"Food... is one of the principal kinds of human activity that engage people when they wonder about how to account for different kinds of human behavior."
-Marvin harris
Europeans drink a lot of milk, in part, because the climate in Europe isn't good for growing many of the other significant sources of calcium like certain dark green leafy vegetables. Because Europeans needed calcium to function well, natural selection favored those with lactase, a gene that essentially helps digest milk. In East Asia, because they had other sources of calcium, those with the lactase gene didn't have any evolutionary advantage, so the majority of the population there is lactose- intolerant. Because of this and the symptoms they experience when they try it, milk is generally abhorred in East Asia.
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Insects aren't often eaten in Europe, although they're a common food source around the globe. This is because the insects in Europe are relatively small and don't usually swarm. This means the caloric return on insects is somewhat inefficient because they were so small and they took a relatively long time to hunt in comparison to swarming insects. On top of that, the insects in Europe don't usually destroy crops or wreak havoc, which is sometimes another reason for eating insects, to lower their population. Essentially, the insects that naturally occurred in Europe were an inefficient food source. Because Europeans didn't need them for food, a general attitude of disgust prevailed towards insects, given that they bite, infest in many places, and spread disease, making their consumption even less likely.
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Beef has become America's number one meat source partially because of railroads. This lowered tranpsortation costs and made the overall cost of beef cheaper. This helped it compete with pork. However, the most significant beef benefit came from suburbanization. Surbanization led to many families owning outdoor grills. Beef was much easier to cook on these grills, and this made it more popular than pork, as pork would usually fall apart. Additionally, when women starting working more and cooking less, many familes turned to the fast food hamburger (which is all beef) for their dinners, again boosting beef's popularity.
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Harris argues that pigs are avoided in the Middle East (the hearth of Judaism and Islam which prohibit pig-eating) due to a number of geographic and practical reasons. Essentially, pigs simply don't operate very well in the Middle Eastern climate, as the heat makes them die more often and require more resources. They also compete with humans for food, but the only service they provide is meat (cows and goats, for instance, can provide milk or traction power). Banning these animals was, Harris argues, a way of counteracting the temptation of their succulent meat because raising pigs was very inefficient.
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Horse meat wasn't eaten a lot in Europe becauses horses were too important in warfare. In fighting interludes, horse meat would sometimes gain popularity, especially if there were excess horses left over from wartime, because prices were lower. Also, if other sources of meat were readily available, horse meat wouldn't gain a lot of popularity, but there were some periods when it was fairly widely eaten. However, once horses began to be replaced by automobiles, there was never really an excess of them, so horse meat wasn't as popular because the prices would need to be much higher. The consumption of horse meat in the USA came down to similar factors, but organizations that protect horses made it much more difficult for horse meat to ever really gain traction in addition to the factors that shaped European horse meat history.
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