What is the idea behind “gourmet”? Originally, gourmet referred to food that was high on taste and low on quantity. But now, it seems like everything is being marketed as “gourmet”.

The down hill slide began with gourmet pop corn. Now, while I like pop corn, I didn’t consider it to be in the same category with caviar.

Recently, I bought “gourmet” peanut brittle. It was tasty but not the best that I have ever had. Most recently, I bought some dried basil. There were two kinds on the shelf; regular and gourmet. The gourmet was more expensive than the regular. I opted for the regular.

If you used gourmet pop corn for pop corn balls, would the pop corn balls be “gourmet”?