Good to Eat: Riddles of Food and CultureWhy are human food habits so diverse? Why do Americans recoil at the thought of dog meat? Jews and Moslems, pork? Hindus, beef? Why do Asians abhor milk? In Good to Eat, best-selling author Marvin Harris leads readers on an informative detective adventure to solve the worlds major food puzzles. He explains the diversity of the worlds gastronomic customs, demonstrating that what appear at first glance to be irrational food tastes turn out really to have been shaped by practical, economic, or political necessity. In addition, his smart and spirited treatment sheds wisdom on such topics as why there has been an explosion in fast food, why history indicates that its bad to eat people but good to kill them, and why children universally reject spinach. Good to Eat is more than an intellectual adventure in food for thought. It is a highly readable, scientifically accurate, and fascinating work that demystifies the causes of myriad human cultural differences. |
From inside the book
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... agricultural system is that it is incapable of feeding all those animals as well. This is because it costs much more to raise animals for food than to raise plants for food. Expressed in energy terms, it takes nine additional calories ...
... agricultural societies animal foods are especially good to eat nutritionally speaking, but they are also especially hard to produce. Animal foods get their symbolic power from this combination of utility and scarcity. I do not think ...
... Agricultural expert Narayanan Nair claims that for most Hindus, goat, sheep, and poultry are a “delicious food . . . they would eat more of it if they could afford it.” Buddhism is the other great world religion whose food preferences ...
... Agricultural Organization committee on nutrition in 1981, this allowance was revised sharply upward from .57 to .75 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight per day, an increase of 30 percent over 1973 standards. The pro-protein ...
... agricultural modes of production a mere ten thousand years ago that grains became the staple foods of humankind. Anyone who contends there is something inherently more “natural” about a diet rich in wheat or rice than one rich in meat ...
Contents
13 | |
19 | |
47 | |
The Abominable Pig
| 67 |
Hippophagy
| 88 |
Holy Beef USA
| 109 |
Lactophiles and Lactophobes Milk Lovers and Milk Haters
| 130 |
Small Things
| 154 |
Dogs Cats Dingoes and Other Pets
| 175 |
People Eating
| 199 |
Better to Eat
| 235 |
References | 249 |
Bibliography | 258 |
Index | 275 |