Cultural Meat Taboos

I think pork is a very good example. In Europe, you can see millions of Jewish people or Muslims that consider pork "unclean" and don't eat them; just like we consider rats "unclean" and don't eat them but eat pork. It really doesn't make sense to think that there is single "inherent" way how people think about food.

Turns out this varies widely by culture. In many places, it's taboo: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog_meatIf you'd like a different example that gets the same feeling, try substituting something else considered treif in your culture, like "roasted eyeballs" or "a human hand". My point being that people who are used to eating some kinds of meat see it a

>It's not a staple food like chicken or pigsYou forgot to add "in western culture"

You said eating pigs is ok, massive numbers of countries don’t have pork on the menu. You said eating beef is ok, yet go to India and try thatYour culture thinks eating horse is bad, other cultures it’s fine, but beef or pork is bad.Even dog and cat are quite common in many countries.

I think it's because some animals are raised for their meat, and some not, and they're different animals in different parts of the world. Similarly, some animals are hunted or foraged for food and others aren't.I think that kind of ...crystallises? into eating taboos. So for example, where I'm from, in Greece, it's traditional (particularly in the islands of Crete and Corfu) for people to go out and gather snails after the rain to cook them and eat them. Famously, the

Compared with cows or sheep pigs eat what humans can eat, so growing pigs means wasting a lot of food that could be fed to people. Many historians argue that this was the primary reason why pork was banned in Islam and Judaism, not because pigs were considered unclean.

Do we (USA) not eat horse and dog meat because we have special feelings for those animals?

A good point - people are not so 'scared' of offal in some other cultures

The prohibition is against eating pig, not benefiting from it

I feel like his comments do not apply to all of the world. In Japan for example, meat consumption is so prominent that we hardly ever consider not having meat. Sure, there is a lot of hamburger here but for the most part people stick to meat in its natural state - lots of pork, beef. Trying to convert Japan from a pork eating society would probably be a feeble attempt.