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"Cooking, in effect, took part of the work of chewing and digestion and performed it for us outside of the body, using outside sources of energy. Also, since cooking detoxifies many potential sources of food, the new technology cracked open a treasure trove of calories unavailable to other animals. Freed from the necessity of spending our days gathering large quantities of raw food and then chewing (and chewing) it, humans could now devote their time, and their metabolic resources, to other purposes, like creating a culture."

Michael Pollan

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Sunday
Aug102014

Professor Stephen Mennell on food porn

DateSunday, August 10, 2014 at 9:31AM

"Significantly, the charge (if it is a charge) has been levelled at the gastronomic essay and the 'learned' cookery book that they have an affinity with pornography. Certainly, both gastronomy and pornography dwell on pleasures of the flesh, and in gastronomic literature as in pornography there is vicarious enjoyment to be had. In gastronomy, however, vicarious enjoyment is more definitely intended to be a prelude to, not a substitute for, direct and actual enjoyment." 

Stephen Mennell

Mennell, S. 1996. All Manners of Food: Eating and Taste in England and France from the Middle Ages to Present. 2nd ed. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 271-272.

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