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Quote by Michael Pollan

“Cooking gave us not just the meal but also the occasion: the practice of eating together at an appointed time and place. This was something new under the sun, for the forager of raw food would have likely fed himself on the go and alone, like all the other animals. (Or, come to think of it, like the industrial eaters we've more recently become, grazing at gas stations and eating by ourselves whenever and wherever.) But sitting down to common meals, making eye contact, sharing food, and exercising self-restraint all served to civilize us.”

Book:Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation

Work

Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation

Michael Pollan investigates the evolution of cooking techniques and ingredients, examining how they have shaped human societies and diets, and offering insights into the importance of cooking in our lives. more

Author

Michael Pollan

Michael Pollan is an American author renowned for his insightful views on food, agriculture, and culture. His work explores the impact of the modern food industry on health, the environment, and society, as well as the necessity of sustainable food systems. more

“The quest for an ever-whiter shade of bread, which goes all the way back to the Greeks and Romans, is a parable about the folly of human ingenuity -- about how our species can sometimes be too smart for its own good. After figuring out an ingenious system for transforming an all but nutritionally worthless grass into a wholesome food, humanity pushed on intrepidly until it had figured out a way to make that food all but nutritionally worthless yet gain! Here in miniature, I realized, is the whole checkered history of "food processing." Our species' discovery and development of cooking (in the broadest sense of the word) gave us a handful of ingenious technologies for rendering plants and animals more nutritious and unlocking calories unavailable to other creatures. But there eventually came a moment when, propelled by the logic of human desire and technological progress, we began to overprocess certain foods in such a way as to actually render them detrimental to our health and well-being. What had been a highly adaptive set of techniques that contributed substantially to our success as a species turned into a maladaptive one -- contributing to disease and general ill health and now actually threatening to shorten human lives.”

Food Cooking

Book:Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation

Source: Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation

“Being a humble person, she gave her pie shop a humble name—PIE.”

Food Humility Humble Middle Grade Kidlit Naming Middlegrade Cooking Quotes

Book:Pie

Source: Pie

“Ser Tomaso,” she said. “It is very likely we will all die.” “Or worse,” said Brown, the first words he’d said in days. Ser Tomaso made a brave face. “Perhaps,” he said. “But we will eat well.”

Food Knights

Book:A Plague of Swords

Source: A Plague of Swords