This is the dark side of the second tier of what's left of the literary movement - articles which begin with a long section of blithering about the author's background, family, or cats. At least on blogs, one has the option of skipping the "About" page.
The New Yorker would not have published this in its heyday.
By the same author: "How to Spend Money".
This was sort of a "say nothing" article in sum to me, because he explored some different subjects and how he felt like foodies couldn't really survive in the long term with population expansion without compromising their reasons for being foodies in the first place, but then concludes by saying he's going to continue to be a foodie anyways.
Useless.
It's part formula, part filler to meet word count. My eye immediately skips down a few paragraphs so I can get to the point.