Few things ignite all of our senses to the degree that food does.  Once simply a form of sustenance, food today, in restaurants or in markets, represents status, sexuality, politics, and education. Where all of this comes together, is not just in taste, or smell, or texture, but in the language that is used by purveyors of food, and the language that we all use, in talking about food. 

Stanford linguistics Professor and MacArther Fellow, Dan Jurafsky gives us a menu to interpret this in The Language of Food: A Linguist Reads the Menu.

My conversation with Dan Jurafsky: