Food Writing Quotes

“The rise of vast portions - particularly in fast-food restaurants - means that if we eat only the calories we need, we should often stop at half of something; or even a quarter. And no one - child or adult - seems to like the feeling of the glass- - or plate - half empty.”

Source: First Bite: How We Learn to Eat

Food Eating Portions Food Writing

“Being able to regulate the amount of food we eat according to our needs is perhaps the single most important skill when it comes to eating, and the one that we leat often master.”

Source: First Bite: How We Learn to Eat

“Very little of the eating that happens in the modern world is as simple as: feel hungry, eat food. The great challenge for most people is learning how to recognise when we have had enough.”

Source: First Bite: How We Learn to Eat

“If food is a fuel, we should feel that the tank is emptiest when the longest time has elapsed since it was filled - usually in the morning.”

Source: First Bite: How We Learn to Eat

Morning Food Breakfast Food Writing

“Hunger - this mechanism that we suppose to be so basic - turns out to be one of the more intricate bodily impulses.”

Source: First Bite: How We Learn to Eat

Food Hunger Food Writing

“If you can cancel a child’s hunger during those first three years - from conception to toddlerdom -you create possibilities that stretch decades into the future. If not, the consequences can last for generations.”

Source: First Bite: How We Learn to Eat

Childhood Food Hunger Food Writing

“One of the reasons hunger is so hard to pin down is that it is a negative concept, an absence.”

Source: First Bite: How We Learn to Eat

Food Hunger Food Writing

“Hara hachi bu is a Confucian principle, popular in Japan since medieval times, that you should eat until you are only eight-tenths full. This principle has since been given backing by nutrition scientists who note that when we eat there is a time delay between the body receiving the food and the brain registering that we are full. When the urge comes to have a second helping, it’s worth waiting twenty minutes, and the feeling may pass.”

Source: First Bite: How We Learn to Eat

Culture Food Japan Food Writing Confucianism

“One of the commonest ways our eating goes wrong is that we consistently choose foods that offer immediate satiation in the belly rather than longer lasting satiety.”

Source: First Bite: How We Learn to Eat

Food Eating Food Writing Satiety

“Soup leaves us full because we believe it will.”

Source: First Bite: How We Learn to Eat

Food Soup Food Writing

Food Soup Food Writing Soul Food

Source: First Bite: How We Learn to Eat

“All soup is soul food.”

“In pretty much every country in the world, something hot and brothy cooked in a pot and served in a bowl is viewed as uniquely nourishing. Soup places low demands on the eater. It treats you as a child, who may or may not know how to use a knife and fork. You do not have to chop, or even to chew. Soup is what our mothers gave us when we were ailing. It’s what we return to after a hard day at work, when all we want to do is curl up in a foetal position on the sofa.”

Source: First Bite: How We Learn to Eat

Mother Food Soup Food Writing

“Very little about the way we eat is, in fact, logical.”

Source: First Bite: How We Learn to Eat

“We eat so often and so much because we have more or less lost touch with the signals our body is sending us about hunger.”

Source: First Bite: How We Learn to Eat

Food Eating Hunger Food Writing

“Up until the age of three, children have a remarkable ability to stop eating when they are full.”

Source: First Bite: How We Learn to Eat

Children Food Eating Food Writing

“The loss of hunger regulation after the age of four is a phenomenon that transcends cultures and continents.”

Source: First Bite: How We Learn to Eat

Food Eating Hunger Food Writing

“From childhood onwards, our idea of fullness is heavily influenced by how much food we are offered.”

Source: First Bite: How We Learn to Eat

Childhood Food Hunger Food Writing

“We need new eating methods to take account of the new ways we are being supplied with food.”

Source: First Bite: How We Learn to Eat

“It’s a chancy business, taking our cues about how much to consume from our surroundings.”

Source: First Bite: How We Learn to Eat

“Avoid ‘distracting’ meals such as TV dinners and computer lunches. replace the biscuit jar with a fruit bowl. Repackage food into smaller containers. Order half-size portions in restaurants. Replace short wide glasses with tall narrow ones. And get smaller plates.”

Source: First Bite: How We Learn to Eat

Food Eating Diet Food Writing

“Part of eating well is making friends with hunger.”

Source: First Bite: How We Learn to Eat

Food Eating Hunger Food Writing

“Cereal is a medium through which we learn to confuse hunger with marketing.”

Source: First Bite: How We Learn to Eat

Food Breakfast Food Writing Cereal

“Of all the foods that we could give a child a free rein over, cereal makes the least sense. Parents let children choose cereal but dictate which vegetables they eat; it should be the other way around.”

Source: First Bite: How We Learn to Eat

Children Food Eating Food Writing

“The first step in recovering from an eating disorder is recognising that there is a problem.”

Source: First Bite: How We Learn to Eat

Food Eating Eating Disorder Food Writing

“Structured meals, at which a wide range of foods is offered in a firm but loving way, are a key part of the cure for any eating disorder.”

Source: First Bite: How We Learn to Eat

Food Eating Eating Disorder Food Writing

“For people with eating disorders, food is both a poison and the remedy, but this is true for the rest of us as well. Food is an inescapable fact of life and the task for each of us is to find a way to make out peace with it.”

