Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Part V Food and Drink around the World
- Part VI History, Nutrition, and Health
- VI.1 Nutrition and the Decline of Mortality
- VI.2 Nutrition and Mortality Decline: Another View
- VI.3 Infection and Nutrition: Synergistic Interactions
- VI.4 Famine
- VI.5 Height and Nutrition
- VI.6 The Nutrition of Women in the Developing World
- VI.7 Infant and Child Nutrition
- VI.8 Adolescent Nutrition and Fertility
- VI.9 Nutrition and Mental Development
- VI.10 Human Nutritional Adaptation: Biological and Cultural Aspects
- VI.11 The Psychology of Food and Food Choice
- VI.12 Food Fads
- VI.13 Food Prejudices and Taboos
- VI.14 The Social and Cultural Uses of Food
- VI.15 Food as Aphrodisiacs and Anaphrodisiacs?
- VI.16 Food as Medicine
- VI.17 Vegetarianism
- VI.18 Vegetarianism: Another View
- Part VII Contemporary Food-Related Policy Issues
- Part VIII A Dictionary of the World’s Plant Foods
- Name Index
- Subject Index
- References
VI.13 - Food Prejudices and Taboos
from Part VI - History, Nutrition, and Health
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 March 2008
- Frontmatter
- Part V Food and Drink around the World
- Part VI History, Nutrition, and Health
- VI.1 Nutrition and the Decline of Mortality
- VI.2 Nutrition and Mortality Decline: Another View
- VI.3 Infection and Nutrition: Synergistic Interactions
- VI.4 Famine
- VI.5 Height and Nutrition
- VI.6 The Nutrition of Women in the Developing World
- VI.7 Infant and Child Nutrition
- VI.8 Adolescent Nutrition and Fertility
- VI.9 Nutrition and Mental Development
- VI.10 Human Nutritional Adaptation: Biological and Cultural Aspects
- VI.11 The Psychology of Food and Food Choice
- VI.12 Food Fads
- VI.13 Food Prejudices and Taboos
- VI.14 The Social and Cultural Uses of Food
- VI.15 Food as Aphrodisiacs and Anaphrodisiacs?
- VI.16 Food as Medicine
- VI.17 Vegetarianism
- VI.18 Vegetarianism: Another View
- Part VII Contemporary Food-Related Policy Issues
- Part VIII A Dictionary of the World’s Plant Foods
- Name Index
- Subject Index
- References
Summary
Over the past 2,000 years, scholars have produced a vast literature on food prejudices and taboos. This literature, however, is complicated by confusing etymology and indiscriminate or inconsistent application of several terms, such as food aversions, avoidances, dislikes, prejudices, prohibitions, rejections, and taboos/tabus.
The term aversion is used by food-habit researchers primarily in the context of disliked or inappropriate foods, whereby individuals elect not to consume items because of specific, defined, biological or cultural criteria. Some human food aversions, for example, are immediate as when foods are tasted and disliked because of sensory properties of odor, taste, and texture. Other foods are avoided because of biological-physiological conditions posed by nausea and vomiting, “heartburn” or “acid stomach,” intestinal distress associated with flatulence, or acute diarrhea. Still other food aversions are cultural or psychological in origin, as evidenced when individuals report that they dislike specific foods even though the items have never been consumed by them. In such instances, anticipation triggers avoidance or aversive behavior, and merely the color, shape, or images of the food source itself are enough to elicit aversion and the individual decision not to eat.
The word taboo or tabu, in contrast, implies a moral or religious context of foods or food-related behavior. Taboo, the Polynesian concept to “set apart,” includes the suggestion that some human activities, and eating behavior specifically, may be either protective or deleterious to the environment, to the consumer, or to society at large. Food-related taboos in this context are identical to dietary prohibitions, whereby foods and food-related behaviors are forbidden for specific positive or negative reasons.
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- Chapter
- Information
- The Cambridge World History of Food , pp. 1495 - 1513Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2000
References
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