Reading Notes: Michael Pollen on the Magic of Sharing Food

From Michael Pollen's recent interview with NPR about his new book " Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation" 

"Some of the foods that hold themselves out to you as supremely convenient, like those microwavable single-potion entrees in the supermarket? I did an experiment with those. We had what we call " Microwave Night,"  where we all got to buy one of those, you know, fast-food-in-a-freezer-bag things that they now have in the supermarket. And guess what? It took 40 minuets to get that meal on the table. Because the microwave is individualistic. You can only microwave one person's entree at a time. And you're not sharing. And there's something magical that happens when people eat from the same pot. The family meal is really the nursery of democracy. It's where you learn to share, it's where we learn to argue without offending. It's just too critical to let go, as we're been so blithely doing."