Nobody in Singapore drinks Singapore Slings. It’s one of the first things you find out there. What you do in Singapore is eat. It’s a really food-crazy culture, where all of this great food is available in a kind of hawker-stand environment. Anthony Bourdain
When you consume more food in one meal than a village of people eat in a day something is wrong. Stanley Victor Paskavich
I always thought a low fat diet was the way to go ... The new public enemy number one – it’s sugar. Fiona Phillips, The Truth About Sugar, BBC 2015
You might be eating far more than you think. ibid.
Fifty litres of sugary drink a year. ibid.
Food: ‘The Thing about the sausage rolls – they’re getting smaller. In terms of the size and all that there, you know.’ Sinn Fein prisoner, televised interview cited It Was Alright in the 1990s, Channel 4 2015
The decreasing availability of caviare in the Caspian has prompted the growth of one of the most profitable mafia operations in the former Soviet Union. Misha Glenny, McMafia
The Republic of Dagestan in the Russian Federation descended into lawlessness, which saw the Russian customs and border guards fighting a losing battle against one of the most ruthless branches of the caviare mafia; 20,000, 30,000, then 40,000 tons of caviare were fished a year as the New Rich in Moscow gorged themselves on black pearls, selling on the excess to the West for huge profits. ibid.
Yet it is curious how seldom the all-importance of food is recognized. You see statues everywhere to politicians, poets, bishops, but none to cooks or bacon-curers or market gardeners. George Orwell, The Road to Wigan Pier
You discover what it is like to be hungry. With bread and margarine in your belly, you go out and look into the shop windows. Everywhere there is food insulting you in huge wasteful piles; whole dead pigs, baskets of hot loaves, great yellow bricks of butter, strings of sausages, mountains of potatoes, vast Gruyere cheeses like grindstones. A snivelling self-pity comes over you at the sight of so much food. George Orwell, Down and Out in Paris and London
So it is not often that I am confronted with the sort of fare photographed in the Sunday supplements. I scarcely ever sit down to an octagonal plate on which a sliver of monkfish is arranged in a composition of pastel shades, which also features a brush stroke of pink sauce, a single peeled prawn and a sprig of dill. Such gluttony is, happily, beyond my means. John Rumpole, Rumpole a la Carte
Egypt imports food which is unheard of. We fed the whole world at one time. Omar Sharif
Monsanto should not have to vouch for the safety of biotech food, our interest is in selling as much of it as possible. Paul Angell, Monsanto corporate communications director
Grilled cheese and tomato soup is the ultimate comfort meal. Ina Garten
In Britain’s not-too-distant past our relationship with food was such that for most people going for a meal outside of the home was not something done for pleasure. But the dining-out experience was about to be transformed. Spicing Up Britain: How Eating Out Went Exotic, BBC 2016
Migrants from Italy, China and the Indian sub-continent helped us develop a taste for eating out. ibid.
Berni Inn: ‘Prawn Cocktail, Steak and Chips and Black Forest Gateau.’ ibid.
Italian cafés, or Bracchis, were a familiar sight throughout South Wales. ibid.
Chinese restaurants soon became a favourite place to eat out, and by the 1960s there were over 2,000 of them. ibid.
I’ve brought you a fish supper. The Gorbals Story 1950 starring Willie Mutrie & Peggy Anderson & Johnnie Martin & Jean Mutrie & Nora Reilly & Peter Reilly et al, director David MacKane, husband to wife
Hunts Point: there are three massive wholesale markets here selling meat, fruit and veg, and fish. New York: America’s Busiest City II, BBC 2016
An army of delivery men and women working day and night. Most of them use bikes to courier the food. ibid.
3 a.m. The busiest time for the [fish] market. ibid.
The Chinese food arrives. Delicious saliva fills his mouth. He really hasn’t had any since Texas. He loves this food that contains no disgusting proofs of slain animals, a bloody slab of cow haunch, a hen’s sinewy skeleton; these ghosts have been minced and destroyed and painlessly merged with the shapes of insensate vegetables, plump green bodies that invite his appetite’s innocent gusto. Candy. John Updike, Rabbit, Run
Organophosphates: ‘The farm workers were pretty alarmed.’ Mark Thomas Comedy Product s6e1, worker, Channel 4 2002
Organophosphates were actually developed by the Nazis … cheap food thanks to the Nazis! ibid.
We find that nine out of ten British housewives can’t tell the difference between Whizzo butter and a dead crab. Monty Python’s Flying Circus s1e1, BBC 1969
Well, there’s egg and bacon, er egg sausage and bacon, egg and spam, egg bacon and spam, egg bacon sausage and spam, spam bacon sausage and spam, spam eggs spam spam bacon and spam, spam spam spam egg and spam … Monty Python’s Flying Circus s2e12: Spam, BBC 1970
In dreams I would have visions of Sushi. Jiro Dreams of Sushi, Jiro, 2011
You have to fall in love with your work. ibid.
All of the sushi is simple. It’s completely minimalist. ibid. Yamamoto food critic
For fast eaters a meal there might last only 15 minutes. In that sense, it’s the most expensive restaurant in the world. ibid.
I’ve never seen another chef who is so hard on himself. ibid.
Each Tuna has its own unique taste. ibid. Yuri
You have to persevere ten years of training. ibid. Yamamoto
In order to make delicious food you must eat delicious food. ibid. Jiro
I make twenty pieces per person. ibid.
Jiro is the oldest chef to have been awarded three stars by Michelin. ibid. Yamamoto
We used to be a nation of farmers but now it’s less than 2% of the population. The Future of Food, 2004
Nerve gas developed during World War II was slightly modified to make insecticides. DDT was the hero of its generation. ibid.
97% of the varieties of vegetables grown at the beginning of the 20th century are now extinct. ibid.
A pesticide treadmill: the more they sprayed, the more they had to spray. The increased use of fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides increased costs, polluted water and created health risks. Then in the 1970s Monsanto introduced Round Up, because of its ability to kill most weeds it became one of the most popular herbicides in history. ibid.
Monsanto genetically modified its seeds to be Round Up ready. ibid.
Estimates are that Monsanto has sent out 9,000 letters to farmers; most farmers choose to pay to avoid lawsuits. ibid.
‘They’re opposing labelling … A key way to get these corporations liable for the health affects.’ ibid.
Tonight: what’s really in our food? Do you pay attention to lists of ingredients? The diet traps we can all fall into. And what might processed food be doing to us? Tonight: Processed Food: What Are We Eating? ITV 2018
In the UK we eat nearly four times as much processed food as we do fresh. And it’s no coincidence that we are the most obese nation in western Europe. ibid.
Tonight: Bulging Britain. How to stop your yo-yo diet cycle. Is the government doing enough for the overweight? How long it takes to burn off the bad stuff … The UK is now the fattest nation in western Europe. Tonight: Eat Yourself Healthy, ITV 2018
One in four of us is now obese. ibid.