Food System Quotes

“Our food system depends on consumers’ not knowing much about it beyond the price disclosed by the checkout scanner. Cheapness and ignorance are mutually reinforcing. And it’s a short way from not knowing who’s at the other end of your food chain to not caring- to the carelessness of both consumers and producers.”
― Michael Pollan, The Omnivore's Dilemma

“How fragile is a world so connected and tied together that a change in food fashion in one place can lead to starvation halfway through the world?”
― Richard R. Wilk, Home Cooking in the Global Village: Caribbean Food from Buccaneers to Ecotourists

“Only from our position of power can we afford to ignore where things really come from, because we know that all things drain, like syrup through a pipeline, from the edges of the world into the centre. What we want will appear, as if by magic, on the shelves of our supermarkets because were have the money to pay for it. We don’t have to know - other people grow it and process it, and buy it and sell it until all we see is the brand, a language we understand without effort. All those strange substances are fuzed together for our convenience, our health, our pleasure.”
― Richard R. Wilk, Home Cooking in the Global Village: Caribbean Food from Buccaneers to Ecotourists

“Food is packed with meaning, as well as vitamins, carbohydrates and protein. It satisfies needs beyond those of the body and the pocketbook. Food is a medium to build families, religious communities, ethnic boundaries and a consciousness of history.”
― Richard R. Wilk, Home Cooking in the Global Village: Caribbean Food from Buccaneers to Ecotourists

“The industrial food complex polluted our food system
to please the addicted palettes they created.”
― Donna Maltz, Conscious Cures: Soulutions to 21st Century Pandemics