Home > Work > Good to Eat: Riddles of Food and Culture
1 " We can eat and digest everything from rancid mammary gland secretions to fungi to rocks (or cheese, mushrooms, and salt if you prefer euphemisms). "
― Marvin Harris , Good to Eat: Riddles of Food and Culture
2 " Strictly speaking, human flesh itself contains the highest-quality protein that one can eat. "
3 " We now know that the greatest concentration of "abnormal" lactose absorbers lives in Europe north of the Alps. Over 95 percent of the Dutch, Danes, Swedes, and other Scandinavians have enough lactase enzyme to digest very large quantities of lactose throughout their lives. South of the Alps, high to intermediate levels prevail, falling to intermediate and low levels in Spain, Italy and Greece and among Jews and city-dwelling Arabs in the Middle East. Intermediate to high levels of absorbers occur again in northern India, while high levels of absorbers occur in isolated enclaves such as the Bedouin nomads of Arabia and certain pastoral groups in northern Nigeria and East Africa. Mammals obviously have to be able to drink milk in infancy, "
4 " When first contacted by Europeans, the peoples of New Guinea, northern Australia, and most of the islands of Melanesia such as the Solomon Islands, the New Hebrides, and New Caledonia practiced some degree of warfare cannibalism. "
5 " Unfortunately, it makes as little sense to offer this kind of explanation as to say that we have become too "civilized " to eat insects or horses. "
6 " Anyone who contends there is something inherently more "natural" about a diet rich in wheat or rice than one rich in meat knows little about either culture or nature . Of "
7 " Aztecs had not only failed to repress the eating of enemy dead, they were practicing a state-sponsored form of human sacrifice and cannibalism on a scale never rivaled before or since. "
8 " Tantrics seek oneness with the universe through eating meat, drinking alcohol, taking drugs, dancing, and ritual sexual intercourse. "
9 " In fact the taboo against killing and eating one's relatives is the most fundamental precondition if people are to live together and cooperate on a daily basis. "
10 " Of all domesticated mammals, pigs possess the greatest potential for swiftly and efficiently changing plants into flesh. "
11 " THE PUZZLE of cannibalism concerns the socially sanctioned consumption of human flesh when other foods are available. "
12 " Humans are big animals, but it takes an immense effort just to capture a few of them. The hunted are as alert, evasive, and as well-informed about hunting as the hunters. "
13 " The only thing different about the Aztecs is that the meat was human meat. "
14 " From antiquity to modern times, virtually every society that has been organized as a state has condemned the consumption of human flesh more forcefully than it has condemned the consumption of any other kind of animal food. "
