Labels are for people

How many ways can you describe your dietary choices?

By Caroline Cummins

August 1, 2007

This spring, Chow magazine published a Top 10 list of labels.

Nope, not the kind you see on boxes or cans. Rather, the kind that humans choose to apply to themselves (or others) about what they eat (or won’t).

Chow’s list? In order, their top 10 human-diet labels were: vegan, macrobiotic, localvore or locavore, gluten-free eater, lachanophobitarian (i.e., afraid of veggies), flexitarian, pescatarian, calorie-restricted, gravitarian (a vegan subset), and breatharian (subsisting on, well, air).

To that list, we’ll add 13 more: vegetarian, lacto-ovo vegetarian, lactose-intolerant,
omnivore, carnivore, herbivore, ayurvedic, raw, freegan, fruitophobe (to go with the lachanophobes), food sensitive, allergic, and yo-yo dieters.

No wonder it’s so hard to plan dinner parties these days.