Orwell: A human being is primarily a bag for putting food into...

When I was a small boy at school a lecturer used to come once a term and
deliver excellent lectures on famous battles of the past, such as Blenheim,
Austerlitz, etc. He was fond of quoting Napoleon's maxim 'An army marches
on its stomach', and at the end of his lecture he would suddenly turn to us
and demand, 'What's the most important thing in the world?' We were
expected to shout 'Food!' and if we did not do so he was disappointed.

Obviously he was right in a way. A human being is primarily a bag for
putting food into; the other functions and faculties may be more godlike,
but in point of time they come afterwards. A man dies and is buried, and
all his words and actions are forgotten, but the food he has eaten lives
after him in the sound or rotten bones of his children. I think it could be
plausibly argued that changes of diet are more important than changes of
dynasty or even of religion. The Great War, for instance, could never have
happened if tinned food had not been invented. And the history of the past
four hundred years in England would have been immensely different if it had
not been for the introduction of root-crops and various other vegetables at
the end of the Middle Ages, and a little later the introduction of non-
alcoholic drinks (tea, coffee, cocoa) and also of distilled liquors to
which the beer-drinking English were not accustomed. Yet it is curious how
seldom the all-importance of food is recognized. You see statues everywhere
to politicians, poets, bishops, but none to cooks or bacon-curers or
market-gardeners. The Emperor Charles V is said to have erected a statue to
the inventor of bloaters, but that is the only case I can think of at the
moment.


This quote points out how important food and food technology are in driving the essence of humanity including human living conditions. However, in modern, developed areas, we lack an appreciation for this now subtle fact. Attention has shifted from food acquisition, and with it, individuals have lost a sense of the appreciation towards something that your survival depends on.

I like this quote because it makes me think about working with food.

The fact that I have this thought points out to me that I want to do work with something that is axiomatic, and can drive large-scale changes. Or put differently, with something upon which other things are built.