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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... sacrifice, fundamental to the formative doctrines of Christianity, Hinduism, Judaism, and Islam, arose from the sharing of meat in the camps and villages of prehistoric times. With the domestication of herds and flocks, meat, blood, and ...
... sacrifice, and in feeding the gods on animal flesh, ancient peoples expressed their own craving for meat and other animal products. Or taking a slightly different point of view, animal flesh was so good to eat that humans would consume ...
... sacrifice and lavish meat eating. The compulsive attention paid by the Brahman priests to the size, shape, and color ... sacrificed cattle more often than other animals and that beef was the commonest flesh consumed in northern India ...
... sacrifices. Gradually the ratio of cattle to humans declined and with it the consumption of beef, especially among the lower castes. But there was a Catch-22 in the process: cattle could not simply be eliminated to make way for more ...
... sacrifice, condemned butchers, and substituted meditation, vows of poverty, and good deeds for ritual and prayers as the means of gaining salvation. Buddha did not single out beef eating as a special evil, but since cattle were the ...
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 |