George Lakoff (and others) on "foodie"

[Laurence Horn]

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/01/opinion/beyond-foodie-its-about-our-values.html
[see embedded link for the Mark Bittman op-ed at issue]

Note that Lakoff's argument presupposes that the -ie of "foodie" is the same suffix that we have in "Barbie", "baggie", "birdie", "hoodie", and "selfie", but none of these are quasi-agentives the way "foodie" is, and other than the -ie or -y hypocoristic for names (Barbie, Georgie, Billy,..), the others are diminutives for non-human objects.  You'd think a more relevant example might be "hippie", "Yippee", or even "commie", where an Xie is someone adhering to the X philosophy or an aficionado/true-believer in X. (There are probably other examples I'm not remembering.  Anyone else?)  These may well be trivializing, but it's not just the -ie form that's responsible for trivializing and pejoration; we've spent some time knocking around the -er of "truther", "birther", etc. for 'adherent of the X conspiracy', also .  I agree with the following letter suggesting that "foodist" might be the best choice, unless it's too reminiscent of "nudist" (given the rhyme) or "naturist". 

L

P.S.  I guess an anti- might also try "foodite", as in Trotskyite (vs. neutral "Trotskyist"), but that sounds too much like a chemical additive that foodies would resist.
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