Where Iowa Ranks in This Foodie Study is Preposterous
Iowa is the land of rolling farm fields, hog confinements, and cattle, both dairy and beef. Throw in some chicken, and that about sums up the (stereotypical) Iowa homestead, right?
Okay, most of us who aren't farmers likely don't have that set-up, but you likely never have to travel more than a few miles to find a set-up much like anything described above. So it may shock, or even disappoint you, to find out a new study doesn't rank any Iowa city as one of the top foodie cities.
The folks at WalletHub published a new study that claims to have identified the best foodie cities in the country. So how well is Iowa represented? Well, we only have two entries on the massive list.
Cedar Rapids and Des Moines were Iowa's lone foodie-worthy cities. Of course, as eastern Iowans, we're glad to see Cedar Rapids on the list, but when you learn CR appeared at 135th on the list, doesn't that cheapen things a bit?
Our capital, Des Moines, was ranked 60th, and overall, the list had 182 different cities.
How'd they figure this out?
The metrics used by the WalletHub folks seem to indicate they went solely based on how much food/drink costs. Their main two metrics are the cost of groceries and the cost of beer and wine.
They did consider restaurant meal costs as well... but they lumped that in with sales and food taxes.
I don't really see how taxes can factor into being a good foodie town. Foodies are not able to set the tax rate, nor directly change or influence them. Shouldn't a study about food and foodies factor in, you know, food and foodies?
Just a thought. Still nice to have two Iowa cities hit the list.