Food Supply Quotes

We are doing everything we can to protect the food supply. And I can tell you that we're making decisions based upon sound science and good public policy, given the circumstances that we are now in. ~ Ann Veneman

I saw 'Food, Inc.' last night - it was like a horror movie. I'm definitely thinking about my food supply now and how I want to grow my own. ~ Lauren Ambrose

The pet food recall, which was after all just about pets, and treated as if it were an inconsequential matter, was an absolute forerunner of what's going on in China, where 50,000 infants have been sickened because of a contaminated infant formula. So these things are all closely related. You cannot separate the food supply for pets, farm animals, and people, and you cannot separate problems in one area of a country from problems in another area. ~ Marion Nestle

If your homeland were invaded by aliens who cut down the forests, poisoned the water and air and contaminated the food supply, would you resist? ~ Derrick Jensen

It is often thought that the life of the hunter-gatherer was one of feast and famine. But most available data suggest that they were surprisingly healthy and had a fairly stable diet and lifestyle. Not so the primitive farmers. In years when the crops failed, in settlements where the population density was high and where disease weakened the ability to cope even further, life would have been very hard indeed. The settled population could not migrate to follow the food supply as could hunter-gatherers. They were trapped. ~ Peter Gluckman

Migration can be triggered by the angle of sunlight, indicating a change in the season, temperature, plant life, and food supply. Female monarchs lay eggs along the route. Every history has more than one thread, each thread a story of division. The journey takes four thousand eight hundred and thirty miles, more than the length of this country. The monarchs that fly south will not make it back north. Each departure, then, is final. Only their children return; only the future revisits the past. ~ Ocean Vuong

Good!" the creature echoed. "Doctor Nelson will be along in a minute. Feel like some breakfast?" All four symbols in the query were in Smith's vocabulary but he had trouble believing that he had heard them rightly. He knew that he was food, but he did not "feel like" food. Nor had he had any warning that he might be selected for such an honor. He had not known that the food supply was such that it was necessary to reduce the corporate group. He was filled with mild regret, since there was still so much to grok of these new events, but no reluctance. ~ Robert A. Heinlein

When we do harm to one thing we are essentially harming ourselves. For example when we use poisonous toxins and pesticides to grow our food, we pollute the soil, kill the life of the surrounding ecosystems, decrease the quality of the food supply, which then decreases our health and the level of energy we operate on. When we do this every day on a global scale for several decades we end up with soil infertility, habitat loss, environmental pollution, low quality food, poor health, malnutrition, and a lack of productivity, which is so apparent in today's society. ~ Joseph P. Kauffman

The air that people breathe in many Chinese cities has become dangerously polluted. Their food supply is subject to constant contamination scandals. Now it appears that not merely stagnant ponds but the water people draw from deep underground is already tainted. ~ James Fallows

Reforms to our complex and dysfunctional immigration system should not in any way favor those who came here illegally over the millions of applicants who seek to come here lawfully ... Additionally, the framework carves out a special exception for agricultural workers that has little justification. Maintaining the safety of America's food supply is an important goal, but it is unclear why immigrants in this sector should achieve special status over skilled workers in industries equally important to the American economy. ~ Mike Lee

As people move further away from a meat-based diet, I think the focus will shift to using grains as the central focus of our food supply. ~ Daniel Humm

These can be scary and confusing times in which to eat, made still scarier by the fact that there are so many 'experts' out there selling us fear of food and fad cures. Times of transition have always been a gift to confidence tricksters. When everything seems to be changing and we can no longer rely on the truths of the past, we become vulnerable to hucksters. Some diet gurus tell us to beware all grains; others tell us that we should fear supposedly 'acid-producing' foods from ranging from dairy to meat and coffee. These new diets are perhaps best seen as a dysfunctional response to a still more dysfunctional food supply: a false promise of purity in a toxic world. ~ Bee Wilson

Security for agriculture merits serious concern by not only the agricultural community but our nation as a whole. The risk to the U.S. food supply and overall economy is real. ~ Pat Roberts

[The] concentration of our food supply is also a national security threat. A few dedicated terrorists with a crude map could, in a few days, wipe out most of the food supply of this country. We were much less vulnerable when farm animals were dispersed all over the country. ~ Ken Midkiff

What we've done with our modern food supply is absolute insanity. It's not even real any more. You used to be able to give a kid an apple and they would love it. Kids can't even taste apples any more. Apples taste like paper to kids now. ~ Louis C.K.

