I watch Food Network a lot. I love cooking shows and shows about food … cooking being one of those things I am really into. There’s something that has been bothering me lately: food terminology.

A few nights ago a watched a Food Network special called the Las Vegas Pasty Competition. The only problem was there were no pastries to be found. The competition featured top pastry chefs building sugar sculptures. While it was a fascinating program, and I love seeing the amazing things people with skill and talent can do with just sugar, a sugar sculpture isn’t a pastry. One need only look in any standard English dictionary to find that in order for something to be classified as a pastry four things can be considered requirements: flour, shortening, water and baking. Food Network calling a sugar sculpture competition a “pastry” competition irked me enough that I may have to email them to complain.

My other current pet peeve is the use of the word “microgreens” to describe sprouts. Sprouts is a perfectly good word to describe, well SPROUTS and shoots (i.e. baby plants). Why come up with a new word to describe something that has a perfectly valid and well-known word to describe it already, especially since I wouldn’t consider sprouts to be particularly “micro” in nature, not to mention not all sprouts are green (just to nitpick further).

I realize that languages grow and change over time, and call me a fuddy-duddy if you want to, but why not use the language correctly as it already exists rather than misusing it or creating all new words when the ones we have work just fine?