Imagine you’re at a restaurant along with your friend circle. Most of the time you tend to order more food than you can eat when you’re with your friends, right? Pasta, pizzas, burgers, and whatnot and you notice that you are already full. But never mind, we all know that one friend who is like a human dustbin, someone who can devour anything that is left on the plate, be it a slice of pizza or a whole box of pizza.
Whereas, we also have that one friend who is opposite of the one we discussed above. Someone who just likes to enjoy food slowly. These two types of people are termed, gourmand and gourmet.
Gourmet vs Gourmand
The main difference between gourmet and gourmand is that a gourmet is someone who is knowledgeable about food and wine and has refined tastes. Someone who likes to eat food primarily to enjoy its flavors, not for the sake of finishing it. On the other hand, a gourmand is someone who has an excessive appetite for food and beverages. Someone who eats primarily for pleasure.
Gourmet is passionate about learning and exploring more tastes and flavors. They are all about filling their taste buds with flavors rather than filling their stomach with unnecessary food. Gourmet is the true lover of food because they are also very knowledgeable about the food they are eating and even if they don’t, they’re very interested in learning and experimenting more.
Gourmands, also called gourmande (feminine), are people who are passionate about eating, never miss a chance to indulge themselves in some kind of excessive eating activity. Occasionally it’s construed negatively, meaning greedy, but I usually hear it playfully or lovingly.
Comparison Table Between Gourmet and Gourmand
| Parameters of Comparison | Gourmet | Gourmand |
| Definition | Someone who likes to eat food primarily to enjoy its flavors | Someone who has an excessive appetite for food and beverages |
| Passion | Passionate about learning and exploring more tastes and flavors | Passionate about eating until their stomach starts to hurt |
| Health status | Healthy | Borderline unhealthy |
| Offensive term | no | yes |
| Synonyms | Epicure | Glutton |
| Origin | Old French | Old French |
Who is Gourmet?
Someone who has refined tastes and has knowledge about food and wine is called a gourmet. A person who eats primarily to enjoy its taste, rather than to finish it. Gourmets are people who have or believe they have, refined tastes in food. Their tastes are discriminating, and they tend to favor expensive, extravagant restaurants. Furthermore, they have the notion that they believe that because of their refined taste, their discernment, and their rarity and palette, they are better or equal to the world-renowned critics who write about food and their knowledge of flavors.
The term Gourmet comes from the word “tastevin” (French term) meaning someone who has an excellent knowledge about wine, someone who knows the small flavors of wine. Gourmet can also be described by a great connoisseur of food and beverages. Someone who knows what a portion of good food looks like and tastes like. A gourmet never misses a chance to open his/her taste buds and to explore more flavors of the world. Gourmet is truly the best of its kind and seeks to get and spread its knowledge for food and beverages. They like the highest quality of the food which to be presented in the prettiest way possible.
Who is Gourmand?
The term gourmand refers to someone who takes great pleasure in eating; a person who consumes food and drink in excessive amounts; a gluttonous eater. A gourmand eats just to fulfill its rapacious behavior towards food. He just eats for the sake of eating instead of slowly enjoying the taste and feeling the flavors. Gourmand is someone who enjoys food to the point where their stomach starts telling them to stop. They are those kinds of people who prefer quantity over quality in terms of food. They are very passionate about food and like to eat in every emotion. For example, they’ll eat when they are happy to show their happiness. Also, they’ll eat when they’re sad just because it makes them happy and helps them cover their sadness.
The term Gourmand comes from the late Middle English period from French origin. Old French people used to term people who used to eat excessively as gourmand or gourmande (feminine). Nowadays, the term gourmand is often considered offensive or rude because people prefer being called a “foodie” instead of gourmand. Even though gourmet is also passionate about food, Gourmand is also passionate about food and prefers eating good food, but in large quantities.
Main Differences Between Gourmet and Gourmand
- A gourmet is someone who eats in little amounts whereas a gourmand is someone who eats in excessive amounts.
- A gourmet is someone who prefers quality over quantity whereas a gourmand is someone who prefers quantity over quality.
- A gourmet is used as a badge of honor but gourmand is used as an offensive term.
- A gourmet is someone who tries to enjoy every bit of flavor, even if it’s in small quantity whereas a gourmand is someone who eats just for the sake of finishing the food plate.
- A gourmet is someone who is passionate about exploring different flavors whereas a gourmand is passionate about eating until their stomach hurts.
Conclusion
While gourmet and gourmand have similar meanings, they are not the same. The words both can be used to denote a lover of good food, but gourmand is more commonly used to describe someone who eats excessively.
Despite both of these words’ emphasis on food and beverage consumption, they have different meanings which are sufficiently dissimilar from one another. This means that some level of scrutiny should be given before describing oneself as either of them. Calling gourmand could often be seen as inappropriate so mind yourself before using that term for someone.
Reference
- https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1439179104000842