The good thing about the current, non-quote-required, model is that you can use an include in a ListPages module's prependLine:
[[module ListPages prependLine="[[include table class=food |style=background-color: red;]]" appendLine="[[/row]][[/table]]"]]
This allows the use of a table surrounding the module's content, as the table's page contains:
[[table class="{$class}" style="{$style}"]][[row]]
Which makes it possible to set attributes to the table.
You see, the following is not possible:
[[module ListPages prependLine="[[table class="food" style="background-color: red;"]]" appendLine="[[/row]][[/table]]"]]
It's not possible because the first double-quote used within the prependLine is interpreted as the completing double quote of prependLine. That is, the prependLine is essentially
[[table class=
If you made includes require double quotes for variables, then we would be approached with the above problem, and thus unable to create custom tables within the ListPages module.