Taboo food and drink
Categories: Food and drink | Pets | Cats | Diets | Islamic law | Jewish law and rituals | Meat
Taboo food and drinks are those that people avoid for religious, cultural or health reasons.
Certain religions forbid the consumption of certain types of meat. For example, Judaism prescribes a strict set of rules, called Kashrut, regarding what can and cannot be eaten. Followers of Islam and certain sects of Christianity also hold to these or similar rules. Hindus, Jains and Buddhists often follow religious proscriptions for vegetarianism. Before the Second Vatican Council, Latin rite Catholics (or "Roman Catholics") were prohibited from eating any meat except fish on Fridays, in a year-long observance of the fast of Good Friday. After Vatican II, the prohibition remains in effect only for the Fridays which occur during the season of Lent.
Cultural taboos against certain forms of meat may be due to the species' standing as a common pet. In addition, some meats are considered taboo simply because they fall outside of the range of the generally accepted definition of a foodstuff within a given society. This is not necessarily because the meat is considered repulsive in flavor, aroma, texture or appearance.
Some authorities impose cultural food taboos in the form of law. This is alleged to be dietary persecution and possibly human rights abuse. For example, even after resumption to Chinese rule, Hong Kong has not lifted its ban on supplying meat from dogs and cats, imposed in colonial times.
Health reasons may also contribute to a taboo. For example, eating undercooked pork has a risk of trichinosis, while many forms of seafood can cause extreme cases of food poisoning.
Medical food taboos come from professionals' advice that some food is known to excerbate an illness, make a person more vulnerable to one or impede treatment.
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Pets
Rabbit
Leporids such as European rabbits and hares make friendly pets for fanciers or those allergic to cats and dogs. They are also a food meat in Europe, South America, North America and China, among other places. The consumption of rabbit meat, however, historically pre-dates their use as pets, and is therefore not considered taboo by most people.
Michael Moore's film Roger and Me famously features a poor Flint, Michigan woman selling rabbits "for pets or meat".
Rabbit meat was once commonly sold in Sydney, Australia, the sellers of which giving the name to the Rugby League team the South Sydney Rabbitohs, but quickly became unpopular after the disease myxomatosis was introduced in an attempt to wipe out the feral rabbit population (see also Rabbits in Australia).
The hare is specifically stated to be unclean animals in the book of Leviticus in the Bible, making it taboo for Jews and those Christians that hold these rules to be binding for themselves.
Prairie Dog & Squirrel
Both the American prairie dog and squirrel were widely hunted for food in the United States until the mid-20th century, but have recently become exotic pets. The main appeal of these animals as a food source was their abundance and the ease of catching them. Squirrel is still occasionally eaten.
Guinea Pigs
Guinea pigs (cavies) were originally bred for their meat, and only became an exotic popular pet when introduced to Europe from America.
Guinea pigs, or cuy, plural cuyes, continue to be a significant part of the diet in Peru, mostly in the Andes Mountains highlands, where they are an important source of protein and a mainstay of Andean folk medicine. Peruvians consume an estimated 65 million Guinea pigs each year, and the animal is so entrenched in the culture that one famous painting of the Last Supper in the main cathedral in Cusco, Peru shows Christ and the 12 disciples dining on Guinea pig. Today guinea pig meat is exported to the United States and Japan.
In 2004 the New York City Parks Department took legal action to stop vendors serving skewered cuy at an Ecuadorian festival in Flushing Meadows Park. New York state allows for the consumption of guinea pigs, but New York City does not based on a vague health code. Accusations of cultural persecution have since been levelled.
La Molina National University [1], Peru's most prestigious agrarian university, has bred a larger, faster-growing variety of the animal that it hopes will prove a nutritional boon to the country, as well as a source of export income. This breed grows to about 2 kg, or at least twice the native breed.
Dogs
In certain cultures, dogs are raised on farms and slaughtered as a source of meat. In Korea dog meat is the basis for summer soups and stews in some segments of the population (see Gaegogi). The source of the meat and the alleged methods of slaughter has generated friction between dog lovers, particularly from the West, and people who eat dogs that occasionally breaks out as headline news. (For example, just before the FIFA World Cup Football Games in 2002, Korea was tempted to persecute dog eating.)
In other countries, like the Philippines, dogs have served as an emergency reserve of food. Another example is China where in times past Chow Chows were often posted to guard family storehouses. During a hard season when the food store was depleted, the dog would be slaughtered as an emergency ration. (An "emergency ration" Chow Chow is a recurring character in Excel Saga.)
In Europe, the Swiss cantons of Appenzell and St. Gallen are known for the tradition of eating dogs, curing dog meat into jerky and sausages, as well as using the lard for medicinal purposes. Switzerland, as a whole, has no prohibition on the consumption of dog and cat meat, although trading and sale is illegal.
In the United States and Canada, Inuit and non-native sled dog teams traditionally fed a dog who expired during a gruelling run to the remaining dogs (but did not themselves eat it).