Food is a product of supply and demand, so try to figure out where the supplies are fresh, the suppliers are creative, and the demanders are informed. ~ Tyler Cowen

We have learned to eat like snakes. When there is something to eat - we eat enough to last for a week. When there is nothing - we don't eat. Now, when we get our food supply, we eat it all, right there, we leave nothing for tomorrow. Like the birds. And then we read our books. We go after spiritual food... ~ Jonas Mekas

I spent my thirties living out of boxes and moving every six months to a year. It was my cloud period: I just wandered like a cloud for ten years, following the food supply. I was a hunter, gatherer, an academic migrant. ~ Sandra Cisneros

The importance to the nation of a generously adequate food supply for the coming year cannot be overemphasized, in view of the economic problems which may arise as a result of the entrance of the United States into the war. ~ David F. Houston

Many countries have food safety systems from farm to table. Everybody involved in the food supply is required to follow standard food safety procedures. You would think that everyone involved with food would not want people to get sick from it. ~ Marion Nestle

Christian socialism"). This is a difficult concept for modern liberals to grasp because they are used to thinking of the progressives as the people who cleaned up the food supply, pushed through the eight hour workday, and ended child labor. But liberals often forget that the progressives were imperialists, at home and abroad. They were the authors of Prohibition, the Palmer Raids, eugenics, loyalty oaths, and, in its modern incarnation, what many call "state capitalism. ~ Jonah Goldberg

We can begin ever so modestly. We can begin with a one week's food supply and gradually build it to a month, and then to three months. I am speaking now of food to cover basic needs ... I fear that so many feel that a long-term food supply is so far beyond their reach that they make no effort at all ... Begin in a small way, ... and gradually build toward a reasonable objective. ~ Gordon B. Hinckley

Plan to build up your food supply just as you would a savings account. Save a little for storage each paycheck. Can or bottle fruit and vegetables from your gardens and orchards. Learn how to preserve food through drying and possibly freezing. Make your storage a part of your budget. ~ Ezra Taft Benson

Human social institutions can effect the course of human evolution. Just as climate, food supply, predators, and other natural forces of selection have molded our nature, so too can our culture. ~ Peter Singer

Mama grizzlies mate later than other bears. They have two cubs instead of four. They wait four years - about twice as long as other bears - between having cubs. And after they're pregnant, if winter is hard or their health is not good or the food supply is uncertain, they re-absorb the embryo into their body. ~ Gloria Steinem

The fight to save family farms isn't just about farmers. It's
about making sure that there is a safe and healthy food supply for all of us.
It's about jobs, from Main Street to Wall Street. It's about a better
America. ~ Willie Nelson

The best place to have some food set aside is within our homes, together with a little money in savings. The best welfare program is our own welfare program. Five or six cans of wheat in the home are better than a bushel in the welfare granary ... We can begin with a one week's food supply and gradually build it to a month, and then to three months. I am speaking now of food to cover basic needs. ~ Gordon B. Hinckley

People in my neighborhood are so disconnected from the fresh food supply that kids don't know an eggplant from a sweet potato. We have to show them how to get grounded in the truest sense of the word. ~ Ron Finley

My grandmother was not a highly educated woman, but she told me as a small child to quit feeding stray animals. You know why? Because they breed. You're facilitating the problem if you give an animal or a person ample food supply. They will reproduce, especially ones that don't think too much further than that. And so what you've got to do is you've got to curtail that type of behavior. They don't know any better. ~ Andre Bauer

This president has said this has to be a priority for our nation, protecting our food supply from terrorist acts, so he continues to provide the funding that is necessary. ~ Mike Johanns

If we have a food supply that we can't trust, that has enormous implications for the way we view government, for the way we trust business, and for our international trade relations. ~ Marion Nestle

