Chicken-Fried News: Pucker up, Oklahoma

(Madeline Hancock)
Madeline Hancock

According to an analysis of food words on Twitter broken down by state, Oklahoma’s word is, surprisingly, pickle. Not bacon, not steak, but pickle. The article on theverge.com revealed other surprises like North Dakota’s obsession with flan and Kentucky’s penchant for tacos. The academic paper, Analyzing the Language of Food on Social Media by Fried, Surdeanu, et al, built a data set about food trends from Twitter.

The short article by theverge.com broke down the key points of the paper. They were equally surprised at Oklahomans’ love of pickles. Pickles? Is there a pickle trend here in Oklahoma that we didn’t pick up on? Are we here at Oklahoma Gazette, with our obsession with bacon and booze, missing a key demographic? Duly noted, Oklahoma. And thanks for the info, academic guys and gals. We will be devoting countless hours delving into what we can do to give a voice to the voiceless pickle lovers among you.