In the beginning, there were no recipes: food preparation methods were handed down from parent to child. A 3,500 year-old clay tablet from Babylon is thought to be the first recorded recipe, and the first printed cookbooks were prepared for the chefs of royalty. In the 18th century, Jean Brillat-Savarin wrote about food in a way that engaged the average person. But it wasn’t until M. F. K. Fisher — and her Art of Eating in 1954 — that food hit the casual reading market.

Since then, people's interest in food has increased dramatically. Gourmet Magazine, first published in 1941, became the first glossy magazine in America to concentrate on world cuisine. It evolved over time to become the premier food magazine in the US.

But Gourmet printed its last issue earlier this year, the victim of a publishing industry that is finding it necessary to reinvent itself. Citizen journalism, in the form of blogs and social media, proliferates.

Twitter and Facebook (among others) have changed the food landscape. Celebrity chefs tweet their latest local food finds. There are more recipe blogs than you can shake a spoon at. But Christopher Kimball, of the Cooks Illustrated publishing and television empire, exhorts people to “refuse to climb aboard this ship of fools, the one where everyone has an equal voice. Google 'broccoli casserole' and make the first recipe you find. I guarantee it will be disappointing.”

Is social media leveling the playing field — democracy in action — or, as Kimball believes, dumbing-down our understanding of food?

I recently used Twitter and Facebook to ask: “How has social media affected the food world?" Here are excerpt from some of the answers, many from names you might recognize. (Some corrections have been made for grammar and readability, but please realize that many of the “conversations” below happened in 140 characters or less. Of course.)

This article appears in Dec 16-22, 2009.