Food culture taboos

Food cultural taboos are essentially unwritten rules accumulated by different ethnic groups during their long survival and evolution. They not only hide the practical wisdom of ancestors in dealing with survival risks, but also bear the functions of community identity and cultural inheritance. There is no universal standard of right and wrong. "Respect the scene and non-interference" is the only universal principle for dealing with such taboos.

Two years ago, I took some friends from Urumqi to Chaoshan to eat seafood. As soon as I sat down, the boss brought a plate of kale stir-fried with lard as an appetizer. Several people stretched out their chopsticks and then retracted them. They smiled and waved their hands and said sorry, we don't eat lard. I realized then that I had forgotten to mention it to the boss in advance, so I quickly changed it to stir-fried. A tourist at the table next to me muttered, "In this age, people still pay attention to these things." I didn't say anything. After all, it's not the outsider's turn to comment on other people's rules.

Regarding such dietary taboos bound to religious beliefs, there have always been two voices in the academic community: archaeologists tend to believe that such taboos were originally the solidification of survival needs. For example, in the early years of drought and water shortage in the Middle East, pig breeding required a large amount of water resources and food, and free-range pigs are prone to carrying parasites such as Trichinella spiralis. The probability of accidents is high after eating. Gradually, a consensus was formed on fasting, and it was later included in the teachings and given sanctity.； Religious scholars place more emphasis on the sacred attributes of faith, believing that such regulations are markers of believers’ identities and have been decoupled from primitive survival needs. The two statements are actually not contradictory. Just like if you ask a Hui friend who has not eaten pork since he was a child, why he doesn't eat it, he will most likely just say "our family doesn't eat it." There is no need to get to the bottom of it and decide whether it is science or belief. Just respect it.

In addition to taboos bound to beliefs, more folk dietary taboos hide the little thoughts of the past to make a living. Last year, I went out to sea with a fishing boat on the Shengsi Islands in Zhoushan. When I was eating, I was about to reach out to turn the hairtail on the plate. The rough hands of the old boat owner next to me directly pressed my chopsticks. There were scars on the knuckles from years of pulling the net: "Little girl, you can't flip. A capsized fish is a capsized boat. When our old man was young, he went to the sea. There was a young man on the boat who was ignorant and capsized the fish. There was a storm that day. It took the whole boat three days to drift to the shore." ”Some people now say that this is feudal dross. Nowadays, fishing boats have GPS and weather radar. What impact will flipping a fish have? But if you think about it from another angle, in the past, people who ran the sea tied their heads to their belts to earn a living. This unwritten rule is actually the psychological anchor of everyone - everyone abides by this rule, and they feel that it is safe to go to sea. If you insist on arguing about this at the dinner table, it will ruin the fun of the whole boat. Why bother? Now I cook fish at home and turn it over as much as I like, but when eating with my fishermen friends, I only pick up the fish and turn it over, never touching the plate.

There are also some taboos. To put it bluntly, they are the bond between people and the land and animals. Last time I went to Guangzhou to do food research, I asked a local grandma why almost no one here eats cat meat. She peeled a lychee for me and said that in the past, lychee and rice growers relied on cats to catch mice to ensure the harvest. They were the "guardians of the granary" in the family, so how could they eat their benefactors? Nowadays, some people are arguing that cats are living pigs, but they are not? This is a typical example of using one's own logic of survival to trick others. In a farming society, cattle are the labor force, and there are also taboos against eating beef in many places. Nomads rely on dogs to herd sheep and look after their homes. The Manchu people relied on hunting dogs for hunting, so they do not eat dog meat. This is not hypocritical. It is a sentiment left by our ancestors, and it has become a common rule today.

Of course, not all taboos have to be set in stone. My grandma still insists that pregnant women should not eat rabbit meat, saying that babies born from eating it will have cleft lips. When I was pregnant, I wouldn’t touch a bite of the rabbit head in front of her. Instead, I went out with my friends to eat Shuangliu rabbit head, which was so delicious. This kind of taboo has been scientifically proven to have no basis. There is no need to correct the elderly on the line. Just know it in your heart, and everything will be happy for your family. Some people also ask whether all taboos that are not in line with science must be abolished? It’s not right, just like Muslim friends, even if they know that pork from formal channels is free of parasites, they still won’t eat it. This is their identity and has nothing to do with science. You can’t use the name of “being scientific” to force others to break your own rules.

I have been doing food culture research for almost ten years, and I have seen too many quarrels over a mouthful of rice. In fact, to put it bluntly, the most important thing when eating is never about rules and taboos, but comfort. You stick to your habits, I respect my principles. Asking "are there any taboos" before sitting down to eat is better than anything else. After all, when it comes to eating and drinking, the most important thing is that everyone is happy, right?