Really? That’s D.C.’s most-tweeted food?

If asked to guess the food that D.C. folks tweet most about, I’d probably have said #halfsmoke, #pizza or maybe #crab.

I definitely wouldn’t have guessed “guava,” but that was apparently the most frequently tweeted food word in the District during an eight-month period studied by a group of University of Arizona researchers.

Is D.C. poised for some kind of tropical fruit takeover I don’t know about?

The researchers analyzed 3 million food-related tweets in all 50 states and the District during an eight-month period that ended in May 2014. Check out the full study here. (PDF)

Crab didn’t make the cut for Maryland either, with the most-tweeted food there being “grits,” as my Baltimore counterpart Ryan Sharrow reported. A map of the words for all 50 states was reproduced here by The Guardian.

Virginia’s most-tweeted word won’t surprise the state’s drinkers, however. The top food word in the commonwealth during the period studied was “rye.” You know what they’re talking about, right Catoctin Creek?

Some of the results aren’t surprising: “grits” actually dominated most of the South, “caviar” dominated in California, and “brisket” was the most-tweeted food word in Texas. (Duh.)

But “mutton” for New Mexico? “Prune” for New York? What gives? D.C. wasn’t the only one with a mysterious tropical fruit coup, however; the most-tweeted word in Maine during the study period was durian, a super-pungent, ugly-looking fruit that grows mainly in South Asia.

Federal News Network Logo
Log in to your WTOP account for notifications and alerts customized for you.

Sign up