"Tell me what you eat, and I shall tell you what you are."  -- Brillat-Savarin

"For what is food? It is not only a collection of products that can be used for statistical or nutritional studies. It is also, and at the same time, a system of communication, a body of images, a protocol of usages, situations, and behavior. ... When he buys an item of food, consumes it, or serves it, modern man does not manipulate a simple object in a purely transitive fashion; this item of food sums up and transmits a situation; it constitutes an information; it signifies." -- Roland Barthes, "Toward a Psychosociology of Contemporary Food Consumption" (1961)