What benefit does Django-Taggit provide over a simple ManyToManyField() implementation of tagging?

Question

The API according to the documentation seems achievable with a simple ManyToManyField...what am I missing?

Sample from Django-Taggit documentation:

class Food(models.Model):
    # ... fields here

    tags = TaggableManager()

Then you can use the API like so::

>>> apple = Food.objects.create(name="apple")
>>> apple.tags.add("red", "green", "delicious")
>>> apple.tags.all()
[<Tag: red>, <Tag: green>, <Tag: delicious>]
>>> apple.tags.remove("green")
>>> apple.tags.all()
[<Tag: red>, <Tag: delicious>]
>>> Food.objects.filter(tags__name__in=["red"])
[<Food: apple>, <Food: cherry>]

Answer 1

The real advantage is not in finding the tags of an object, but rather the objects for a tag. And specifically, if you have multiple types of objects that can be tagged, imagine:

class Food(models.Model):
   tags = models.ManyToManyField(Tag)

class Wine(models.Model):
   tags = models.ManyToManyField(Tag)

Now find me all the instances of objects tagged "purple". Taggit makes it a lot easier to do so.