Quotable Tuesday: James Beard

Food is our common ground, a universal experience. - James Beard

I just wrote an entire post about this quote, only to have Blogger somehow devour it.

Here's the quick gist: I've been doing a lot of reading and thinking about the role of food in our lives and how that's evolved over time. I think Beard is right - food is a universal experience and it has the potential to bring together even people with absolutely nothing in common.

At the same time, differences between cultures - I was thinking of the French and Americans to start - are even more readily apparent, or are well summarized, by looking at the role food plays in those cultures.

Not a major surprising insight, but a reminder that as both a basic physical human need and a captor of emotional state, food is such a complex subject.