What culture has the most unusual food, food preferences or taboos?
As anthropologists, we assess cultural practices in their own right, not within a comparative value scale. Although all food practices are interesting, I have a hard time thinking of many of them in terms of unusual, unique, or weird, but I’ll make a stab at it. One striking practice is found in Venezuela where some indigenous groups drink a plantain soup mixed with bones and ashes of dead family members. In several African nations earth in the form of clay is mined and formed into little bars that are sold and eaten. On a more somber note, in Haiti mud and clay is mixed with salt and lard and shaped into pie shaped “cookies” that are eaten in hard times by those who are hungry and who have little or nothing to buy food with. An interesting perspective was maintained a few decades ago in parts of New Guinea, where a family would feast on the body parts of a dead relative — if they had not died of a disease — as a means of honoring their dead while also acquiring some precious and tasty
As anthropologists, we assess cultural practices in their own right, not within a comparative value scale. Although all food practices are interesting, I have a hard time thinking of many of them in terms of unusual, unique, or weird, but I’ll make a stab at it. One striking practice is found in Venezuela where some indigenous groups drink a plantain soup mixed with bones and ashes of dead family members. In several African nations earth in the form of clay is mined and formed into little bars that are sold and eaten. On a more somber note, in Haiti mud and clay is mixed with salt and lard and shaped into pie shaped “cookies” that are eaten in hard times by those who are hungry and who have little or nothing to buy food with. An interesting perspective was maintained a few decades ago in parts of New Guinea, where a family would feast on the body parts of a dead relative — if they had not died of a disease — as a means of honoring their dead while also acquiring some precious and tasty
