What an extraordinary achievement for a civilization: to have developed the one diet that reliably makes its people sick!

Food is also about pleasure, about community, about family and spirituality, about our relationship to the natural world, and about expressing our identity. As long as humans have been taking meals together, eating has been as much about culture as it has been about biology.

There is nothing wrong with special occasion foods, as long as every day is not a special occasion.

Food consists not just in piles of chemicals; it also comprises a set of social and ecological relationships, reaching back to the land and outward to other people.

Eat only until you're 4/5 full. An ancient Japanese injunction.

It has become much harder, in the past century, to tell where the garden leaves off and pure nature begins.

Without such a thing as fast food, there would be no need for slow food.