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Good to Eat: Riddles of Food and Culture

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Harris is a gifted writer of expository prose who knows how to connect with his readership. Nonetheless some of this is a little depressing since it is about eating insects and human beings. If you can get past that, it's fascinating.

"Warfare cannibalism" is a concept encountered here. That's what the Aztecs practiced. Harris explains it all. Modern states don't practice cannibalism because the power structure benefits more from keeping the vanquished alive and producing for the state. Before the rise of the state, the bands and village societies had not the bureaucracy nor the technology to take advantage of the labor of prisoners and slaves, so it was more cost effective to eat them. And they did. Before reading Harris I used to think the Conquistadors were horrible and I despised the Spanish state and all of Christendom; however now that I know the nature of the savages of America, it's six of one and half a dozen of the other. Harris makes it clear that we don't eat horsemeat because the horse is less effective at turning grass into meat than ruminants and so horse meat would be more expensive than beef. He shows how horses were extremely valuable as instruments of war. Calvary troops easily defeated infantry. He recalls the Asiatic pastorales who became the mongrel hoards who learned to ride their little horses so effectively that they conquered vast areas from China to Europe. They would ride practically from birth, more on a horse than off. They kept several horses in a caravan and cut the artery in the horse's neck on a ten-day or so rotation and drank the blood. They rode their horses until they dropped and then ate them, but only then.

The Europeans learned from them to use the horse as an instrument of war. The European horses were breed much larger to hold a man and a hundred pounds of armor, and to pull wagons and plows. Horses were only eaten after the horse was too old to work. It became a clear status symbol to own horses, and so eating horseflesh became something the upper classes would never do, but something the lower classes were sometimes reduced to.

Meat hunger and fat hunger have been facts of life for humans for the millennia. Our populations have always increased to the point that meat and fat became hard to get for the poorer people, and in many cases, impossible. Reading Harris makes one believe that the single most important detriment to human well-being is overpopulation. Again and again humans overwhelmed their resources. Today we have so much here in America while in India and places like that most people are hungry, especially for meat and fat. It is only the amazing explosion in technology and the use of fossil fuels that has allowed the current population growth. Still we have too many people.

Insects are eaten by most societies, but seldom as an important source of protein because the supply is unstable. Monkeys that jump from branch to branch eating a bite of fruit and then throwing it down and grabbing another to eat just a bite or two before discarding it are actually looking for insects. They want the apple with the worm in it! Humans typically eat insects that swarm or are otherwise in large supply at once. When the locusts come you might as well eat them because they won't be leaving much plant food to eat. But it is in the tropical climes that most insects are eaten since jungles do not provide a convenient large-animal, ruminant source of meat to satisfy protein needs. Locusts and grubs, termites and ants, especially the fat-rich sexual forms, are the best insects to eat. The giant water bug of Southeast Asian is much prized. Eating insects would provide essential protein if we would do it, and we would, if it were necessary. The chitin of the skeletons cannot be digested, but that is a minor problem. Some people roast and/or boil the insects and then pick off the legs before ingesting. Eating water bugs is apparently a little like eating a small lobster. They pick out the flesh with little sticks.

If you haven't read Marvin Harris, you are missing one of the great writers from anthropology.

As with anything by Harris, a thoroughly enjoyable read. It is mind-boggling that Harris's work and his cultural materialist theories are not better known than the sociobiological garbage so beloved of the media and academia these days. In spite of the sociobio claims that virtually anything that humans do is based on genetics, Harris consistently trumps their arguments with examples of the variability of cultural beliefs, from refusing to eat foods because the gods don't want us to, to beliefs that perfectly edible foods are disgusting, to the belief that the gods want us to eat human flesh. And he demonstrates how all that talk about the food preferences of the gods is really a smokescreen for (originally) practical survival issues.

I wanted to start reading more books about other cultures, especially food cultures. This book was great for what I wanted, and the price was very reasonable! I'm so glad that Amazon has such a wide variety of sellers and used books. Happe Holidays to myself! :)

I bought this book for a class I was taking. I got it in time for the class and it was used, but in terrific condition. Highly recommend it!

There are a number of popular books out on the market today that tell us what to eat, how healthy what we eat is, how we should prepare it, or why it's morally irreprehensible to eat certain foods. "Good to Eat" approaches food from an entirely different angle. Author Marvin Harris pulls back to look at the broader picture of why we avoid certain foods (horses, pork, other people, etc.) and the societal, economic, and ecological forces that we unconsciously allow to shape our food choices.

Harris approaches each topic free of assumptions about cultural knowledge of food and recounts multiple ethnographies related to why certain food choices developed and why in many cases they were codified into various sets of laws (both secular and religious). His manner of addressing food choices is unique due to his conscious avoidance of cultural imperialism and his detachment from the more prevalent food cultures. The books main themes include the cultural aversions and celebrations of insect, pork, beef, horse, and human meat. Harris comes out in a rather harsh manner against vegetarianism and veganism as dietary ideals and attempts to demonstrate that food ways around the world are dominated by a type of meat hunger. By handling each major type of meat in isolation, he is able to detail the reasoning for why they exist as pariahs, beloved creatures, or delectable delights in cultures throughout the world.

"Good to Eat" is not as readable (it's actually quite dense due to the number of interlocking concepts at play) as other recent favorites (think "Omnivores Dilemma" or "Fast Food Nation"), but the information is no less important or provocative. Harris provides less of a pop culture prospective and more of a rational scientific exploration of how we eat. Steeped in historical knowledge, "Good to Eat" provides unique insight into why we eat the way we do and presents the complexities of the human food chain.

I picked up a copy of this in the library, and I think Harris gets the general ideas right. His writing feels slightly dated, but everything is sensible; it's just that nothing in this book seems very innovative reading it now.

I read this book 13 years ago and it was in many respects an eye-opener to me:
1. the statement that meat was positively good to eat, not something to frown upon as many nutritionists (and Jeremy Rifkin!) do. Gradually, this perspective is reinforced by the discoveries of human paleontologists that fat and meat might have played a key role in the evolution of the human brain.
2.that religious prescriptions can be reduced to a materialistic background e.g a live cow for Indian peasants is of greater use than after slaughtering etcetera.
Not that I put all his advices in practice: I take perhaps horsemeat once or twice a year. But I can recommend grasshoppers! Nice nutty taste.
When preparing a lecture about food choice I wanted to check if the book was still in print, and I was glad to discover that it is! Let everybody profit from it!

Este libro de Marvin Harris es fundamental para todo aquel que crea que la mesa y la plaza pública están íntimamente ligadas. En un vertiginoso y suculento viaje -aunque no es recomendable para estómagos débiles- el antropólogo nos lleva a través de la historia de la humanidad y nos permite ver como los hábitos alimenticios hicieron la cultura y viceversa.