend. You can watch the programs without the rigid resolution to learn about food because now it can be just for fun. And viewers now are not just limited to middle-aged women but have extended to people of all ages and both sexes. Not just showing food, now the shows display the history, origin and background information about food. Now you can see gorgeous male chefs cook for viewers and the rising number of YouTubers, who don't just eat but also analyze and describe the taste of food for their viewers. They eat in settings pleasing to the viewers too. And they even make food themselves.
Foodism is not just an instinctive way to have joyful feelings. The rising interest in food and eating means that we are thinking about how much food means to us. It explores the reasons why we eat, what we eat and how we prepare the foods we eat as the range of food goes beyond the food made in our mothers' kitchens. Foodism originates from that most necessary human need to eat and celebrates that.
The writer is a student in the College of English at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies. Her email address is madison94@naver.com.