Taboo food and drink are food and beverages which people abstain from consuming because of a religious or cultural prohibition. Many food taboos forbid the meat of a particular animal, including mammals, rodents, reptiles, amphibians, bony fish, mollusks and crustaceans. Some taboos are specific to a particular part or excretion of an animal, while other taboos forgo the consumption of plants, fungi, or insects.
Food taboos can be defined as rules, codified or otherwise, about which foods, or combinations of foods, may not be eaten and how animals are to be slaughtered. The origins of these prohibitions and commandments are varied. In some cases, these taboos are a result of health considerations or other practical reasons, in others, they are a result of human symbolic systems. Some foods may be prohibited during certain festivals (e.g., Lent), at certain times of life (e.g., pregnancy), or to certain classes of people (e.g., priests), although the food is in general permissible.
Famous quotes containing the words taboo, food and/or drink:
“There is the guilt all soldiers feel for having broken the taboo against killing, a guilt as old as war itself. Add to this the soldier’s sense of shame for having fought in actions that resulted, indirectly or directly, in the deaths of civilians. Then pile on top of that an attitude of social opprobrium, an attitude that made the fighting man feel personally morally responsible for the war, and you get your proverbial walking time bomb.”
—Philip Caputo (b. 1941)
“Architecture might be more sportive and varied if every man built his own house, but it would not be the art and science that we have made it; and while every woman prepares food for her own family, cooking can never rise beyond the level of the amateur’s work.”
—Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860–1935)
“Oh no, darling, you didn’t listen. Julian said she’d given up gin—for brandy. She says she can drink more brandy.”
—John Paxton (1911–1985)