“Out of 30,000 edible plants thought to exist on earth, just eleven account for 93% of all that humans eat: oats, corn, rice, wheat, potatoes, yucca (also called tapioca or cassava), sorghum, millet, beans, barley, and rye.”

— Daniel Levitin , book The Organized Mind

The Organized Mind (2014)

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Daniel Levitin 76

American psychologist 1957

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“According to Sir Anthony Fitzherbert it was the custom in England to shear wheat and rye and to leave the straw standing after the third method described by Varro, the purpose being to preserve the straw to be cut later for thatching, as threshing It would necessarily destroy its value for thatching. It was the custom in England, however, to mow barley and oats.”

Anthony Fitzherbert (1470–1538) English judge, scholar and legal author

A Virginia farmer (translator) (1913) in Varro's Rerum Rusticarum Libri Tres https://archive.org/stream/cu31924062805209#page/n181/mode/2up/search/husbandry, p. 161-2.

“Diet and nutrition advice is often focused on how much we ought to eat, and misses the point: More important than how much, how often, and when we eat is what we eat. Different kinds of animals require different types of diets. We humans are built to thrive on starch. The more rice, corn, potatoes, sweet potatoes, and beans we eat, the trimmer, more energetic, and healthier we become.
Starch? Really? Isn't that for laundry? Yes, but it's also the key to optimum health and satiety. We hear a lot about carbohydrates and whether or not we should eat them, but we don't hear enough about the most valuable type of carbohydrate, starch.”

John A. McDougall (1947) American physician

The Starch Solution (Rodale Books, 2013), Ch. 1, p. 6 https://books.google.it/books?id=if9YAQAAQBAJ&pg=PA6.

“Turning our seed-wheat-kennel tares,
To burn-grain thistle, and to vaporie darnel,
Cockle, wild oats, rough burs, corn-cumbring
Tares.”

Guillaume de Salluste Du Bartas (1544–1590) French writer

Second Week, First Day, Part iii. Compare: "Crown'd with rank fumiter and furrow-weeds, With burdocks, hemlock, nettles, cuckoo-flowers, Darnel, and all the idle weeds that grow In our sustaining corn", William Shakespeare, King Lear, act iv. sc. 4.
La Seconde Semaine (1584)

“The Englishman, in eleven years, gets three bushels more of wheat than the Frenchman. He gets three crops of barley, tares, or beans, which produce nearly twice as many bushels per acre, as what the three French crops of spring corn produce. And he farther gets, at the same time, three crops of turnips and two of clover, the turnips worth 40s. the acre, and the clover 60s. that is 12l. for both. What an enormous superiority! More wheat; almost double of the spring corn; and above 20s. per acre per annum in turnips and clover. But farther; the Englishman's land, by means of the manure arising from the consumption of the turnips and clover is in a constant state of improvement, while the Frenchman's farm is stationary.”

Arthur Young (1741–1820) English writer

Arthur Young (1791), Travels during the years 1787, 1788, and 1789: : undertaken more particularly with a view of ascertaining the cultivation, wealth, resources, and national prosperity of the kingdom of France, Volume 1 http://books.google.com/books?id=WLcFAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA344, p. 344; Cited in: Jackson Spielvogel (2011), Western Civilization: Alternate Volume: Since 1300, p. 296

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William Alcott (1798–1859) American physician and author

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“Today, the Italians have (hard) wheat foods like spaghetti and macaroni as their staple, while most Europeans use the potato. The Italians took the idea of the spaghetti-type foods from the Chinese noodle after Marco Polo returned from travels there, while Europe adopted the potato from American Indians. In neither case were Europeans enslaved before they could receive a benefit that was the logical heritage of all mankind, but Africans are to be told that the European slave trade developed us by bringing us maize and cassava.”

Walter Rodney book How Europe Underdeveloped Africa

Source: How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (1972), p. 156.

“The corn was orient and immortal wheat, which never should be reaped, nor was ever sown. I thought it had stood from everlasting to everlasting.”

Thomas Traherne (1636–1674) English poet

Third Century, sect. 3.
Centuries of Meditations

“On either side the river lie
Long fields of barley and of rye,
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Alfred, Lord Tennyson The Lady of Shalott

Pt. I, st. 1
The Lady of Shalott (1832)

“In becoming a vegetarian, you will eat a greater percentage of your calories from cereal grains, dried beans and peas, potatoes and pasta—the very foods most dieters avoid with zeal. And you will lose weight.”

Jean Mayer (1920–1993) French-American scientist, university administrator

Quoted in "Why People Get Fat" by Keith Akers, Vegetarian Times (May 1983), p. 29 https://books.google.it/books?id=SQgAAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA29.

“I’m Cuban, so we grew up eating meat. But I didn’t like it. I’d say, ‘Rice and black beans is just fine with me.’ But my mother, you know, would say, ‘Tu estas muy flaca!’ Then one day I saw my dad kill a chicken and ever since then I was grossed out by chicken.”

Vida Guerra (1974) American model

"Nude Vida Guerra Ad Pulls the Caliente Card to Raise Money for PETA", Fox News (25 March 2011) http://www.foxnews.com/lifestyle/2011/03/24/vide-guerra-gets-spicy-raise-money-peta.html

“Out of 30,000 edible plants thought to exist on earth, just eleven account for 93% of all that humans eat: oats, corn, rice, wheat, potatoes, yucca (also called tapioca or cassava), sorghum, millet, beans, barley, and rye.”

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Daniel Levitin 76

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