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

If you're going to change the food system, there is a lot that you, the consumer, can do on your own; but in the end, it will be very important to make changes at the national level.

Ripe vegetables were magic to me. Unharvested, the garden bristled with possibility. I would quicken at the sight of a ripe tomato, sounding its redness from deep amidst the undifferentiated green. To lift a bean plant's hood of heartshaped leaves and discover a clutch of long slender pods handing underneath could make me catch my breath.

Eat with consciousness. When you eat with consciousness, and you know what you're eating, and you eat it in full appreciation of what it is, it's enormously satisfying.

Most important thing about your diet is who cooks it, a human or a corporation.

He showed the words “chocolate cake” to a group of Americans and recorded their word associations. “Guilt” was the top response. If that strikes you as unexceptional, consider the response of French eaters to the same prompt: “celebration.

Every peasant cuisine has incredible ingenious tricks for getting a lot of nutrition out of a small amount of ingredients. There are people who don't have the money to invest in better food, but perhaps they have the time. There's a trade-off: The more time you're willing to put into food preparation, the less money you have to spend.