The Abominable Pig/The Culinary Triangle

The Abominable Pig
In “The Abominable Pig,” by Marvin Harris, Harris explains food bans based on economic and ecological utility by rejecting symbolic explanations. Harris points out why raising pigs for meat is a fruitful endeavor. Compared to cows and sheep, pigs turn more of their food into flesh, give birth to more young at one time, and are fully grown in shorter periods of time. He then states some arguments that are used to explain the abstinence of eating pork – they eat and wallow in filth, their meat carries disease. Harris’ theory is that pork is banned because of the impracticality of raising them. From Harris’ point of view, Jewish people in the United States continue to abstain from pork because of tradition and identity.

The Culinary Triangle
“The Culinary Triangle,” by Claude Lévi-Strauss, shows how food preparation can be analyzed as a triangular semantic field, much like language. Lévi-Strauss describes three types of cooking methods – boiling, roasting and smoking – to three types of foods – raw, cooked and rotten. He then describes whether these are natural or cultural ways of preparing food. Boiling is considered a cultural method for it requires a container to hold the water to boil. The second method of cooking Lévi-Strauss mentions is roasting. He states that roasting is a natural way of cooking because it is done by exposing the meat directly to the fire. The last method Lévi-Strauss brings up is smoking the meat. This is also a natural way of cooking. Smoking the meat is a sort of combination of boiling and roasting because it is a slower method of roasting which makes it somewhat similar to boiling.

Compare/Contrast
While Marvin Harris’ main point is explaining a particular culture’s avoidance of pork, Claude Lévi-Strauss’ demonstrates different methods of food preparation and what is considered natural and cultural techniques. However, they both describe how culture affects what we eat and how we eat it.