“Mom is losing, no doubt, because our vegetables have come to lack two features of interest: nutrition and flavor. Storage and transport take predictable tolls on the volatile plant compounds that subtly add up to taste and food value. Breeding to increase shelf life also has tended to decrease palatability. Bizarre as it seems, we've accepted a tradeoff that amounts to: "Give me every vegetable in every season, even if it tastes like a cardboard picture of its former self.”

“Do you like vegetables?" Sophie asked, hoping to steer the conversation towards a slightly less dangerous kind of food. "You is trying to change the subject," the Giant said sternly. "We is having an interesting babblement about the taste of the human bean. The human bean is not a vegetable.”

“My mother has told me once and for all the useful parts. She will add nothing unless powered by necessity, a riverbank that guides her life. She plants vegetable gardens rather than lawns; she carries the odd-shaped tomatoes home from the field and eats food left for the gods.”

“With the rising cost of food, either the portions get smaller, or the quality gets inferior. So, for example, pizza that used to taste like cardboard now tastes like carpet. Unvacuumed carpet, because I asked for lots of toppings.”

“Onions enhance the flavor of food, and the taste of my kisses.
”

“You can’t compare the taste of organic and non organic fruits and vegetables. Organic tastes like a ten-minute trumpet solo in your mouth, and non organic tastes like a thirty second tape recording that’s been listened to a thousand times.”