Pascal Cagni, vice-president of Apple Europe, Africa and Asia:
"There is much more to food than just giving us energy and enabling our race to continue - food bonds us all, brings us comfort and enrichment in a myriad of magical ways.... gathering fruit as a child, sharing special occasions with family and friends while reminding me of places I hold dear, the joy of daily meals...
Food is comforting: it takes us back to our roots, and cooking it is therapeutic, as is producing our own, without chemicals, and eating it! My fig or greengage jam, my perfect, just-picked peaches in syrup or my ripe tomatoes used to make pasta sauce...simple but sublime”
Richard Wolffe, Newsweek Chief White House correspondent and author of “Renegade:
The Making of a President”:
“Food is family and friends, conversation and creativity, people and passion.
It is the wonder of transforming raw ingredients into refined meals, of adding flavour and revealing texture.
It is the joy of sharing and living with the people we love.
It is not just what we eat, but who we are and want to be.
Our meals are intertwined with the words we share across the kitchen table.”
Anna Steiger, professional opera singer:
“Food has always been my friend and my enemy. Memorable meals with loved ones are a high point in my life. Eating when I am anxious or bored and lonely a low point. So many conflicting feelings around food, I cannot even begin to list them all.
But the joy of eating and sharing great times with friends is immense nevertheless”.
Werner Herzog, German film-maker:
“At night I like to get together with friends. ..When we have guests I never take pictures...It is just a dinner. It is real life. It should not be viewed through a lens.
This is real - it is life.”
John Bloom, film editor of “Gandhi”, “A Chorus Line”, “The Lion in Winter”, “Damage” and “The French Lieutenant’s Woman”, among many others:
“That guilty breakfast on the first day in the US of A.
Jet lagged and awake with the prospect of eggs-over-easy, crisp American bacon and hash browns..
An early morning walk in the Austrian Tyrol, appetite whetted and appeased by a perfectly prepared boiled egg, white rolls with the creamiest, sweetest butter known to man...
Paris...a baguette from across the Grande Armée, freshly brewed coffee, a dark, sour cherry jam, exquisite Normandy butter.
It’s the simplicity of breakfast that makes it the best and most memorable of meals...”
Dr. Robin Niblett, director of Chatham House, London:
“Meals are pivotal moments in the day -- moments for enforced reflection or spontaneous conversation, but always for appreciating the simple, but wonderful ingredients that nourish us on a daily basis.
Eating remains a central part of my enjoyment of life.
Reading the newspaper with a great sandwich in my office, finishing a long hike with a late lunch, coming home after work and sitting down to eat dinner in the kitchen with my family -- these moments are the main chimes of my daily clock.
I am fortunate to relish the taste of good food and to eat it regularly. Still, these moments are not about eating, but about living”.
Tristram Stuart, author of “The Bloodless Revolution” and “Waste; Uncovering the Global Food Scandal”:
“Most people would not willingly consign tracts of Amazon rain forest to destruction simply through a few trips to the shops. But we do it every day. Throughout the developed world food is treated as a disposable commodity, disconnected from the social and environmental impact of its production. In a globalised food industry, almost everything we eat - from bananas to locally grown beef - is connected to the system of world agriculture”.
Nina Kilham, author of “How to Cook a Tart” and “Mounting Desire”:
“For me lunch and dinner are mostly functional. It’s my morning and afternoon biscuit break that really quickens my blood. Nothing better than big slabs of chocolate pressed across thin, buttery planks of shortbread to fuel my thoughts. When my writing is going poorly and Armageddon wakes me up in the wee hours of the morning, I see my future clearly: as a frail old woman hobbling to the local shop to spend my bitty pension on cat food and packets of McVities Milk Chocolate Digestives”.
Elena Dementieva, professional tennis player:
“If I’ve had a good day, I’ll go home and cook something nice...because eating healthily is part of my lifestyle, part of looking after my body, which in turn is part of my success”.
Raymond van Over, author of “Purgatory’s Gate” and “Midnight in Eden”, due out soon:
“For me food ranges from mindless consumption to a sensuous delight that can equal a work of art. I especially like to watch others’ faces as they eat something I’ve prepared.
Camila Batmanghelidjh formed the charity Kids Company in 1996. It gives support to 13,000 deprived children every year. This web-site's author recalls:
“Camila’s thank you note for a dinner I hosted at my flat was a professional
rice-cooker and Sally Butcher’s cookbook “Persia in Peckham”.
Since I hadn’t served rice at the dinner nor Iranian food, I took this as a compliment”.
Perhaps there’s a touch of anxiety about whether they are going to like it, but overriding that is the simple delight in watching someone else eat. It can be very erotic.
The essential fact about food is that it transcends simple categories of body and mind; it can go beyond nourishment to higher realms of experience. It would not be inappropriate to call the full experience of food and its impact as “ecstatic”.
Sean Hagan, General Counsel, International Monetary Fund, Washington, DC:
“Life is both anticipated and remembered as a punctuation of powerful moments.
For me, wonderful meals often create such moments. The smells, flavours, laughter – and tears – associated with meals evoke some of my strongest childhood memories.
Similarly, when I ponder a future visit with friends or an upcoming vacation with my family, nothing quickens my anticipation more than the thought of an extended – and noisy- session around a generous table.
Food has a magical way of deepening intimacy among its participants”.
Byron Kelleher, New Zealand rugby player now playing for Stade Toulousain in France:
“A meal is more than just the food on the plate. It’s how you prepare it, who you are sitting with, where you eat it”.
