Every now and then it’s hard to choose just one. I found a dozen wonderful quotes on food, and I narrowed it down to two this time.
This was the dawn of plastic eating in America…. We doted on Velveeta. Spam. Canned ravioli. Instant puddings. Instant anything. The further a thing was from the texture, flavor, and terrifying unpredictability of real food, the better.
–Shirley Abbott, The Bookmaker’s Daughter (1991)
Fake food — I mean those patented substances chemically flavored and mechanically bulked out to kill the appetite and deceive the gut — is unnatural, almost immoral, a bane to good eating and good cooking.
–Julia Child, Julia Child & Company (1978)
I love that Julia Child refers to it as “immoral”. It does seem a crime against man and nature that generations are being raised on crap. Bad enough that art and music programs are being cut so that people no longer appreciate finer things; they can’t appreciate food anymore, either (and overeating into obsesity is not “food appreciation”).