quotations about food
Food--what is chosen from the possibilities available, how it is presented, how it is eaten, with whom and when, and how much time is allotted to cooking and eating it--is one of the means by which a society creates itself and acts out its aims and fantasies.
MARGARET VISSER
Much Depends on Dinner
I think preparing food and feeding people brings nourishment not only to our bodies but to our spirits.
SHAUNA NIEQUIST
Bittersweet
Food is our common ground, a universal experience.
JAMES BEARD
O Magazine, Nov. 2003
All of the best foods are dipped or drizzled.
KAREN SOLOMON
Asian Pickles
This much thou hast taught me: that I should learn to take food as medicine. But during that time when I pass from the pinch of emptiness to the contentment of fullness, it is in that very moment that the snare of appetite lies baited for me.
AUGUSTINE
Confessions
I've long believed that good food, good eating, is all about risk. Whether we're talking about unpasteurized Stilton, raw oysters or working for organized crime 'associates,' food, for me, has always been an adventure.
ANTHONY BOURDAIN
Kitchen Confidential
When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist.
DOM HELDER CAMARA
Essential Writings
How can I describe it? Good food is like music you can taste, color you can smell. There is excellence all around you. You need only to be aware to stop and savor it.
AUGUSTE GUSTEAU
Ratatouille
More die in the United States of too much food than of too little.
JOHN KENNETH GALBRAITH
The Affluent Society
Food is much better off the hand than the fork.
MARIO BATALI, Esquire
Esquire, Jun. 2004
I love simple food. I like to serve the entire animal, not only because it somehow provokes a customer to think about it, but also because to honor of the animal that has been killed for us to eat, you have to eat the whole thing. It would be silly to just eat the chops and throw everything else away.
MARIO BATALI
Harvard Business Review, May 2010
What is food to one, is to others bitter poison.
LUCRETIUS
De Rerum Natura
The fact is that this generation -- yours, my generation ... we're the first generation that can look at poverty and disease, look across the ocean to Africa and say with a straight face, we can be the first to end this sort of stupid extreme poverty, where in the world of plenty, a child can die for lack of food in it's belly.
BONO
2004 PENN Address
Once you become an elaborate and well-developed culture, anything from Rome or the Etruscans, for that matter, the food starts to become a representation of what the culture is. When the food can transcend being just fuel, that's when you start to see these different permutations.
MARIO BATALI
"The Traditions of the Table"
No food on my table
And no shoes to go on my feet
My children cry for mercy
They got no place to call your own
JOHN LEE HOOKER
"No Shoes", Travelin'
My favorite food city is wherever I happen to be eating. You know what they say, love the one you’re with!
PAMELA ANDERSON
PBS interview, Aug. 15, 2011
Food is like a chameleon meandering through the historical landscape changing its symbolic expression to meet the vagaries of the socio/cultural domain.
JANE FERRY
Food in Film
There are a lot of products still to be discovered in the world and experimentation, for example with seafood and fish. There are thousands of products that we're not eating right now that maybe will be cultivated in a good agriculture situation, a sustainable, ecological way. Maybe there will be textures or flavors we hadn't even thought of. In the Amazon there are 400 fruits that are not cultivated right now. They're just incredible fruits. Textures, tastes that we don't know right now.
FERRAN ADRIA
"World's top chefs talk cuisine, creativity in Chicago", Chicago Tribune, Mar. 20, 2014
What is sufficient for health is not enough for pleasure. And it is often a matter of doubt whether it is the needful care of the body that still calls for food or whether it is the sensual snare of desire still wanting to be served.
AUGUSTINE
Confessions
Our relationship with food -- how, when, what and why we eat -- is a direct expression of our underlying feelings, thoughts and beliefs about ourselves. It has to do with stances we take that get reflected not only in our relationship with food, but in all our relationships. It just so happens that the relationship with food causes enough conflict, grief, shame and hurt that we're willing to look at it.
GENEEN ROTH
"Geneen Roth on Dr. Oz, Food and Body Image", Huffington Post, Sep. 26, 2012