Taboo food and drink
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This article discusses practices in relation to specific animals and food. For more discussion on religious views, see Unclean animals.
Taboo food and drinks are food and drink which people avoid consuming for religious, cultural or health reasons.
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Taboo meats
Various 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. Certain sects of Christianity also hold to these or similar rules. In Islamic practice, the laws of Haram and Halaal dictate, among other things, certain foods which may not be eaten. Hindus, Jains and Buddhists often follow religious directives to observe vegetarianism and avoid eating meat.
Cultural taboos against the consumption of some animals may be due to their species' standing as a common pet. Within a given society, some meats will be considered taboo simply because they are outside the range of the generally accepted definition of a foodstuff, 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 exacerbate an illness, make a person more vulnerable to one or impede treatment.
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, some parts of the Middle East, 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 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 and 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, especially in the south.
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
- Main article: Dog meat
In a number of countries around the world, apart from being kept as pets, certain breeds of dogs are slaughtered as a source of meat and specifically raised on farms for that purpose in some countries.
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 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. However, in Islamic countries horse is generally considered halaal.
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. In the UK, this strong taboo includes banning horsemeat from commercial pet food and DNA testing of some types of salami suspected of containing donkey meat. 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 not eaten in Europe and North America is the camel, although it is not uncommonly eaten in the Middle East, North Africa, and Central Asia. 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.
Reindeer/Caribou
Although reindeer is popular as a dish in Alaska (USA), Norway, Sweden, Finland, Russia and Canada, many people in the United Kingdom and Ireland are squeamish about the idea of eating reindeer meat. This relates to the popular culture myth of the reindeer as assistant to Father Christmas, as opposed to the “cows of the north” vision of the Northern countries.
Other
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. Beef may also be refrained from in eating by elderly Taiwanese. The reason for this is that many feel it is wrong to eat an animal that was so useful in agriculture.
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 and Islam, such as the freshwater eel (Anguillidae) and all species of catfish. This is because they live in water, but have no scales. (See Leviticus). This Jewish and Islamic prohibition is for all marine creatures which have no fins or scales, which encompasses all poisonous seafood, i.e., shellfish, crustaceabs, eels, catfish, puffers, etc. The Roman Catholic church forbade, until the 1980's, the consumption of meat on Fridays. Professional fisherman were granted favor and economic advantage for various Papal 'gifts', and hence, fish became the 'meat' officially santioned by Rome. There was no Papal condemnation for fish consumption on other days, but penant souls were required to eat fish on Fridays. French Canadian fisheries were suffering economically until it was learned a penitant offering could be made to their local diocese, thus assuring their financial future in much the way their Roman brethren benefitted. Fish, hence, became favored by the Catholic institution rather than taboo. As a side note, in the Middle Ages, the Roman Catholic Church classified the tail of beavers (which is covered by a scalloped skin) as "fish" because it was a delicacy favored by the clergy. Thus, beaver tail was for some time the only non-proscribed meat allowed during Lent.
Insects
Except for certain 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 in Korean or nhyong in Vietnamese) are a popular snack food in these countries.
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 countries such as Australia and the United States, 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 or modongo among Latinos, chitterlings in the southern states, beef testicles as mountain oysters and prairie oysters in the west.
Pigs/Pork
- Main article: Religious restrictions on the consumption of pork
Consumption of pigs is forbidden among Muslims, Jews, and Seventh Day Adventists. Many Christians of various denominations, and in fact many people generally (not driven by religious doctrine) also abstain from consuming pork. For these, pigs are in general associated with uncleanliness. There are various theories concerning the origins of this law, but none has been universally accepted.
For one thing, pigs do not possess sweat glands at all. This means that their bodies are much more likely to retain waste that other mammals would normally release through such pores. Usually the "unclean" status is attributed to wallowing habits of pigs; in water, mud, or even feces when nothing else is available, which is necessary for pigs to cool themselves without sweat glands. 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 diarrhea cases each year in the United States.
The most likely reasoning for not eating pork, is that pigs are omnivorous: they do not discern between meat or vegetation in its natural dietary habits. This is quite unlike other animals which humans consume (cows, horses, goats, etc.) who would naturally eat only plants. In most, though not all cases, mammals do not eat the meat of other meat-eaters; consumption of pigs by humans would thus seem unnatural. In fact the preferred diet of pigs very closely resembles that of humans. That is, they are not picky. It is often said that pig flesh is the closest thing in nature to human flesh.
One other explanation for pork taboos given by some scholars is that some foods are prohibited so that humans will understand that they have limitations, basically as a reminder that they must keep to the discipline of their Creator, and 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 unless more specific references can be found.
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 human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) 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, Vietnam and other parts of Indochina. Cane rats (Thryonomys swinderianus and Thryonomys gregorianus) and some species of field mice are a rich source of protein in Africa. Bamboo rats are also commonly eaten in the poorer parts of South-east Asia. 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 France, rats bred in the wine stores of Gironde were cooked with the fire of broken wine barrels and eaten, dubbed as cooper's entrecôte. In some communities the muskrat (which is not a rat at all) is hunted for its meat (and fur) (e.g. some parts of Flanders); see also under "Fish" above for consumption of beaver tails.
Whales
Whale hunting is prohibited in all but a few nations such as Norway, Iceland and Japan. In those countries whale meat is eaten but has seen a decline in popularity due to international pressure and increased awareness of its status as a protected species.
Despite the ban on whale hunting in the United States and Canada, some indigenous groups are allowed to hunt for cultural reasons.
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.
Taboo drinks
Alcohol
Some religions—most notably Islam, Latter-day Saints, the Nikaya and most Mahayana schools of Buddhism and some Protestant sects of Fundamentalist Christianity—forbid or discourage the consumption of alcoholic beverages.
In addition to alcohol, coffee and tea are also taboo drinks for members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and some other Mormon groups. For some Mormons this taboo extends to cola and other caffeinated beverages, but usually not to chocolate.
Blood
Drinking blood is a strong social taboo in most countries, often with a vague emotive association with vampirism (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 and Vietnam also eat coagulated pig's, duck's or goose's blood with noodles, alone, or with something else.
Followers of Judaism, Islam, and Jehovah's Witnesses are forbidden to drink blood or eat food made with blood.
The Maasai and Batemi people of Tanzania drink cow's blood mixed with milk as a major part of their diet. In Kenya, camel blood is drunk.
A special dish called Dinuguan (literally meaning "of blood") is eaten in the Philippines. It consists of pig or cow intestines, liver, and other organs stewed in pig or cow blood.
See also
- Bushmeat
- Cannibalism
- Clean animals
- Halaal
- Kashrut
- Kosher foods
- Muslim dietary laws
- Soul food
- Teetotalism
- Temperance movement
- Unclean animals
- Vegetarianism
- Veganism
- Word of Wisdom
References
- Unmentionable Cuisine; Calvin W. Schwabe ISBN 0-8139-1162-1
External links
- Global Appetites for Horse Meat
- U.S.D.A. Promotes Horse & Goat Meat
- Americans squeamish over horse meat
- Korean Animal Protection Society
- China exotic food FAQ
- Traditional German gourmet recipes with horse meat
- Insects as food
- Cats - Friend or Food?
Categories: Food and drink | Pets | Cats | Diets | Islamic law | Jewish law and rituals | Meat