The first and most important impact of climate change on human civilisation will be an acute and permanent crisis of food supply. Eating regularly is a non-negotiable activity and countries that cannot feed their people are unlikely to be reasonable about it. ~ Gwynne Dyer

I am interested in agricultural corporations and how they function. The idea that they own the genetics of our food supply is a really compelling thing to me. ~ Paolo Bacigalupi

I didn't marry. I didn't have children. I followed the food supply for jobs. I kept writing at night. And that kept me moving. It kept my life disruptive. It broke up many relationships. Was it worth it? Yes. ~ Sandra Cisneros

We basically used oil and aquifer water to temporarily boost the carrying capacity of the land, all for economic growth demanded by Wall Street investors. It's a crazy system that only makes sense when you foist all the costs onto taxpayers in the form of crop subsidies that benefit agribusiness, and defense spending to secure fossil fuels. We're basically paying for corporations to seize control of the food supply and dictate to us the terms under which we live. ~ Daniel Suarez

The advances of agricultural and contraceptive technology in the nineteenth century apparently refuted Malthus: in England, the United States, Germany, and France the food supply kept pace with births, and the rising standard of living deferred the age of marriage and lowered the size of the family. ~ Will Durant

Surely there must be some way to find a husband or, for that matter, merely an escort, without sacrificing one's privacy, self-respect, and interior decorating scheme. For example, men could be imported from the developing countries, many parts of which are suffering from a man excess, at least in relation to local food supply. ~ Barbara Ehrenreich

I'm confident that we have measures in place. And the additional measures that we announced yesterday will be even more protective of our food supply in this country. ~ Ann Veneman

Our budget works to reduce and eliminate the risk of attacks at our ports, rails, in the skies, our food supply and roads by allowing for increases in many of the programs and agencies to help protect these important areas of commerce and travel. ~ Jim Ryun

When we entered the material world, God lent us a body to act as a vessel and encase our souls. Our body is our temple and, miraculously, it is in a state of constant renewal.
Fat cells are replaced at the rate of 10% each year. Skin cells are renewed every two to four weeks. Our 9,000 taste buds are renewed every 10-14 days. Our skeleton is renewed every two years. Every day billions of cells replace the ones that came before them. We are in this miracle of creation and renewal every second of our lives ... unless we mess up that renewal.
God not only gave us a constantly renewing body, but he also provided a profoundly rich, diverse and constantly-renewing food supply. ~ Celso Cukierkorn

If we do not change our way of life, and fast, we will destroy ourselves by continuing to pollute the environment that sustains us, abusing natural resources, poisoning our food supply, destroying large ecosystems, contaminating the air, and perpetuating climate change. ~ Joseph P. Kauffman

It's a foolish culture that entrusts its food supply to simpletons. ~ Joel Salatin

I think it's important that, as a matter of course, the brain and spinal column were removed from this cow, and that would be the material that would cause concern in terms of human health. And therefore we're confident in the safety of the food supply. ~ Ann Veneman

We don't really have any that protect the food supply from farm to table. We have a food safety system that's piecemeal, largely divided between two agencies that don't talk to each other very much. Neither agency can enforce regulations from the farm to the table. ~ Marion Nestle

Let me leave you with one very recent example of Berry at his best, drawn from an op-ed piece that he published (with his old friend and collaborator Wes Jackson) shortly after the economy crashed in the fall of 2008. For 50 or 60 years, we have let ourselves believe that as long as we have money we will have food. This is a mistake. If we continue our offenses against the land and the labor by which we are fed, the food supply will decline, and we will have a problem far more complex than the failure of our paper economy. The government will bring forth no food by providing hundreds of billions of dollars to the agribusiness corporations. I ~ Wendell Berry

Food safety oversight is largely, but not exclusively, divided between two agencies, the FDA and the USDA. The USDA mostly oversees meat and poultry; the FDA mostly handles everything else, including pet food and animal feed. Although this division of responsibility means that the FDA is responsible for 80% of the food supply, it only gets 20% of the federal budget for this purpose. In contrast, the USDA gets 80% of the budget for 20% of the foods. This uneven distribution is the result of a little history and a lot of politics. ~ Marion Nestle

