Judging foods without regard to price is a rich mans game, and yet poor people can be gourmets able to discern a good potato from a bad one.

A gourmet knows that the best part is not always the expensive part, and he will find that part, and then he will share it. A gourmet should want to share.

THE ROMANS SALTED their greens, believing this to counteract the natural bitterness, which is the origin of the word salad, salted.

Fate likes to tease paranoids.'

The history of the Americas is one of constant warfare over salt.

Man wants to see nature and evolution as separate from human activities. There is a natural world, and there is man. But man also belongs to the natural world. If he is a ferocious predator, that too is part of evolution. If cod and haddock and other species cannot survive because man kills them, something more adaptable will take their place. Nature, the ultimate pragmatist, doggedly searches for something that works. But as the cockroach demonstrates, what works best in nature does not always appeal to us.

In 'The Republic' he [Plato] states that the enjoyment of food is not a true pleasure because the purpose of eating is to relieve pain - hunger.