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American food is the food of immigrants. You go back a couple of hundred years, and we were all immigrants, unless we're going to talk about Native American cuisine.

From food trucks to hot dog stands to county fair favorites, 'street food' has enjoyed a rich and storied history in American cuisine. However, street food has been around for thousands of years. In fact, street food is believed to have originated as far back as Ancient Rome.

Food as a hobby used to be an elite pastime, and it has become something that is totally ordinary for people of every background. In that way, we see the growing up of the American food scene: that it's okay to be a regular person and be really into food.

In America, we are engaged in constant battle with food.

I was raised on T.V. dinners because in those days, they were considered a well-balanced meal. And when I was sick, my mother fed me beef-barley soup and peanut butter sandwiches. That's about it for childhood food memories.

Oh yes, there's lots of great food in America. But the fast food is about as destructive and evil as it gets. It celebrates a mentality of sloth, convenience, and a cheerful embrace of food we know is hurting us.

I'm not sure that some of the food purists are in touch with what really goes on in American households.

Food is everything we are. It's an extension of nationalist feeling, ethnic feeling, your personal history, your province, your region, your tribe, your grandma. It's inseparable from those from the get-go.

I can't think of a time in the history of man when food was in excess. We're dealing with the same old problems we've dealt with for 60,000 years.

Well, you know... I grew up in postwar Britain, when you were lucky to get anything to eat. People in America have absolutely no conception of how austere England was after the war. While you were all sort of eating butter and eggs, we were eating rabbit. That's what there was in the butcher shop.