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Food Taboos: Their Origins and Purposes Victor Benno Meyer-Rochow1,2

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Food Taboos: Their Origins and Purposes Victor Benno Meyer-Rochow1,2 Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine BioMed Central Review Open Access Food taboos: their origins and purposes Victor Benno Meyer-Rochow1,2 Address: 1School of Engineering and Sciences, Jacobs University, D-28725 Bremen, Germany and 2Department of Biology, University of Oulu, SF- 90014 Oulu, Finland Email: Victor Benno Meyer-Rochow - [email protected] Published: 29 June 2009 Received: 4 December 2008 Accepted: 29 June 2009 Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine 2009, 5:18 doi:10.1186/1746-4269-5-18 This article is available from: http://www.ethnobiomed.com/content/5/1/18 © 2009 Meyer-Rochow; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Abstract Food taboos are known from virtually all human societies. Most religions declare certain food items fit and others unfit for human consumption. Dietary rules and regulations may govern particular phases of the human life cycle and may be associated with special events such as menstrual period, pregnancy, childbirth, lactation, and – in traditional societies – preparation for the hunt, battle, wedding, funeral, etc. On a comparative basis many food taboos seem to make no sense at all, as to what may be declared unfit by one group may be perfectly acceptable to another. On the other hand, food taboos have a long history and one ought to expect a sound explanation for the existence (and persistence) of certain dietary customs in a given culture. Yet, this is a highly debated view and no single theory may explain why people employ special food taboos. This paper wants to revive interest in food taboo research and attempts a functionalist's explanation. However, to illustrate some of the complexity of possible reasons for food taboo five examples have been chosen, namely traditional food taboos in orthodox Jewish and Hindu societies as well as reports on aspects of dietary restrictions in communities with traditional lifestyles of Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, and Nigeria. An ecological or medical background is apparent for many, including some that are seen as religious or spiritual in origin. On the one hand food taboos can help utilizing a resource more efficiently; on the other food taboos can lead to the protection of a resource. Food taboos, whether scientifically correct or not, are often meant to protect the human individual and the observation, for example, that certain allergies and depression are associated with each other could have led to declaring food items taboo that were identified as causal agents for the allergies. Moreover, any food taboo, acknowledged by a particular group of people as part of its ways, aids in the cohesion of this group, helps that particular group maintain its identity in the face of others, and therefore creates a feeling of "belonging". Background insectivores, fungivores, coprophages, xylophages and Years ago a student asked me the following question: many more? "Why don't all animals eat the same kinds of food?" This may have sounded a stupid question, but it is not as trivial Although it is true that all heterotrophic organisms need an enquiry as one might have thought initially. Afterall, to the same fundamental food stuffs, it is easy to understand grow and survive, animals all need the same basic things: that on account of their different sizes, different anato- carbohydrates, protein, fats, some minerals and water." mies, and different habitats, different species must make So, why do we have this diversity of food specialists on use of different food sources to satisfy their needs. A cat Earth? Why are there herbivores, carnivores, detritovores, would happily devour the meat of an antelope and a lion Page 1 of 10 (page number not for citation purposes) Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine 2009, 5:18 http://www.ethnobiomed.com/content/5/1/18 would not reject a mouse, but both are not built for these percent of the calories in the diet of the Ache are supplied kinds of food items. A tree-dwelling leaf-eater does not by only seventeen different food sources. graze on the ground and a grazer does not climb trees. Pond snails may love lettuce, but they can never leave Although mere avoidance of potential food (for whatever their watery realm. Moreover, it is a "Law of Nature" that, reason) does not in itself signify a food taboo, it is easy to where there is an underexploited resource, it usually does see how regular avoidance can turn into a tradition and not take long before such a resource is 'discovered' and eventually end up as a food taboo [7,8,10]. But what is it used by some organism. Yet, intense competition for one that leads to the regular avoidance? Social anthropologi- and the same kind of food by two species ultimately cal research on eating and food taboos (cf., reviews [7- would lead to the extinction of one of them or it would 11]) has frequently invoked utilitarian [7-9] and magico- result in the two species occupying different niches, either religious motives [10] or seen the dichotomy between in connection with the food itself or the timing of feeding positive and negative rites as a basis for food taboos [1,2]. [11,12]. A functionalist's explanation of food taboos as mechanisms for conserving resources as well as a person's It is, thus, easy to understand why different species of ani- health, have been less popular (cf., [13]), although there mals with different anatomies and habitat preferences is good evidence in support of both [14-19]. Yet even rit- should use different food items, but food specialists within uals and taboos based on spiritual, religious, and magic a species also occur and it is then less obvious why indi- ideation must have had a "history" and somehow 'got viduals of one and the same species should exploit differ- going' [7-11,20-23]. Therefore, given that food taboos can ent resources. It becomes really tricky, when some adults involve plants as well as animals, solids as well as liquids, of the same gender, species, and overall physical built nev- hot as well as cold categories, wet and dry items, etc. [7- ertheless vary in relation to their food preferences. 9,12-15], this review, rather than attempting to provide a Intraspecific competition may be involved, differences in complete list of food taboos operating in human societies, hunting and/or collecting skills and strategies, acquired will instead present examples of food taboos in selected through learning or chance discovery, could be the rea- human groups that illustrate some of the wide spectrum son, and there could even be an outwardly not visible of food taboo origins. The five examples chosen reflect the physiological basis for such kinds of behaviour. Yet, no author's own cultural background (Jewish dietary laws), ecologist or zoologist would use the term "food taboo" to or are based on original field research by the author in describe intraspecific food preferences of this kind in ani- Central Australia, Papua New Guinea, and India, or refer mals, but in connection with humans we do use the term to other persons' published work (e.g., food taboos of the "food taboo". We use it (or refer to "prohibitions") to dis- Orang Asli by [24]). tinguish the deliberate avoidance of a food item for rea- sons other than simple dislike from food preferences. In Methods non-human mammals, dominant individuals may force Based on the authors own experience, observations, weaker ones to accept less sought-after food items, and a recordings, and interactions with locals, examples of Jew- possible liking for these originally reluctantly accepted ish dietary laws and Hindu practices form the basis of food items may in turn develop [2,3]. Some aspect of this examples 4 and 5. Research stays in India of 2 months scenario may also apply to human societies, because food (Meghalaya and Nagaland) and three weeks (Karnataka taboos can be imposed on individuals by outsiders, or by and Goa) during sabbaticals in 1990 and 2005 as well as members of the kinship group to manifest themselves a Brahmin Indian wife further helped gathering the neces- through instruction and example during upbringing [4]. sary information for the section on Hindu food taboos. Probably food taboos (as unwritten social rules) exist in Field work by the author in Papua Niugini of several one form or another in every society on Earth, for it is a weeks each in 1972 (Onabasulu and neighbouring fact that perhaps nowhere in the world, a people, a tribe, tribes), 1998, 2002, and 2004 (Kiriwina), during which or an ethnic group, makes use of the full potential of edi- the author stayed with the locals in their villages or home- ble items in its surroundings [5-10]. One of many exam- steads and then studied the locals' entomophagic prac- ples, although an especially well-studied one, involves the tices as well as food taboos, forms the basis for the Ache people, i.e., hunters and gatherers of the Paraguayan information given in example 2. Information in the field jungle. According to Hill and Hurtado [6], the tropical for- was always gathered from more than one informant ests of the Ache habitat abound with several hundreds of (although it has to be mentioned that the informants were edible mammalian, avian, reptilian, amphibian and pis- all males). Examples 1 and 3 (Orang Asli and Mid-West cine species, yet the Ache exploit only 50 of them.
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