It's to the best of our knowledge. I'm Anne Strand Champs. Today, food for thought. Say we go out for brunch.

You want bacon and sausage. I go for the tofu scramble. You order a decaf moccacchino soy latte.

I don't know what that is. Taste can seem so incredibly individual, as though no two

people could possibly share all the same likes and dislikes. But beyond individual taste buds,

there are vast social and economic trends and even hidden taste makers shaping the foods we eat, like cupcakes.

Remember how they used to come in two flavors, chocolate or vanilla, and they were served

at children's birthday parties, and then almost overnight they were transformed into

upscale, decadent desserts for grownups. How does that happen? Journalist David Sacks

investigates in his book The Taste Makers, Why We're Crazy for Cupcakes but Fet Up with Fondue.

Sarah Nix caught up with him. It seems like over the past 10 years, food has become the next great

mark of cultural savvy. Do you have any idea why knowing about the next

big food trend or the latest hot chef or the best fermentation recipe has become equivalent to say

being in the loop about music or art or films? Yeah. You know, my wife loves to say that food is our

new culture, that chefs are our

rock stars and our artists, and that's how we value things today. And I think it's for a couple

reasons. One is that food and cooking went really since the mid-90s and the rise of the food

network and became a form of entertainment. And I think it grew because it is accessible to everyone.

You know, opera is something that's accessible to only people who really understand it and live in an area where there's opera and kind of afford to go.

Art is the same thing.

You know, there's not a lot of art shows that people go to.

It's not sort of the most accessible form of culture to the masses. And the other forms of

culture have been kind of devalued, right? Music is now something you just get whenever you want,

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