Historically, dogs were raised specifically for food by the Aztecs and Polynesians.
Cats
Cats are eaten in parts of China. In Guangdong, China, cat is reportedly served along with snake in a dish called "The Dragon and the Tiger". In desperate times, people have been known to resort to cooking and eating cats, in places where it is otherwise not usual to do so, as it occurred in a poverty-stricken shanty town in Rosario, Argentina, in 1996 (though the much-advertised cat meal was later revealed to have been set up by media from Buenos Aires).
Cats are also used to produce medicinal potions such as Korean "liquid cat", a remedy for joint pain made by boiling cats (alleged to be alive in some cases) with spices, and for their fur which is used to make fur coats and other fur clothing.
Cats are sometimes confused with civet cats. This has led Americans to accuse some Chinese manufacturers of using cat fur in their products. Others worry that some traditional medicines imported into the United States are of unknown animal origin. In 2001, a shipment of cat toys imported into the United States from China were recalled and destroyed because they were trimmed with cat fur, which had just been banned in the U.S.
Some Australian Aboriginal tribes have been known to hunt the feral cats as a secondary source of meat. One tribe well known for this activity believe this cat to be either indigenous or of ancient, non-European origin. However, one recent DNA analysis has shown its genetic similarity to British shorthair cats. Feral cats in Australia are regularly hunted, but not eaten, by non-Aboriginals due to their being voracious pests. They are considered a danger to native species. There is a small minority of scientists who contend the cats are more likely to eat from rubbish dumps and other food sources provided by humans.
The term roof-hare (roof-rabbit) applies to cat meat presented as that of a hare, another pet used as a source of meat. Subtracting the skin, feet, head and tail, hares and cats are practically identical. The only way to distinguish them is by looking at the processus hamatus of the feline scapula, which should have a processus suprahamatus. Pasar gato por liebre ("to pass off a cat as a hare") is an expression common to many Spanish-speaking countries, equivalent to "to pull the wool over someone's eyes" derived from this basic scam. There is an equivalent Portuguese expression Comprar gato por lebre, meaning "to buy a cat as a hare".
Work animals
Horses
Main article: Horse meat
Horse may not be eaten by observant Jews, since under Mosaic Law, horse meat is forbidden because the horse is not cloven-hoofed or cud-chewing. However, in Islamic countries horse is generally considered halal.
The eating of horse meat is a food taboo to some people in the United Kingdom, the US, and Australia, and its supply is sometimes even illegal. Like lobster and camel, it is forbidden in Judaism and some sects of Christianity. In 732 CE, Pope Gregory III began an effort to stop the pagan practice of horse eating, calling it "abominable", and the people of Iceland allegedly expressed reluctance to embrace Christianity for some time largely over the issue of giving up horse meat. His edicts are based on the same scripture as the Jewish prohibitions.
Camels
Another animal that is used strictly for work is the camel. The killing and eating of a camel is strictly prohibited by the Mosaic Law as well. Although the camel is a cud-chewer, the Levites still considered it "unclean." It is because of this the cloven-hoofed criterion was added. Since camels do not have hooves, the Levites had an explanation for not eating camels. The foot of a camel is split into two toe-like structures. The meat of a camel may also have been spurned due to the camel's physiology. All of a camel's fat is stored in its hump. This makes the rest of the body very lean. Although this is ideal for removal of body heat, it does not make for good eating.
Other
Blood
Drinking blood is a strong social taboo in most countries often with a vague emotive association with vampirism, despite that being the consumption of human blood.
Although blood sausage, or blood made to cake form, is quite popular in many parts of the world, it is considered repulsive in most of the United States. People in China also eat coagulated pig's blood with noodles or alone or with something else
Followers of Judaism, Islam and Jehovah's Witnesses are forbidden to drink blood or eat food made with blood.
Cows
Many Hindus abstain from eating any meat at all. Most Hindus do not eat beef, as the cow holds a sacred place in Hindu society, however the taboo does not always extend to milk and dairy products. While the injunctions against eating beef arose long after the Vedas had been written, it is assumed that the largely pastoral Vedic people and subsequent generations of Hindus throughout the centuries relied so heavily on the cow for all sorts of dairy products, the tilling of fields, and fuel or fertiliser that its status as a willing "caretaker" of humanity grew to identifying it as an almost maternal figure. Traditionally people from lower castes, like Dalits, ate beef and carabeef (buffalo). In modern times, beef-eating has gained some acceptance in various parts of India.
Crustaceans and other seafood
Almost all types of non-piscine (non fish) seafood, such as shellfish, lobster, shrimp or crawfish, are forbidden by Judaism and some followers of Christianity because such animals live in water but have no scales (Leviticus 11:10-12).