We use competitive markets to arrange for delivery of our food supply. ~ Kenneth Lay

As far as I know, no vampires live in Antarctica."
"I'd have thought the long winter nights would be just the thing for you guys," I said.
"Perhaps. But the food supply is a bit wanting. ~ Carrie Vaughn

As people flock to urban centers where ground space is limited, cities with green walls and roofs and skyscraper farms offer improved health and well-being, renewable resources, reliable food supply, and relief to the environment. ~ Diane Ackerman

If the food supply runs out, try trapping or hunting animals. For most people, this won't be easy. If you can't catch any animals, it's time to throw a Donner party. ~ Andrew Shaffer

Man's survival, from the time of Adam and Eve until the invention of agriculture, must have been precarious because of his inability to ensure his food supply. ~ Norman Borlaug

The most interesting biofuel efforts avoid using land that's expensive and has high opportunity costs. They do this by getting onto other types of land, or taking advantage of byproducts that aren't used in the food chain today, or by intercropping. ~ Bill Gates

What we are trying to do is to create a social business in Bangladesh, a joint venture to create restaurants for common people. Good, healthy food at affordable prices so that people don't have to opt for food that is unhealthy and unhygienic. ~ Muhammad Yunus

You cannot escape from the biological law of cause and effect - food choices are the most significant cause of disease and premature death. ~ Joel Fuhrman

The physics of water is central to cooking, because food is mostly water. All steak that you cook is actually boiled on the inside. ~ Nathan Myhrvold

He ordered food with a childlike glee and watched me eat, tasting it as I did. In private he'd roll on his back like a cat, hands pressed to his mouth as if trying to drain every taste. It was the only thing he did that was cute. He was gorgeous, sensual, but rarely cute.
- Anita Blake about Jean-Claude ~ Laurell K. Hamilton

I work very hard on finding good characters who can explain things to me, and I use them to help tell the story. I organize my pieces not just around people but around animals and plants, energy flows, the path that carbon takes through the food system. ~ Michael Pollan

He began to prefer talking on the phone to actually getting together with someone, preferred the bodilessness of it, and started to turn down social engagements. He didn't want to actually sit across from someone in a restaurant, look at their face, and eat food. He wanted to turn away, not deal with the face, have the waitress bring them two tin cans and some string so they could just converse, in a faceless dialogue. ~ Lorrie Moore

John Updike once said that he was confused by the very concept of "antiwar," which he felt, and I'm paraphrasing him here, was like being "anti-food" or "anti-sex," since war was such an essential element of human experience. ~ Mark Bowden

Dear Diary:
I have a confession to make: I've become a total idiot over French pastries.
They're my new favorite food.
My new-found edible souvenir.
My new favorite sin.
Dunkin Donuts is so yesterday. ~ Kimberley Montpetit

You're never lost. You always know exactly where you are. You're right here. It's just that sometimes you've misplaced your destination.
Brian W. Porter 2005
Have you ever wondered how the computer you're using got to the store? How about your medicines, the food you eat, the clothes you wear, the furniture, the plants in the garden center? Do they have a railroad right there? Does merchandise magically appear? Only if you grow your own food, make your own clothes, make your own tools, cut your own wood, and make your own furniture, can you get away from trucking. Everything you see, even the nature outside in some places, has been on at least one truck. ~ Brian W. Porter

We cut the throat of a calf and hang it up by the heels to bleed to death so that our veal cutlet may be white; we nail geese to a board and cram them with food because we like the taste of liver disease; we tear birds to pieces to decorate our women's hats; we mutilate domestic animals for no reason at all except to follow an instinctively cruel fashion; and we connive at the most abominable tortures in the hope of discovering some magical cure for our own diseases by them. ~ George Bernard Shaw

