50 Famous Food Quotes

Food has always been more than just sustenance; it's a universal language that brings people together, evokes memories, and stirs emotions. From celebrated chefs to renowned authors, many have tried to capture the essence of this remarkable connection through words. In this carefully curated collection, we present the top 50 famous food quotes that perfectly encapsulate the love, joy, and inspiration that food brings into our lives. Whether you’re a culinary enthusiast or simply someone who appreciates a good meal, these quotes are sure to resonate and inspire. Join us on this delectable journey through words and flavors!

1. “The preparation of good food is merely another expression of art, one of the joys of civilized living…” - Dione Lucas

2. “It seems to me that our three basic needs, for food and security and love, are so mixed and mingled and entwined that we cannot straightly think of one without the others. So it happens that when I write of hunger, I am really writing about love and the hunger for it, and warmth and the love of it and the hunger for it… and then the warmth and richness and fine reality of hunger satisfied… and it is all one.” - M.F.K. Fisher

3. “You may feel that you have eaten too much...But this pastry is likefeathers - it is like snow. It is in fact good for you, a digestive!” - M.F.K. Fisher

4. “There is one thing more exasperating than a wife who can cook and won't, and that's a wife who can't cook and will.” - Robert Frost

5. “Everything you see I owe to spaghetti.” - Sophia Loren

6. “Thanksgiving dinners take eighteen hours to prepare. They are consumed in twelve minutes. Half-times take twelve minutes. This is not coincidence.” - Erma Bombeck

7. “Owners of dogs will have noticed that, if you provide them with food and water and shelter and affection, they will think you are god. Whereas owners of cats are compelled to realize that, if you provide them with food and water and shelter and affection, they draw the conclusion that they are gods.” - Christopher Hitchens

8. “My favorite animal is steak.” - Fran Lebowitz

9. “Feast or famine. My plate is suddenly full.” - David Wong Louie

10. “Simple,' Tummeler replied.' Blueberries is one of the great forces o'good in the world.' How do you figure that?' said Charles. Well,' said Tummeler, 'have you ever seen a troll, or a Wendigo, or,' he shuddered, 'a Shadow-Born ever eating a blueberry pie?' No,' Charles admitted. There y'go,' said Tummeler. It's cause they can't stand the goodness in it.' Can't argue with you there,' said Charles. Foods is good and evil, just like people, or badgers, or even scowlers.' Evil food?' said Charles. Parsnips,' said Tummeler, 'Them's as evil as they come.” - James A. Owen

11. “Tis an ill cook that cannot lick his own fingers.” - William Shakespeare

12. “As I got closer to the fence, I held my shirt over my nose to block the smell. One stallion waded through the muck and whinnied angrily at me. He bared his teeth, which were pointed like a bear's.I tried to talk to him in my mind. I can do that with most horses.Hi, I told him. I'm going to clean your stables. Won't that be great?Yes! The horse said. Come inside! Eat you! Tasty half-blood!But I'm Poseidon's son, I protested. He created horses.Usually this gets me VIP treatment in the equestrian world, not this time.Yes! The horse agreed enthusiastically. Poseidon can come in, too! We will eat you both! Seafood!Seafood! The other horses chimed in as they waded through the field.” - Rick Riordan

13. “It struck her how eating was a comfort during a hard time because it reminded you that there had been other days, good days, when you’d eaten the same thing. Reminded you there were good days in life, when precious little else did. (268)” - Ron Rash

14. “Falling in love with humans is like walking into a pantry and realizing you're trapped in it without Whip Cream, and Cherries.” - AainaA-Ridtz A R

15. “To the chefs who pioneered the nouvelle cuisine in France, the ancienne cuisine they were rebelling against looked timeless, primordial, old as the hills. But the cookbook record proves that the haute cuisine codified early in this century by Escoffier barely goes back to Napoleon's time. Before that, French food is not recognizable as French to modern eyes. Europe's menu before 1700 was completely different from its menu after 1800, when national cuisines arose along with modern nations and national cultures.” - Raymond Sokolov

16. “What was that you gave me to eat?" Winter panicked.A Filler Crisp," Clover said, his eyes seventy percent concerned and thirty percent mischievous.” - Obert Skye

17. “It's frustrating to witness how popular Fairtrade bananas, coffee and tea have become with shoppers and supermarkets while plenty of unfair trade goes on, largely unnoticed, in our own back yard.” - Rose Prince

18. “The odds of going to the store for a loaf of bread and coming out with only a loaf of bread are three billion to one.” - Erma Bombeck

19. “The Fine Arts are five in number: Painting, Music, Poetry, Sculpture, and Architecture--whereof the principle branch is Confectionery.” - Antonin Carême

20. “The word indulgent has become a popular catchphrase for dishes we should not eat for health's sake. I never use it to describe food, only poor parenting.” - Martha Hall Foose

21. “Learn to do common things uncommonly well; we must always keep in mind that anything that helps full the dinner pail is valuable.” - George Washington Carver

22. “Food has been my career, my hobby, and, it must be said, my escape.” - Nigel Slater

23. “Almost anything is edible with a dab of French mustard on it.” - Nigel Slater

24. “Me and the folks who buy my food are like the Indians -- we just want to opt out. That's all the Indians ever wanted -- to keep their tepees, to give their kids herbs instead of patent medicines and leeches. They didn't care if there was a Washington, D.C., or a Custer or a USDA; just leave us alone. But the Western mind can't bear an opt-out option. We're going to have to refight the Battle of the Little Big Horn to preserve the right to opt out, or your grandchildren and mine will have no choice but to eat amalgamated, irradiated, genetically prostituted, barcoded, adulterated fecal spam from the centralized processing conglomerate.” - Michael Pollan

