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
... chicken, ducks, silkworms, snails, shrimp, and crab. During the rainy season they may eat as much as a pound of frogs a week. Cambodian Buddhists consume fish, crabs, frogs, mussels, and certain highly esteemed species of hairy spiders ...
... chicken and beef ranking tenth and thirteenth. But for the top 25 percent of Jamaicans, beef and chicken rank first and second while wheat flour rank seventh. This relationship holds around the world. The elites in Madagascar consume ...
... chicken eggs as their reference standard. Taking into account their relative digestibility once they get into the human gut, the quality of most animal proteins can be said to be about 25 percent to 50 percent higher than the best ...
... chickens with grains, fish meal, growth hormones, and antibiotics, the problem with most meats was that they were too lean to achieve a protein-sparing effect. Modern high-fat carcasses are 30 percent or more fat. In contrast, a survey ...
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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 |