Good to Eat Quotes

“We can eat and digest everything from rancid mammary gland
secretions to fungi to rocks (or cheese, mushrooms, and salt if
you prefer euphemisms).”
― Marvin Harris, Good to Eat: Riddles of Food and Culture

“Strictly speaking, human flesh itself contains the highest-qual­
ity protein that one can eat.”
― Marvin Harris, Good to Eat: Riddles of Food and Culture

“The only thing different about the
Aztecs is that the meat was human meat.”
― Marvin Harris, Good to Eat: Riddles of Food and Culture

“Aztecs had not only failed to repress the eating of enemy dead,
they were practicing a state-sponsored form of human sacrifice
and cannibalism on a scale never rivaled before or since.”
― Marvin Harris, Good to Eat: Riddles of Food and Culture

“When first contacted by Europeans, the
peoples of New Guinea, northern Australia, and most of the
islands of Melanesia such as the Solomon Islands, the New He­
brides, and New Caledonia practiced some degree of warfare
cannibalism.”
― Marvin Harris, Good to Eat: Riddles of Food and Culture

“Unfortunately, it makes as little sense
to offer this kind of explanation as to say that we have become
too "civilized " to eat insects or horses.”
― Marvin Harris, Good to Eat: Riddles of Food and Culture

“From antiquity to
modern times, virtually every society that has been organized as
a state has condemned the consumption of human flesh more
forcefully than it has condemned the consumption of any other
kind of animal food.”
― Marvin Harris, Good to Eat: Riddles of Food and Culture

“Humans are big animals, but it takes an
immense effort just to capture a few of them. The hunted are as
alert, evasive, and as well-informed about hunting as the hunters.”
― Marvin Harris, Good to Eat: Riddles of Food and Culture

“In fact the taboo
against killing and eating one's relatives is the most fundamental
precondition if people are to live together and cooperate on a
daily basis.”
― Marvin Harris, Good to Eat: Riddles of Food and Culture

“THE PUZZLE of cannibalism concerns the socially sanctioned con­
sumption of human flesh when other foods are available.”
― Marvin Harris, Good to Eat: Riddles of Food and Culture

“We now know that the greatest concentration of "abnormal"
lactose absorbers lives in Europe north of the Alps. Over 95
percent of the Dutch, Danes, Swedes, and other Scandinavians
have enough lactase enzyme to digest very large quantities of
lactose throughout their lives. South of the Alps, high to inter­
mediate levels prevail, falling to intermediate and low levels in
Spain, Italy and Greece and among Jews and city-dwelling Arabs
in the Middle East. Intermediate to high levels of absorbers occur
again in northern India, while high levels of absorbers occur in
isolated enclaves such as the Bedouin nomads of Arabia and cer­
tain pastoral groups in northern Nigeria and East Africa.
Mammals obviously have to be able to drink milk in infancy,”
― Marvin Harris, Good to Eat: Riddles of Food and Culture

“Of all domesticated mammals, pigs
possess the greatest potential for swiftly and efficiently changing
plants into flesh.”
― Marvin Harris, Good to Eat: Riddles of Food and Culture

“Tantrics seek oneness with the universe
through eating meat, drinking alcohol, taking drugs, dancing,
and ritual sexual intercourse.”
― Marvin Harris, Good to Eat: Riddles of Food and Culture

“Anyone who
contends there is something inherently more "natural" about a
diet rich in wheat or rice than one rich in meat knows little about
either culture or nature . Of”
― Marvin Harris, Good to Eat: Riddles of Food and Culture