Food is about agriculture, about ecology, about man's relationship with nature, about the climate, about nation-building, cultural struggles, friends and enemies, alliances, wars, religion. It is about memory and tradition and, at times, even about sex.

Mark Kurlansky

Categorized in : Sex War Memories

Food is a central activity of mankind and one of the single most significant trademarks of a culture.

Mark Kurlansky

cooking food culture

Man wants to see nature and evolution as separate from human activities. There is a natural world, and there is man. But man also belongs to the natural world. If he is a ferocious predator, that too is part of evolution. If cod and haddock and other species cannot survive because man kills them, something more adaptable will take their place. Nature, the ultimate pragmatist, doggedly searches for something that works. But as the cockroach demonstrates, what works best in nature does not always appeal to us.

Mark Kurlansky

cockroaches doe men

The egg creams of Avenue A in New York and the root beer float....are among the high points of American gastronomic inventiveness.

Mark Kurlansky

new-york beer food

Judging foods without regard to price is a rich mans game, and yet poor people can be gourmets able to discern a good potato from a bad one.

Mark Kurlansky

games food people

modern people have seen too many chemicals and are ready to go back to eating dirt.

Mark Kurlansky

dirt eating people

If ever there was a fish made to endure, it is the Atlantic cod... But it has among its predators - man, an openmouthed species greedier than cod.

Mark Kurlansky

sea lakes men

A gourmet knows that the best part is not always the expensive part, and he will find that part, and then he will share it. A gourmet should want to share.

Mark Kurlansky

gourmet want food

In 'The Republic' he [Plato] states that the enjoyment of food is not a true pleasure because the purpose of eating is to relieve pain - hunger.

Mark Kurlansky

pain plato food

A superpower that no longer stands for anything, that no one believes in anymore, that is seen only as a bully, will fall despite its military might. If the Bush administration ever wanted to reflect on history, it might think about this.

Mark Kurlansky

military believe fall

Chloride is essential for digestion and in respiration. Without sodium, which the body cannot manufacture, the body would be unable to transport nutrients or oxygen, transmit nerve impulses, or move muscles, including the heart.

Mark Kurlansky

oxygen heart moving

The history of the Americas is one of constant warfare over salt.

Mark Kurlansky

salt warfare constant

THE ROMANS SALTED their greens, believing this to counteract the natural bitterness, which is the origin of the word salad, salted.

Mark Kurlansky

salad bitterness believe

Fate likes to tease paranoids.'

Mark Kurlansky

tease fate likes

In nineteenth-century Russia, sauerkraut was valued more than caviar.

Mark Kurlansky

caviar russia century

Nature, the ultimate pragmatist, doggedly searches for something that works. But as the cockroach demonstrates, what works best in nature does not always appeal to us.

Mark Kurlansky

pragmatists cockroaches doe

In every age, people are certain that only the things they have deemed valuable have true value. The search for love and the search for wealth are always the two best stories. But while a love story is timeless, the story of a quest for wealth, given enough time, will always seem like the vain pursuit of a mirage.

Mark Kurlansky

love two people

I did not realize at the time, as I have discovered since, that anyone who attempts any thing original in this world must expect a bit of ridicule. Clarence Birdseye

Mark Kurlansky

realizing bird world

There is a dreamlike quality to the 1936 Basque government, the fulfillment of a historic longing that was to be crushed only nine months later in carnage the scale of which had never before been seen on earth.

Mark Kurlansky

quality government earth

Whenever I was called a gourmet, I suspected I was being accused of something at least slightly unpleasant. But that was before I heard the term "foodie." I am still not sure that a gourmet is a good thing to be, but it must be better than a foodie.

Mark Kurlansky

gourmet good-things food

In spite of muzzling the press, imprisoning thousands, and engaging in torture, kidnapping and murder, the Socialist government was still vulnerable to the accusation of being "soft on Basques.

Mark Kurlansky

socialist-government murder vulnerable