25. “I hate France. It's like the whole country's on a diet” - Gordon Korman

26. “There he got out the luncheon-basket and packed a simple meal, in which, remembering the stranger's origin and preferences, he took care to include a yard of long French bread, a sausage out of which the garlic sang, some cheese which lay down and cried, and a long-necked straw-covered flask wherein lay bottled sunshine shed and garnered on far Southern slopes.” - Kenneth Grahame

27. “Leggo my Eggo!” - Kellogg

28. “They served "Good Food" but only a G, an O and a D were lit up. Personally, I doubted God dined there. Unless God was keen on samonella poisoning and rat droppings in the hamburgers. But then again, what did I know?” - Julie Kenner

29. “A fit, healthy body—that is the best fashion statement” - Jess C. Scott

30. “ I'll be busy for the next eight weeks, so let's set this for November 15th.MENUI want lamb or venison steak. Baked potatoes with honey butter. Corn on the cob. Rolls. And apple pie, like the one you made before. I really liked it. I want it with ice cream.You owe me one naked dinner, but I'm not a complete beast, so you can wear a bra and panties if you so wish. The blue ones with the bow will do.Curran,Beast Lord of Atlanta” - Ilona Andrews

31. “She lived frugally, but her meals were the only things on which she deliberately spent her money. She never compromised on the quality of her groceries, and drank only good-quality wines.” - Haruki Murakami

32. “If you think of someone's good qualities as the umeboshi in an onigiri it's as if their qualities are stuck to their back! Maybe the reason people get jealous of each other is because they can see so clearly the umeboshi on other people's backs.” - Natsuki Takaya

33. “I have a lot of time for vegetarians (though apparently not all of them have a lot of time for me), and that's because I respect anyone with principles about food.” - Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall

34. “That eating should be foremost about bodily health is a relatively new and, I think, destructive idea-destructive not just the pleasure of eating, which would be bad enough, but paradoxically of our health as well. Indeed, no people on earth worry more about the health consequences of their food choices than we Americans-and no people suffer from as many diet-related problems. We are becoming a nation of orthorexics: people with an unhealthy obsession with healthy eating.” - Michael Pollan

35. “On the nights I stuffed myself full of myths, I dreamed of college, of being pumped full of all the old knowledge until I knew everything there was to know, all the past cultures picked clean like delicious roasted chicken.” - Lauren Groff

36. “If you are able to introduce a white person to a new cheese, it's like introducing them to a future spouse.” - Christian Lander

37. “If I ever meet with the man who fulfills my ideal, I shall make it a condition of the marriage settlement, that I am to have chocolate under the pillow.” - Wilkie Collins

38. “Knowledge is the food of the soul.” - Plato

39. “According to analyses conducted by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, 100 grams of fresh tomato today has 30 percent less vitamin C, 30 percent less thiamin, 19 percent less niacin, and 62 percent less calcium than it did in the 1960s. But the modern tomato does shame it's counterpart in one area: It contains fourteen times as much sodium.” - Barry Estabrook

40. “I've never seen Salisbury steak on a restaurant menu. It's only in frozen dinners. Is there something we should know about that? What IS Salisbury steak anyway? And where do they hunt or harvest the salisburies?” - Kelli Jae Baeli

41. “If you are going to go to the trouble of choosing healthy food for your plate, shouldn't you also choose healthy people for your life?” - Ramani Durvasula

42. “Relationships, like all human experiences, are transient; they change every day and are meant to be enjoyed in the present. When I hear people say you need to "work" at a relationship, what that often really means is just seeing through the day-to-day; listening to another person, listening to yourself, not getting stuck on hurts from the past, and not getting lost in what might come. To be in a relationship with someone you respect, care about and value is a gift, and when you take that in the day-to-day, you honor yourself and your partner each day. Eating is no different in that you can honor yourself at each meal. So much time in relationships is spent hashing the past, and arguing about things that haven't yet happened. A relationship cannot be "hoarded", just like a meal cannot be prolonged by taking home the leftovers.” - Ramani Durvasula

43. “Mama operated under the assumption that I was eight years old and incapable of feeding myself. It was physically impossible for her to cross my threshold without some form of nourishment. She once offered me cheese and crackers from her while we were standing in my kitchen.” - Molly Harper

44. “When I'm not longer rapping, I want to open up an ice cream parlor and call myself Scoop Dogg. Snoop Dogg.” - Snoop Dogg

45. “Would you pour sand into the gas tank of your car? Of course not, your car was meant to run on good gasoline. Well, your body works the same way. Your body was meant to run on good food: fruits, vegetables, lean protein, and lots of water. Eat good food!” - Tom Giaquinto

46. “The French have the right respect for dogs--in France we chiens get to go to lunch and dinner anytime, anywhere.” - Sheron Long

47. “Diet food is for lazy people.” - Ice-T

48. “We can’t go from zero to sixty in a day or even a week when it comes to shifting our food-habit gears. We have to take baby steps, starting with an increasing awareness of our habits and a willingness to chip away at the ones that aren’t doing us any good. Slowly, with time and commitment, we move away from the rat-race, multitasking mentality to a place where we want to give our meals and ourselves the time and attention we deserve.” - Mary DeTurris Poust

49. “Workers who pick the food we eat cannot afford to feed themselves.” - Barry Estabrook

50. “On Earth one of the things that a large proportion of the locals is most proud of is this wonderful economic system which, with a sureness and certainty so comprehensive one could almost imagine the process bears some relation to their limited and limiting notions of either thermodynamics or God, all food, comfort, energy, shelter, space, fuel and sustenance gravitates naturally and easily away from those who need it most and towards those who need it least. Indeed, those on the receiving end of such largesse are often harmed unto death by its arrival, though the effects may take years and generations to manifest themselves.” - Iain M. Banks