It's on Twitter - It Has to Be True

I came across this great map.  Researchers at the University of Arizona compiled Twitter hashtags and made a map of the most talked about foods by state.  I am not sure how researchers sorted through the hashtags, separating food from non-food.  In fact, I have a million questions about the methodology of this study.  (Nevermind the usefulness of it - don't these scientists have better things to study than food mentions on Twitter?)

Sure it is clever, a little parlor trick of social media research.  Does it tell us anything about our eating habits?  Or our conversations about food?  Well, a lot of people are tweeting about grits.  I am also fascinated by the pairs - Kansas and New York are talking about prunes, and Nevada and Wisconsin tweet a lot about sauerkraut.  What does it mean?  It doesn't mean anything!

I think I'll head to North Dakota; I could use a good flan.

University of Arizona food tweets