I consider myself a half-gourmet.

There is a difference between a gourmet and a foodie. A foodie is someone who loves to eat. They are often hungry and can be satisfied with rich and greasy foods like spicy crayfish or spicy hot pot. Generally, foodies are only interested in the taste and show little interest in the culture, history, and culinary skills beyond the act of eating.

A gourmet, on the other hand, may not necessarily enjoy eating but is very particular and even picky about the details of food, to the point of being "demanding." They have their own opinions on the harmony or discord of ingredient pairings, the suitable cooking methods for certain ingredients, the balance of flavors (which seasoning is excessive or lacking in a dish), the control of cooking temperatures, and even the appropriate serving dishes and utensils for a particular dish.

Gourmets are mostly interested in the culture, history, and stories related to food. For example, when I was young, I read Lu Wenfu's Gourmet, and the part about Zhu ZiYe rushing to eat the first pot of noodles in the morning was something I read over and over with great interest.

There is some overlap between foodies and gourmets. Those who like to eat may not necessarily know how to eat well; and those who know how to eat well, due to their pickiness, often do not overindulge. I call those who are particular about eating but do not cook themselves "appreciative gourmets." Those who are particular and also cook are "practicing gourmets." These gourmets, upon seeing a new recipe, eager to try it out.

What is Eat Intelligence? If scholars in the future become interested in this concept and conduct in-depth research, I would have laid the foundation for a new discipline. The following can be considered the basic theory of this discipline.

Eat Intelligence refers to a person's ability to appreciate and create the beauty of food. I believe that the level of Eat Intelligence depends on four aspects:

• Talent: It cannot be denied that innate factors have a significant impact on Eat Intelligence. Some people are naturally capable of finding, discovering, and appreciating good food; others have relatively dull taste buds and are insensitive to good food. The same dish, the same recipe, the same ingredients, and the same cooking method can be done decently by someone with talent on their first try, while someone without talent may need to experience repeated failures before achieving the same result.

• Exposure: If talent is the innate aspect of Eat Intelligence, exposure is the acquired part. The influence of a rich food environment can greatly compensate for a lack of natural talent. A child growing up in a region abundant with delicious food certainly has an advantage in Eat Intelligence over one growing up in a food desert. A child with zero talent but full exposure can have an equivalent Eat Intelligence to one with full talent but zero exposure.

• Willingness: This refers to the motivation to seek out, discover, and create good food. A lack of willingness is reflected in the appreciation of food as not being particular about what one eats. In terms of creating good food, I have seen many people who have talent but do not enjoy cooking; on the other hand, there are those who do not have talent but love to show off their culinary skills. If you do not want to speak against your conscience when eating the latter's dishes, you can only comment, "Hmm, this dish is interesting."

• Creativity: This refers to the ability to create good food without being bound by established methods, to transfer, vary, break through, and innovate based on existing cooking experiences with raw materials and cooking techniques. People without imagination often cook by the book, repeating the same few dishes day after day; those with rich imagination can draw inferences about other cases, trying different cooking methods with different ingredients.

Willingness and creativity mainly affect the creation of good food; talent and exposure affect both the appreciation and creation of good food. The imagined top experts who have reached the seventh level should not only be able to handle various cuisines with ease but also create their own dishes, establish their own schools, and leave legends in the culinary world.

Defining "good food" is a challenging task. The standards for "good food" are highly subjective and regional, depending on personal experiences and preferences. Like aesthetics, it is difficult to have an absolute standard for good food. It is obviously impossible to convince southerners that "nothing is better than dumplings"; and it is unreasonable to expect people outside of Hubei to acknowledge that hot dry noodles are the best noodles in the world.

I once saw a list on Twitter called "The World's 50 Best Foods Selected by Americans." Although I already knew the level of American cognition of good food, I couldn't help but click to see what Americans think is delicious. The Neapolitan pizza and Japanese sushi listed in the top few are relatively normal, but later on, there are surprisingly "American fried potato chips," "American tomato sauce," and "American ice cream"... If someone thinks that hamburgers, fries, and coke are the best taste in the world, what can you do?