Akademik

n.

A person who predicts food and dining trends.

"As our rapid-paced lifestyle continues to change eating patterns, Campbell's sees nourishing, ready-to-serve soups playing an even more important role in the future. Which is why this market leader put the challenge to Ann Coombs, food futurist and trend forecaster, to predict Canada's future 'soupscape' and food trends for the year 2025."

— "Is Soup the Next Fast Food?," Canada NewsWire, October 24, 2000

When I first saw this word, I burst out laughing at the sheer preposterousness of such a creature. My laughter turned to shock when after some research I found out that not only are there food futurists among us, there are enough of them to have formed their own organization: International Food Futurists! I wonder if Faith Popcorn is a member?

You can imagine these people are quite silly in a delightfully unintentional way. A perfect example is the following citation, in which a food futurist proposes five new — and absolutely hilarious — meal names:

"The World Future Society in Bethesda, Md., which publishes The Futurist, has marked the New Year with its top 10 list of thought-provoking forecasts. One of them may already be a reality for some of us: the demise of three square meals a day. Instead, according to Christopher Wolf, a food futurist in Chicago, we will eat fives snacks a day. Their proposed names are 'daystart,' 'pulsebreak,' 'humpmunch,' 'holdmeal,' and 'evesnack."

— Linda Feldman, "It's Crystal-Ball Time: Imaging 1995," The Christian Science Monitor, December 30, 1994