[spongepoc]

The west has culturally moved into a kind of foodie Epicureanism in the past 15 years. This can be seen as a response to economic pressures that young people are facing. When you can't afford a home or a car, you give up on it altogether and suddenly you have all this disposable income to spend on smaller and more transient sensory experiences like food and travel. Importantly, these experiences are able to be catalogued on social media.

Instagram is a huge factor in the rise of foodie-ism. If you are what you eat then you can use pictures of food as a form of self-expression. Picture of a dish at a quirky new restaurant? You're adventurous and on-trend. Made a sourdough bread from scratch? You're artisanal and authentic.

We also have to consider that 'cool food places' is one of the biggest draws that have led people to move into big cities in the past 15 years. Young people are ditching chain restaurants for hipster authenticity. Fetishising the latest Pho place as being more authentic than the last is one way to demonstrate your competence in the urban marketplace of food choices. Which leads on to the phenomenon of 'review-ism': how we now depend on internet reviews to decide where to go.