People Who Turn Food Into a Full-Time Job
There’s a certain type of person whose entire life seems to orbit around food. They’re either talking about food, planning food, photographing food, shopping for food, or explaining food. You’d think they were preparing for a lunar mission instead of making dinner on a Tuesday.
Every conversation eventually loops back to it. You mention you went for a walk and they respond with, “Oh nice, did you stop by that new artisanal sandwich place?” You say you worked late and they immediately pivot to, “Well you’ve GOT to try this air-fried cauliflower taco recipe I found.”
Meanwhile you’re just thinking, I ate a sandwich. It was fine. The end.
Some people treat grocery shopping like an Olympic sport. They know which store has the best olive oil, which store has the freshest basil, and which store has the organic heirloom tomatoes that were “harvested under the correct moon phase.” The trip requires three stores, two apps, and a spreadsheet.
Normal people buy food like this:
You go to the store, grab some stuff that looks edible, and leave.
Food enthusiasts, however, approach the process like they’re managing a hedge fund portfolio. “Well the avocados were $1.89 at Trader Joe’s, but if you combine the digital coupon at Kroger with the weekend produce special you can get them for $1.42 each.” At that point the time spent calculating avocado arbitrage has already cost more than the avocados.
Then there are the home chefs who document everything they cook. Not cook professionally, just cook dinner. Every plate must be photographed from multiple angles like it’s auditioning for a magazine cover.
“Hold on, nobody touch it yet.”
“What?”
“I need the lighting to hit the sauce properly.”
By the time the photo shoot is done, the food is cold and everyone else at the table is quietly wondering if they’re part of a cooking show they didn’t agree to join.
Another classic move is the endless recipe discussion. Some people cannot simply make spaghetti. They must explain the origin story of the tomatoes, the philosophical inspiration behind the sauce, and the 17 YouTube chefs they studied before committing to this version of garlic.
At some point you realize the conversation about dinner took longer than dinner itself.
The funny thing is that eating well actually isn’t that complicated. You can make perfectly good meals quickly and cheaply without building a culinary identity around it. A piece of chicken, some rice, a few vegetables, maybe a sandwich or pasta here and there, and you’re good to go. You know, food.
But for the hyper-food crowd, the meal itself is only part of the experience. There must be a narrative, a sourcing strategy, and a post-meal recap. They discuss grocery deals with the intensity of stock traders discussing market trends.
“Chicken thighs are down this week.”
“Oh yeah? I heard Aldi is moving serious volume.”
Some people treat restaurants the same way others treat tourist attractions. They’ve got lists, rankings, spreadsheets, and seasonal rotation schedules. You can’t just eat somewhere, it must be a curated dining experience with a waiting list and a signature appetizer.
All of this is perfectly fine if cooking and food culture are truly someone’s hobby. But a lot of the time it seems less like a hobby and more like a lifestyle identity that somehow consumes enormous amounts of time, energy, and money.
Meanwhile the rest of us are over here making a simple meal in fifteen minutes and moving on with life. That extra time can be used for things like hobbies, exercise, learning a skill, building a side business, or doing literally anything else. Because at the end of the day, food is supposed to fuel your life, not become your life.
Eat something decent, enjoy it, and carry on. You don’t need a documentary crew and a grocery price-tracking algorithm just to make dinner.
You’re Not a Food Influencer. Please Stop.
There’s a certain type of person who can’t simply eat food , they have to experience it, document it, discuss it, and then plan the next one before the current meal is even digested. You know who you are. You’ve got three different grocery store apps on your phone, a running note of which Trader Joe’s products are “back for the season,” and strong opinions about cast iron versus carbon steel. Bless your heart.
The weekly meal prep photo post is a particular genre worth examining. This is when someone spends an entire Sunday arranging identical Tupperware containers in a 3×4 grid and then photographs it like it’s a Condé Nast shoot. That’s four to six hours of your weekend, friend. You could have learned a new skill, gone for a hike, or made literally any amount of side income , but instead you have 28 portions of lemon herb chicken and a very organized fridge.
Then there’s the grocery store discourse. These are the people who treat a Costco run like a competitive sport, arriving with a laminated list and leaving with a cart that requires a second person to steer. They will tell you, unprompted, that they saved $47 this week, as if no one has ever considered buying the store brand before. The amount of mental energy spent tracking sales, clipping digital coupons, and cross-referencing unit prices per ounce could genuinely be redirected into something that makes money instead of just saving pennies.
Let’s not forget the restaurant scouting phase. This is where someone spends forty-five minutes on Yelp before committing to dinner plans, reads aloud from the menu like it’s breaking news, and then photographs the dish before anyone at the table is allowed to eat. The food gets cold. No one cares about your Instagram grid enough to justify cold pasta, but here we are.
Here’s the thing , eating well is genuinely not that complicated. Protein, vegetables, some whole grains, don’t deep fry everything, drink water. That’s basically it. You can pull off a week of solid, healthy meals in maybe an hour of actual cooking spread across a few days, without consulting five recipe blogs or owning a spice rack that looks like a pharmacy.
The food obsession industrial complex has convinced people that eating is a hobby, a lifestyle, a personality. And sure, cooking can be genuinely enjoyable and a real skill worth having. But there’s a meaningful difference between someone who cooks well and someone who treats every trip to the farmers market like a spiritual pilgrimage and then makes you watch a 90-second reel about heirloom tomatoes.
Life is short and full of genuinely interesting things to do, learn, build, and explore. Food is fuel with some very nice upside , not a full-time unpaid second job. Eat your vegetables, close the recipe app, and go do something else.