Food openly reveals character more than money or sex do

Evidence

Food is as revealing as money and sex, and is revealed more often. People can’t wait to tell you that they mustn’t eat cabbage or have a craving for puddings; whereas how frequently do you hear, I’ve got ten thousand in my deposit account, or I can’t bear parting with small change? — Hilary Mantel, A Memoir of My Former Self- A Life in…, 569

Categorization

• SEED: A handle for writing characters: deploy diet, cravings, and food rituals as free, willing disclosures of inner life.
• XREF: Echoes the sensory particularization Mantel admires in Bedford (the barley-coffee breakfasts, the consommé madrilène dinner) and her own diet-and-detail realism. — connects to: Basic food scarcity makes refined gastronomic etiquette irrelevant to most people — David, Elizabeth, Book of Mediterranean Food, 50; Tastes encode a whole choice of being rather than sexual or physiological facts
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Hilary Mantel, A Memoir of My Former Self- A Life in…, 569

Broader Connections

• Basic food scarcity makes refined gastronomic etiquette irrelevant to most people #qualifies (0.55) — David, Elizabeth, Book of Mediterranean Food, 50