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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... animals, much of it by freeing low-quality domestic grains for stock raising while using the imports for human consumption. In 1981 the people of the Soviet bloc consumed 126 million tons of grain while their animals consumed 186 ...
... animal or plant protein from a nutritional point of view in order for meat distributions to take a quarrelsome turn. As ... domestic animals a principal focus of their sacraments. The very idea of sacrifice, fundamental to the formative ...
... animals but its composition is different. Wild game contains over five times more polyunsaturated fats per gram than is found in domestic ... animal carcasses contain a polyunsaturated fat (called eicosapent-aenoic acid) which is currently ...
... animals to the temples. Traces of a “let-them-eat-cake“ type of arrogance show up in some early Brahmanic texts ... domestic animals. Buddhists never attempted a similar apotheosis of cattle nor worship of Krishna or comparable deities ...
... animal foods available for human consumption? I doubt it. AS part of a ... animals which are energetically and nutritionally more useful alive than ... domestic or international markets for Indian beef, it continues to protect ...
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 |