Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.
Michael PollanRead
The shared meal elevates eating from a mechanical process of fueling the body to a ritual of family and community, from the mere animal biology to an act of culture.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote emphasizes the importance of sharing meals as a cultural and familial ritual rather than just a biological necessity.
Michael Pollan's quote reflects on how eating together transforms a simple act of sustenance into a deeper cultural and familial experience. By sharing meals, we engage with one another, fostering connections and creating a sense of community that transcends the mere biological need for food, turning it into a celebration of culture and togetherness.
Themes
Shared MealFamilyCommunityCultureEating
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used when discussing the importance of family dinners at a family gathering.
More from Michael Pollan
All quotes →You look how much sugar is in a typical supermarket loaf of bread: it's a lot of sugar. It's just become one of those sugar delivery systems in our food economy.
Michael PollanRead
There is nothing wrong with eating sweets, fried foods, pastries, even drinking soda every now and then, but food manufacturers have made eating these formerly expensive and hard-to-make treats so cheap and easy that we're eating them every day.
Michael PollanRead
Meat is a mighty contributor to climate change and other environmental problems. The amount of meat we're eating is one of the leading causes of climate change. It's as important as the kind of car you drive - whether you eat meat a lot or how much meat you eat.
Michael PollanRead
[Government] regulation is an imperfect substitute for the accountability, and trust, built into a market in which food producers meet the gaze of eaters and vice versa.
Michael PollanRead
He showed the words “chocolate cake” to a group of Americans and recorded their word associations. “Guilt” was the top response. If that strikes you as unexceptional, consider the response of French eaters to the same prompt: “celebration.
Michael PollanRead
Similar quotes
My father’s family name being Pirrip, and my Christian name Philip, my infant tongue could make of both names nothing longer or more explicit than Pip. So, I called myself Pip, and came to be called Pip.
Charles DickensRead
I was a gift to my mother. She was a remarkable person. God or nature, or whatever those forces are, smiled on her, then passed me the best of her.
Sidney PoitierRead
Thank you, darling, for learning to play chess. It is an absolute necessity for any well organized family. (in a letter to his wife)
Alexander PushkinRead
We would not have been a successful family without my father and stepfather, who were working-class men with better dreams for their children. We just wore them out.
James McbrideRead
Compassion for our parents is the true sign of maturity.
Anais NinRead
A house means a family house, a place specially meant for putting children and men in so as to restrict their waywardness and distract them from the longing for adventure and escape they've had since time began.
Marguerite DurasRead