Racath's eyebrows drew together. "Terms?"
"Yes, terms," Briz'nar replied, a forked tongue dancing behind its sharkish teeth. "Conditions for the riots to cease. The rabble must have some sort of price if they are sending one of your kind to do the bargaining. What is it, then? Coin? Food? Perhaps a much needed bath?" Some of the Arkûl chuckled.
Racath rolled his eyes. "I'm not here to negotiate with anyone!" he answered incredulously. "The only terms I have are that you die, this Bridge is destroyed, and the Dominion never even thinks about looking at the Burrows ever again. ~ S.G. Night

In Euripedes's The Bacchae...Dionysus dispenses food, drink and comfort, and inspires communal energy, song and dance; he is rapture and rage, illumination and blindness. ~ Anya Taylor

I think oysters are more beautiful than any religion,' he resumed presently. 'They not only forgive our unkindness to them; they justify it, they incite us to go on being perfectly horrid to them. Once they arrive at the supper-table they seem to enter thoroughly into the spirit of the thing. There's nothing in Christianity or Buddhism that quite matches the sympathetic unselfishness of an oyster. ~ Saki

For Werner, doubts turn up regularly. Racial purity, political purity - Bastian speaks to a horror of any sort of corruption, and yet, Werner wonders in the dead of night, isn't life a kind of corruption? A child is born, and the world sets in upon it. Taking things from it, stuffing things into it. Each bite of food, each particle of light entering the eye - the body can never be pure. But this is what the commandant insists upon, why the Reich measures their noses, clocks their hair color. The entropy of a closed system never decreases. ~ Anthony Doerr

My father was usually too far in the drink to remember he had children. My mother was half mad and had fewer morals than the barn cat we brought back today. Since none of our relations wanted custody of a pair of impoverished brats, Devon and I were sent to boarding school. We stayed there most holidays. I became a bully. I hated everyone. Henry was especially irritating- skinny, odd, fussy about his food. Always reading. I stole that book from the box under his bed because it seemed to be his favorite."
Pausing uncomfortably, Mr. Ravenel raked a hand through his disordered hair, and it promptly fell back into the same gleaming, untidy layers. "I didn't plan to keep it. I was going to embarrass him by reading parts of it aloud in front of him. And when I saw what you'd written on the inside cover, I could hardly wait to torture him about it. But then I read the first page."
"In which Stephen Armstrong is sinking in a pit of quicksand," Phoebe said with a tremulous smile.
"Exactly. I had to find out what happened next."
"After escaping the quicksand, he has to save his true love, Catriona, from the crocodiles."
A husky sound of amusement. "You marked x's all over those pages."
"I secretly longed for a hero to rescue me from crocodiles someday."
"I secretly longed to be a hero. Despite having far more in common with the crocodiles. ~ Lisa Kleypas

Keep your friends close, your enemies closer, and the junk food as far away as possble. ~ Krista Scott-Dixon

How quickly a year passes, like a mouthful of food snatched from the maw of eternity. ~ Garth Stein

I set the vodka glasses on the table, and we become gently drunk in the foetal warmth. The Australian woman doesn't quite get the picture. We have a brief exchange in English. 'Do you have a car?' she asks. 'No,' I reply. 'A TV?' 'No.' 'What if you have a problem?' 'I walk.' 'Do you go to the village for food?' 'There is no village.' 'Do you wait for a car on the road?' 'There is no road.' 'Are those your books?' 'Yes.' 'Did you write all of them?' I prefer people whose character resembles a frozen lake to those who are more like marshes. ~ Sylvain Tesson

And even if prayer seems futile and unnecessary, even if tears are quite often your only food - "day and night," as the psalmist said (Ps. 42:3) - hope still lives because God still loves. ~ Frank Page

... Chinese consider eating food to be one of the rare joys of living... ~ Frederick J. Simoons

Whilst the food we eat nowadays has much to be grateful to the likes of Marco Polo, Alexander the Great and Vasco De Gama, who would have introduced the tangy flavours of South Africa's Rainbow Cuisine on his way around the Cape of Good Hope to India, Arabic cuisine, with spices of cinnamon, cloves, saffron and ginger was a lot more enterprising than Western cooking at the time. The medley of colours that the spices offered the food had mystical meanings to the Arabs ~ Karl Wiggins

Tomatoes and oregano make it Italian; wine and tarragon make it French. Sour cream makes it Russian; lemon and cinnamon make it Greek. Soy sauce makes it Chinese; garlic makes it good. ~ Alice May Brock

What I am proud of, what seems so simply clear, is that feminism is a way to fight for justice, always in short supply.


