In my opinion Waverley Root is the best kind of food writer, though this generation has consistently ignored him. I'm brushing up on Bouillabaisse and in his over ten pages on the subject he says this:

"The easiest, and least subtle, way to provoke a discussion guaranteed to end a lifelong friendship forever is to bring up the issue of lobster. There are two chief schools of thought about this. One is that a man who would put lobster in a bouillabaisse would poison wells. The other is that a man who would leave it out would starve his children."

- Food of France; Waverley Root, 1958