James:

“Food and sex are close cousins. Our enjoyment of both depends upon who else comes to the table. Food shopping for one is more depressing than masturbation.”

Flett:

“Well, bad food is often worse than bad sex because women are quite often primed for bad sex but remain terribly disappointed by a crappy meal. And bad food cooked for you by the person who is also responsible for the bad sex is, probably, inevitable.

Good food, meanwhile, is obviously much better than bad sex, though good food is sometimes even better than good sex, especially while pregnant. And of course it goes without saying, though I shall say it anyway, that fabulous sex is better than almost everything… except great food cooked for you by someone with whom there is also the prospect of having fabulous sex.”

“If you were stranded on an island but miraculously it had a refrigerator, what 10 ingredients could you absolutely not do without? Matthew LeMay PHILADELPHIA

I’d have to have olive oil, garlic, pasta, canned fish–anchovies if I had to pick just one–cheese. If my husband were on the island with me, then I have to have salami. I’ve got to have some prosecco and some other wine, and you need your roughage, so escarole–and I have to have some beans, so I’d pick white.”

Sorry about this one.

As Stickfingers at Deep Dish Dreams said, attracting some controversial comments on the local Slow movement:

“Then the organisers of the market decide that the vendor has grown too big for the circuit and tell them that they are not to return. What does that farmer do when removed from their customers? In one case they have gone bust, have had to liquidate their assets and lay off staff at the farm. They have no other outlet for their product.
Perhaps I’m a soft touch, but once again I find myself questioning the qualifications of the people who make the decisions pertaining to the running of the markets.”

In comments:

“Your story about the markets is a great example of what goes on in slow as well. You not quiet “slow enough” kinda crap. Which is very funny really. She who must be admired and is also dull can be tiresome but power will corrupt.
The politics are hard “you are either with us or against us” type of deal. Are you willing to risk your business’s reputation (income) by rocking the boat? I was not. If you are not in the inner royal circle it can be very confusing and even then it is hard, you never really know what is going on…
The fundamentals of slow in Australia are flawed, 35% of the subscription fee go to Italy ( a lot of that used to end up as “Admin fees” (but by good they were good dinners) and free subscriptions to the “right kinda people” I am very sure that doesn’t happen now of course. One of the previous el presidents was sacked by the state government because they could not work with her highness. The whole slow food festival is dead with out Government funding. “Culinary welfare for the well fed” very odd really when you think about it.”

As the Organic Centre, where you can download the report, says :

“This is the first major, indepth review of the published scientific literature on the nutritional benefits of organic food completed since 2003.

Over 40 new studies have come out since the last review was carried out — studies that dramatically improve our ability to answer a basic question — are organic foods generally more nutritious than conventional foods?”

“But then America is a gullible nation with a long-standing thirst for snake oil. How could we have resisted the blandishments of marketing departments and their lab-coated allies? We couldn’t, and as a result, Pollan writes, “Thirty years of nutritional advice have left us fatter, sicker, and more poorly nourished.”

“Unfair Trade argues that for all its good intentions, Fairtrade is not fair. Firstly, by guaranteeing certified farmers a minimum price for their goods, it can distort local markets leaving other farmers even worse off. Secondly, only about 10 percent of the premium paid by consumers actually makes it to the producer, which makes it an inefficient way of helping the poor. Most importantly, Fairtrade does little to aid economic development, focusing instead on sustaining farmers in their current state.”

“That Jews have an affinity for Chinese food is no secret. The Jews know it. The Chinese know it. Everyone knows it. Until the dispersal of middle-class Jews to the New York suburbs was complete in the 1970s and 1980s, Chinese take-out shops opened on every corner of the city. It was said that you could tell how Jewish a neighborhood was by the number of Chinese restaurants.”