Source: First Bite: How We Learn to Eat

Food Eating Eating Disorder Food Writing

“The art of feeding, it turns out, is not about pushing ‘one more bite’ into someone’s mouth, however healthy the food. Nor is it about authoritarian demands to abstain from all treats. It is about creating a mealtime environment where those eating are free to develop their own tastes, because all the choices on the table are real, whole food.”

Source: First Bite: How We Learn to Eat

Food Eating Feeding Food Writing

“Siblings have always marked out territory through food.”

Source: First Bite: How We Learn to Eat

Family Food Siblings Food Writing

“We are all descended from survivors, and survivors were the chubby ones.”

Source: First Bite: How We Learn to Eat

Food Evolution Food Writing Chubby

“We urgently need to invent new models of generosity. We need to find a way for a small portion to feel as much like love as a large one.”

Source: First Bite: How We Learn to Eat

“Feeding children too often can make them forget what their own hunger feels like. Large portions lead to overeating. And giving food to calm a distressed child teaches them that unhappiness is a reason to eat.”

Source: First Bite: How We Learn to Eat

“Force-feeding is a crime of passion, driven by a parent’s desire to see a child eat; as with other crimes of passion, the perpetrator has lost sight of the loved one’s autonomy.”

Source: First Bite: How We Learn to Eat

“Indulgence makes a child fat. Restriction makes a child fat and unhappy.”

Source: First Bite: How We Learn to Eat

“The true objective is independence: for a child to reach the point where they can regulate their own intake of food and to choose the things that will do them good while giving them pleasure. Weaning them off milk is one thing. But the real task for a parent is to wean children off needing you.”

Source: First Bite: How We Learn to Eat

Food Eating Feeding Food Writing

“Next time you sit down to eat, imagine you are an ideal parent feeding a beloved child. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could offer yourself food in a warm, structured, no-fuss kind of way? You wouldn’t punish yourself with crash diets nor would you allow yourself too much junk. Your priority when choosing food would be to see yourself well nourished and you’d choose meals to keep your mood on an even keel. You’d want yourself to enjoy eating. The pantry would be stocked with good food and you would trust yourself to choose wisely from its contents.”

Source: First Bite: How We Learn to Eat

“Each bite that you see the other person take reinforces your liking. Or not: it is hard to sit calmly by and carry on eating if you share a table with someone who is grumbling that peas are ‘gross’ and pinging them at you with a knife.”

Source: First Bite: How We Learn to Eat

“Inequality among siblings goes all the way to the gut: we are born with different microbes inside us, outnumbering our cells ten to one. Some of them affect our chances of becoming obese in later life and others affect how well we digest our dinner. What we eat is constantly changing the composition of our microbiota, but, equally, the nature of the microbes inside us determines how well we respond to the food we eat.”

Source: First Bite: How We Learn to Eat

Food Siblings Food Writing

“When fairy-tale children seek their fortune, food is the main thing they’re after.”

Source: First Bite: How We Learn to Eat

Food Fortune Fairytale Food Writing

“Our childhood experiences with food can trap us in destructive patterns for the rest of our lives.”

Source: First Bite: How We Learn to Eat

Childhood Food Memory Food Writing

“Like so many of the things parents do out of loving solicitude, putting pressure on girls to lose weight has no good outcomes and a lot of bad ones.”

Source: First Bite: How We Learn to Eat

Childhood Food Parents Food Writing

“We tend to automatically associate hearty meat dishes with men and lighter salads and sweets with women, and these stereotypes are replicated in cultures as different as France and Japan.”

Source: First Bite: How We Learn to Eat

Food Japan Stereotypes Food Writing

“The social pressure to eat according to your sex matters more than it seems. For one thing, it undermines our pleasure in eating, which is seldom a good idea. women often deny themselves the dish they might really want pn the menu because they feel it isn’t “appropriate”.”

Source: First Bite: How We Learn to Eat

“What is so damaging about our gendered approach to food is that it encourages both boys and girls to feed themselves in ways that go against what their bodies require. We have got things the wrong way round. It is girls more than boys who need the most haemoglobin-boosting foods. And boys more than girls are lacking in salad and vegetables. Girl food and boy food are dangerous nonsense that prevents us from seeing the real problems of feeding boys and girls.”

Source: First Bite: How We Learn to Eat

Food Eating Gender Feeding Food Writing

“Too many overweight teenage girls are being pressurised by their families to lose weight when what they in fact need is better nourishment (which would almost certainly help them lose weight along the way).”

Source: First Bite: How We Learn to Eat

Food Eating Teenagers Food Writing

“Women have a special relationship with chocolate mostly because our culture tells them to. It goes back to the old claptrap about sweet treats being for ‘ladies’, while savoury tastes for men.”

Source: First Bite: How We Learn to Eat

Culture Women Food Chocolate Food Writing

“Once the pattern of not being hungry in the morning is set, it modifies the way you eat for life.”

Source: First Bite: How We Learn to Eat

Morning Food Food Writing

“Prolonged chronic malnutrition affects children for the rest of their lives because it affects both brain development and growth.”

Source: First Bite: How We Learn to Eat

Food Food Writing Malnutrition

“It’s not just that people learn to tolerate beetroot: they switch from dislike to adoration.”

Source: First Bite: How We Learn to Eat

Food Food Writing Beetroot