As with swine, crustaceans and many other forms of non-piscine seafood are scavengers that work at filtering the water. Improperly collected or uncooked seafood can be dangerous. It is probable that people who lived far from the sea and had no experience in choosing proper seafood would prefer to forego all seafood as a question of safety.
Fish
The Kikuyu and Kalenjin people of Kenya observe a taboo against the consumption of fish. The rejection of fish may be attributable to the arid conditions and associated scarcity of water.
Certain species of fish are also forbidden in Judaism, such as the freshwater eel (Anguillidae) and all species of catfish. This is because they live in water, but have no scales. (See Leviticus)
Insects
Except for locusts and related species, insects are not considered kosher. Many find the consumption of insects to be disgusting rather than immoral. In particular, some insects and insect larvae, such as weevils and maggots, are associated with food spoilage.
Many different kinds of insects have traditionally been consumed as food in non-European cultures, including locusts, grasshoppers, and crickets, and larvae such as caterpillars and bee grubs. For example, grasshoppers (inago) and bee larvae (hachinoko) are eaten in some regions of Japan and silkworm larvae (ppondegi) is a popular snack food in Korea.
Kangaroo
Kangaroo meat has had a varied history as meat in Australia due to the emotive association, predominantly by foreigners, of kangaroos as pets and a national symbol. In actuality the relatively lower consumption compared to beef and lamb is primarily due to the higher relative cost and more exotic "gamey" flavour of the meat. Kangaroo meat is the base of dishes in many restaurants and is available at many butchers and major supermarkets as mince, sausages and steak. The meat can also be smoke cured and makes an interesting prosciutto.
Offal
In the United States and Australia, many people are squeamish about eating offal, or the internal organs of butchered animals. Organ meats such as sweetbreads and kidney which are considered edible in other cultures are more often regarded as being fit only for processing into pet food under the euphemism "meat by-products" in the United States. Except for calf liver, organ meats that are consumed in the U.S. tend to be regional or ethnic specialties; for example, tripe as menudo among Latinos, chitterlings in the southern states, beef testicles as mountain oysters and prairie oysters in the west.
Pigs/Pork
Main article: Pork taboo
Consumption of pigs is forbidden among Hindus, Muslims, Jews, and Seventh Day Adventists. There are various theories concerning the origins of this law, but none has been universally accepted. The supposed "unclean" status has been attributed to the wallowing habits of pigs (in water, mud, or even faeces when under stress), as well as it being an omnivore; able to consume meat in higher quantities than cows and chickens which require antibiotics in order to consume the meat they are fed in modern agricultural methods. Pork may contain worms but this is far less common than in the past and the worms are easily killed with proper cooking. A common pork parasite is trichina which causes a minority of diarrhoea cases each year in the United States.
An explanation for pork taboos given by some scholars is that some foods are prohibited so that humans will understand that they do not have the right to subjugate all of the Earth's animals and to remind them that they should not take lightly their obligation to steward all the Earth's species well. This hypothesis is supported by passages in some religious texts, but cannot be promoted to a theory until more specific references can be found. It is important to note that the underlying explanations are not given in any religious text but instead appear to be inventions by religious followers to justify an unexplained order from their God.
Another possible explanation can be found in the nomadic tribal cultures of the Middle East. The nomadic tribes did not keep pigs, but favoured animals more suited for long treks across arid lands and were in competition with stationary land cultivators for whom pigs were an important farm animal.
Primates
Some consider the consumption of monkeys and apes to be too close to human cannibalism due to the similarity of our species. The similarity increases the danger of viruses. Most is "bushmeat" or caught from the wild, in area of high non-human primate populations such as Sub-Saharan Africa and southeast Asia, especially Indonesia. One of the major theories for the origin of the HIV virus in humans is the eating of primate meat infected with a similar virus.
Rats and Mice
In most Western cultures, rats and mice are considered either unclean vermin or pets and thus unfit for human consumption. However, rats are commonly eaten in Ghana and in rural Thailand. Cane rats (Thryonomys swinderianus and Thryonomys gregorianus) and some species of field mice are a rich source of protein in Africa. Historically, rats and mice have also been eaten in the West during times of shortage or emergency, such as during the Battle of Vicksburg and the Siege of Paris. Mice were also domesticated and raised for food in ancient Rome. In some Asian countries, mice are eaten, and go by the name of vole. In some communities the muskrat (which is not a rat at all) is hunted for its meat (and fur) (e.g. some parts parts of Flanders ).
Human Meat
Main article: Cannibalism
Of all the taboo meat, human flesh likely ranks as the most proscribed. Historically, man has indulged in the flesh of fellow humans in rituals, and out of insanity, hatred, or hunger. Cannibalism is still performed in some cultures.
See also
- Bushmeat
- Cannibalism
- Clean animals
- Halaal
- Kashrut
- Kosher foods
- Muslim dietary laws
- Unclean animals
- Vegetarianism
- Veganism
References
- Unmentionable Cuisine; Calvin W. Schwabe ISBN 0-8139-1162-1