temple univ pr food and evolution toward a theory of human food habits jan 1987

[...]... anthropologists predominate numerically, they too offer a great diversity of insight and information based on their varying professional interests and, in particular, their wide spectrum of regional specializations: Bangladesh (Lindenbaum), Amazonia (Johnson and Baksh, Good, Ross), Paraguay (Hawkes), Canadian sub-arctic (Winterhalder), Southeast Asia and Africa (Franke), Mexico (Pelto), Costa Rica (Edelman),... infrastructure cause major changes in foodways and their emic valuations Changes in emic valuations change major foodways, but only when such changes are favored by infrastructural conditions As both essays stress, the balance of etic costs and benefits that provides the cultural and biopsychological selection pressures for and against particular foodways often differs markedly according to age- and. .. cultural systems, and has meant an intensification of economic, social, and political stratification, locally, nationally, and on a global scale Hunting, Taboos, and the Market Economy We have observed that among foraging populations, the level of intake of protein may, in fact, be an artifact of the quest for calories By the same token, the contribution of various animals to the diet may be in part a. .. consumption of domesticated tubers and grains gained ascendancy over meat and other animal foods (pastoral modes of production, of course, followed a divergent trajectory) The next great general evolutionary changes in foodways may be associated with the rise of archaic agro-managerial states whose dense, socially stratified populations were dependent on one or two staple grains and which maintained distinctive... animals, especially tapir, and here and there also deer and paca, are traditionally tabooed" (1972:68-69), while Basso has noted that the Kalapalo, vv-ho inhabit the rich river and lake network of the Upper Xingu, "regard virtually all land animals as disgusting and refuse to eat them" (1973: 14, 16; (~arneiro 1970; Murphy and Quain 1955:29) In contrast, where the aquatic resources that so enhance the opportunities... drawn by Chagnon and Hames 1979) It may only reflect commercial pressures Such outside influence has worked in a diversity of ways, as the Achuara case suggests The Achuara today tend to regard such animals as tapir, deer, 14 1 Overview of Trends in Dietary Variation and capybara as inedible (Ross 197 8a) But, as with other pre-industrial populations, it is impossible to regard Amazon hUlnan ecology apart... esteemed foods are channeled also tends to reflect and reinforce social relations and status hierarchies Regardless of actual practice, even the beliefs about their proper usage may play such a role Ecology, Economy, and Domesticated Animals in Europe In looking, in an earlier section, at taboos in the Neotropics, I tried to demonstrate that the valuation of certain animals as food varied according to various... that are particularly rich in fat-whether it is beaver among the Amerindians of the Canadian boreal forest (Berkes and Farkas 1978: 161; Winterhalder 1981) or tapir and coleoptera larvae among the Ache (Clastres 1972) As a result, it has perhaps not been uncommon for foraging populations, in a diverse assortment of biomes, to have a "surprisingly" high protein intake-in order to amass sufficient calories... recurrent processes beneath the immediate appearance of a worldwide confusion of seemingly capricious preferences, avoidances, and aversions Once this decision is made, however, a complex set of explanatory strategies and options still remains to be explored and integrated, since the knowledge we have of human food customs and practices derives from data collection that has traditionally been dispersed among... unlikely to apply For it is precisely in the matter of dietary customs that the concept of culture has been most consistently invoked to suggest that, at the heart of what seems the most material and practical of human affairs, there lies an ineluctable core of arbitrary, fortuitous, or irrational thought The seemingly inexhaustible variety and range of human dietary patterns thus has been taken to represent . class="bi x0 y0 w0 h0" alt="" FOOD AND EVOLUTION Toward a Theory of Hllman Food Habits