Near a Thousand Tables Quotes

“it aligns the cannibals with their real modern counterparts: those who eat “health” diets for self-improvement or worldly success or moral superiority or enhanced beauty or personal purity. Strangely, cannibals turn out to have a lot in common with vegans.”
― Felipe Fernández-Armesto, Near a Thousand Tables

“Cannibalism is a problem. In many cases the practice is rooted in ritual and superstition rather than gastronomy, but not always. A French Dominican in the seventeenth century observed that the Caribs had most decided notions of the relative merits of their enemies. As one would expect, the French were delicious, by far the best. This is no surprise, even allowing for nationalism. The English came next, I’m glad to say. The Dutch were dull and stodgy and the Spaniards so stringy, they were hardly a meal at all, even boiled. All this sounds sadly like gluttony. —PATRICK LEIGH FERMOR”
― Felipe Fernández-Armesto, Near a Thousand Tables

“From his brimstone bed at break of day A-walking the Devil is gone To visit his snug little farm, the Earth, And see how his stock goes on. —COLERIDGE AND SOUTHEY, THE DEVIL’s THOUGHTS”
― Felipe Fernández-Armesto, Near a Thousand Tables

“The myth of Native Americans’ talent for conservationism before the arrival of the white man is belied by the evidence of the scale of their slaughters.”
― Felipe Fernández-Armesto, Near a Thousand Tables

“Experiments, especially the Oslo trials of 1981-84 and the Lipid Research Clinics trials, the results of which were announced in 1984, did show that a low-fat diet could lower high cholesterol levels and reduce the risk of heart disease—but most people do not have a high cholesterol level, regardless of their diet, and more than 50 percent of those with afflicted hearts do not have high cholesterol counts.”
― Felipe Fernández-Armesto, Near a Thousand Tables

“A loaf of bread,” the Walrus said, “Is chiefly what we need: Pepper and vinegar besides Are very good indeed— Now if you’re ready, oysters dear, We can begin to feed.” —LEWIS CARROLL, THROUGH THE LOOKING-GLASS”
― Felipe Fernández-Armesto, Near a Thousand Tables

“Cooking deserves its place as one of the great revolutionary innovations of history, not because of the way it transforms food—there are plenty of other ways of doing that—but because of the way it transformed society. Culture begins when the raw gets cooked. The campfire becomes a place of communion when people eat around it. Cooking is not just a way of preparing food but of organizing society around communal meals and predictable mealtimes. It introduces new specialized functions and shared pleasures and responsibilities. It is more creative, more constructive of social ties than mere eating together. It can even replace eating together as a ritual of social adhesion.”
― Felipe Fernández-Armesto, Near a Thousand Tables: A History of Food