Quotes from Richard R. Wilk

How fragile is a world so connected and tied together that a change in food fashion in one place can lead to starvation halfway through the world?

Food is also the stuff of international politics, and the power of one country to control the daily bread of another has always been politically important.

I find it fascinating that this bottle is so cosmopolitan, a true multicultural brew, but it is so quiet about it.

Food is packed with meaning, as well as vitamins, carbohydrates and protein. It satisfies needs beyond those of the body and the pocketbook. Food is a medium to build families, religious communities, ethnic boundaries and a consciousness of history.

Or could it be that there is something about globalisation itself that produces local culture, and promotes the constant formation of new forms of local identity, dress, cuisine, music, dance and language?

Globalisation creates a world where causes are remote form effects, and the connections between them are often hidden or obscure.

Foodways like any other aspect of culture, are never static. Even without the influence of other cultures, we would be eating and cooking differently from the generations that came before us.

As geographic place lost its power to guarantee quality, modern corporate brands began to appear, at first linked to the personal names of the manufacturers, who thereby offered their reputation, their face as it were, to establish a bond of trust with consumers.

The idea that foods and diets will "just mix" when they come into contact is clearly a vast oversimplification.

People want to think of a food tradition as something that would continue unchanging and timeless, unless some outside force knocked things askew.

There is no culture where everyone cooks in the same way.

But instead of being frozen in time, I want to show that "local" and "authentic" food are as much creations of modernity as survivors from before it. Authenticity is therefore a problem, not something we can ever depend on as some kind of naturally occurring category. Tradition is crafted, just as much as modernity is manufactured.

How old does a recipe have to be in order to be traditional? What should we think when an old industrial food like salted (corned) beef or pickled herring becomes a part of "traditional" ethnic cuisine?

The inevitable result of any search for authenticity is that you always end up with something completely modern in intent, since the purpose of the performance lies in the present, not the past.

The world becomes a pageant of diversity with its differences neatly organised and selected.

Home cooking is always concerned with quality, because people you care about will eat the meal.