Consuming the Inedible

by MacClancy, Jeremy; Henry, Jeya; Macbeth, Helen

• ISBN13: 9781845453534
• ISBN10: 1845453530
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2008-01-02
• Publisher: Berghahn Books

Summary

Throughout the world, everyday, millions of people eat earth, clay, nasal mucus, and similar substances. Yet food practices like these are strikingly understudied in a sustained, interdisciplinary manner. This book aims to correct this neglect. Contributors, utilizing anthropological, nutritional, biochemical, psychological and health-related perspectives, examine in a rigorously comparative manner the consumption of foods conventionally regarded as inedible by most Westerners. This book is both timely and significant because nutritionists and health care professionals are seldom aware of anthropological information on these food practices, and vice versa. Ranging across a diversity of disciplines "Consuming the Inedible" surveys scientific and local views about the consequences - biological, mineral, social or spiritual - of these food practices, and probes to what extent we can generalize about them.

Author Biography

Jeremy M. MacClancy is Professor of Anthropology, C. Jeya Henry is Professor of Nutrition and Helen M. Macbeth is an Honorary Research Fellow in Anthropology, all at Oxford Brookes University.

Table of Contents

List of Figures
List of Tables
Preface
List of Contributors
Introduction: Considering the Inedible, Consuming the Ineffable	p. 1
Evidence for the Consumption of the Inedible: Who, What, When, Where and Why?	p. 17
Consuming the Inedible: Pica Behaviour	p. 31
The Concepts of Food and Non-food: Perspectives from Spain	p. 43
Food Definitions and Boundaries: Eating Constraints and Human Identities	p. 53
A Vile Habit? The Potential Biological Consequences of Geophagia, with Special Attention to Iron	p. 67
The Discovery of Human Zinc Deficiency: A Reflective Journey Back in Time	p. 81
Geophagia and Human Nutrition	p. 89
Consumption of Materials with Low Nutritional Value and Bioactive Properties: Non-human Primates vs Humans	p. 99
Lime as the Key Element: A 'Non-food' in Food for Subsistence	p. 113
Salt as a 'Non-food': To What Extent Do Gustatory Perceptions Determine Non-food vs Food Choices?	p. 121
Non-food Food during Famine: The Athens Famine Survivor Project	p. 131
Eating Garbage: Socially Marginal Food Provisioning Practices	p. 141
Eating Cat in the North of Spain in the Early Twentieth Century	p. 151
Insects: Forgotten and Rediscovered as Food. Entomophagy among the Eipo, Highlands of West New Guinea, and in Other Traditional Societies	p. 163
Eating Snot: Socially Unacceptable but Common. Why?	p. 177
Cannibalism: No Myth, but Why So Rare?	p. 189
From Edible to Inedible: Social Construction, Family Socialisation and Upbringing	p. 205
The Use of Waste Products in the Fermentation of Alcoholic Beverages	p. 215
Afterword: Earthy Realism: Geophagia in Literature and Art	p. 223
Index	p. 235
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