How to tell if you're a foodie - and it's not always a good thing

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The term "foodie" is getting a bad rap.

Recently, food writers, chefs and celebrities have been launching assaults on the notion of foodies - people obsessed with all things epicurean - in 140-character Twitter blasts, magazine and newspaper essays decrying this group as borderline insufferable and pretentious.

A mini web series entitled Foodies which aired in March, for instance, was one giant parody of high-brow diners who throw extravagant dinner parties with obscure ingredients like geoduck - a long, seawater clam. The webisodes prompted national Canadian newspaper The Globe and Mail to weigh in with an essay entitled, "Foodies: Are food crazies getting their just desserts?"

The March issue of The Atlantic also visited the topic in a lengthy piece, "The Moral Crusade Against Foodies," and recently, chef star du jour, Gabrielle Hamilton, author of Blood, Bones and Butter and chef at New York restaurant Prune, called the term foodies "kind of a bummer."

Mindy Kaling, star of the US sitcom The Office, also took to Twitter to say, "I'm over foodies," last week.

In light of the backlash against this human food group, editors at Food & Wine magazine published their checklist of "danger signs" June 14 - telltale red flags that your love of food may be turning into "an ugly obsession."

According to the magazine, you may be a foodie if:

1. It takes more time to decide where to dine than to have dinner.

2. You know the names of meat distributors other than Pat LaFrieda.

3. You ask the waitress to be specific about the kind of kale in the salad.

4. You've paid to eat dinner at a stranger's apartment.

5. You've joined a line with more than five people in it, for a sandwich, from a truck.

6. Your entrée choice hinges more on where it was raised than on what it is.

7. You tweet your meals before dessert.

8. Your coffee has a proper name.

9. You've tasted single udder butter.

10. You've made your own sausage. After meeting the pig.

11. Your closets are being used as cheese caves or beer cellars.

12. Queens is a culinary destination.

13. Your pick-up line asks "What's your favorite restaurant."

14. You've spent more than $10 on a cocktail outside of a club.

15. You roll your eyes at molten chocolate cake.