Forbidden Food

"One man's meat is another man's poison"

: CITIES AND CIVILISATIONS :

A SPECIALITY at one of London's oldest and most famous restaurants is steak and oyster pie. Traditionally, this would be accompanied with a glass of stout. But members of no fewer then four major world religions would find this seemingly innocuous meal repulsive. Hindus object violently to eating beef. Orthodox Jews will not eat shellfish. Muslims refuse to drink alcohol. And Buddhist will not eat animals at all. On the other hand, that same restauraunt would never dream of serving horsemeat. In Britain that is fit only for dogs, but in France horsemeat is part of the human diet.

Acquired taste: Water beetles are
pounded into paste for a Southeast Asian dish.

Offer a plate of best roast dog to a French or English person, however, and they will be outraged and disgusted. But in China, dogs - called 'hornless goats' - are delicacy, as they once were among the ancient Phoenicians, Greeks, Romans and Aztecs and, until recently, in the South Pacific. The Tahitian islanders kept one breed of dog especially for the table, and the 18th century explorer Captain hook found it as tasty as English lamb.

All societies regard certain foods as untouchable. Few North Americans or Europeans would relish a menu of ants, caterpillars, locusts, raw ducks' feet and dragonfly larvae, but all eaten everyday somewhere in the world: -

Insect proof: A giant centipede is added
for qiquancy to this homemade
Thai rice liquor.

ants in Latin America, Asia and Africa; caterpillars among the Australian aborigines, who call them 'witchety grubs'; locusts among the Navaho Indians in North America and in north Africa; raw ducks' feet in China, and dragonfly larvae in Laos.


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