‘To be a taker of food or any other commodity without appreciation diminishes our humanity. The height of selfishness corresponds to the avaricious depths of assuming that we are the reason the giver exits. Mother’s table is for me; all the thanks she needs is for me to eat my fill of what is on it. She is a cooking machine and I am the consumer of the food that she provides. Such a mechanistic model of indifference is an dehumanising for the one who eats it as it is for the one who prepares and serves the meal.’

Susan Muto, Table of Plenty: Good Food for Body and Spirit, Cincinnati: Franciscan Media, 2014, xix.

Artwork: ‘A Dutch Interior – Grace Before the Meal’ by Evert Pieters (1856-1932)