~ Barbara Strickland

I don't eat & drink good clean food because I want my body to look more like Taylor Swift's. Actually, I am among a rare breed of humans that knows my worth is not determined by the size of my ass. That said, I eat and drink clean food because I love myself. Besides, when I eat shitty food, I feel like shit. Period. When I eat refined sugar and a bunch of processed foods, my mind gets all foggy and my body feels lethargic.
No thanks! I mean, how am I supposed to change the world for the better feeling like that? ~ Brooke Hampton

Without Laura here, food is the only thing I love that loves me back. ~ Rachel Cohn

I was a food junkie. ~ Mo'Nique

I don't want to eke out my life like a resource in short supply. The only selfish life is a timid one. To hold back, to withdraw, to keep the best in reserve, both overvalues the self, and undervalues what the self is. ~ Jeanette Winterson

If you get a second chance, grab it with the first and second hands. Never let it go till all is done and done well. Second chances come with the last graces! ~ Israelmore Ayivor

NASSER: (about OMAR): Haven't you trained him up to look after you, like I have done with my girls?
PAPA: He brushes the dust from one place to another. He squeezes shirts and heats soup. But that hardly stretches him. Though his food stretches me. It's only for a few months, yaar. I'll send him to college in the autumn.
NASSER: (VO) He failed once. He has this chronic laziness that runs in our family except for me.
PAPA: If his arse gets lazy - kick it. I'll send a certificate giving permission. And one more thing. Try and fix him up with a nice girl. I'm not sure if his penis is in full working order. ~ Hanif Kureishi

THERE is such a thing as hunger for more than food, and that was the hunger I fed on. I was poor, my work unknown; often without meals; cold, too, in winter in my little studio on the West Side. But that was the least of it. When I talk about trouble, I am not talking about cold and hunger. There is another kind of suffering for the artist which is worse than anything a winter, or poverty, can do; it is more like a winter of the mind, in which the life of his genius, the living sap of his work, seems frozen and motionless, caught - perhaps forever - in a season of death; and who knows if spring will ever come again to set it free? It ~ Robert Nathan

This is my invariable advice to people: Learn how to cook- try new recipes, learn from your mistakes, be fearless, and above all have fun! ~ Julia Child

WILL WORK FOR FOOD © 2013 Lyrics & Music by Michele Jennae
There he was with a cardboard sign,
Will Work For Food
Saw him on the roadside,
As I took my kids to school
I really didn't have time to stop,
Already running late
Found myself pulling over,
Into the hands of fate
The look in his eyes was empty,
But he held out his hand
I knew my kids were watching,
As I gave him all I had
My heart in my throat I had to ask,
"What brought you here?"
He looked up and straight into my eyes,
I wanted to disappear.

CHORUS
He said… Do you think I really saw myself,
Standing in this light
Forgotten by society,
After fighting for your rights
WILL WORK FOR FOOD,
WILL DIE FOR YOU
I AM JUST A FORGOTTEN SOLDIER,
I DON'T KNOW WHAT TO DO
v. 2 He put the money in his pocket,
Then he took me by the hand
Thank you dear for stopping by,
I am sure that you have plans
He nodded toward my children,
Watching from afar
It's time they were off to school,
You should get in the car
My eyes welled up and tears fell down,
I couldn't say a word
Here this man with nothing to his name,
Showing me his concern
I knew then that the lesson,
That today must be taught
Wouldn't come from textbooks,
And it could not be bought
CHORUS
He said… Do you think I reall ~ Michele Jennae

Money brings you food, but not appetite; medicine, but not health; acquaintances, but not friends. ~ Henrik Ibsen

There you are. A simple commandment. Not ten of them, just one: 'Thou shalt not eat.' (Personally, I wish the very first edict from God hadn't involved dieting, don't you?) ~ Liz Curtis Higgs