Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Vivir para comer or comer para vivir?

Post 78 Live to eat or eat to live?

When I first visited Barcelona in 1996, I was told by my Spanish friend to ‘vivir para comer’ or live to eat; and not to ‘comer para vivir’ or eat to live. He said that Spanish cuisine comprises a variety of seafood easily available from the coastlines and countless unique cuisines served with one’s health in mind. The Spanish are adventurous with new recipes.

The Chinese cuisines are also well-known and highly popular in many parts of the world. The Chinese can cook any dish tailored to one’s wildest imagination. In the early 1990s, I was at the same table with a group of Americans at a dinner hosted by our mutual host in Lanzhou which is a prefecture-level city and capital of Gansu province in northwestern China. The menu then included camel paws and other dishes which were too daunting for us to try. We became vegetarians for the evening.

Socrates, the Greek philosopher more than 2,000 years ago, however, believed
that "Thou shouldst eat to live; not live to eat." His advice implies that one should eat healthily to live and not just eat for the sake of eating.

Do you vivir para comer or comer para vivir?

18 January 2011

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