Unit6Food新编大学英语第二版第二册课文翻译.doc

Unit?6?Food Food and Culture [1] We all have ideas about what kinds of foods are good to eat. We also have ideas about what kinds of foods are bad to eat. As a result, people from one culture often think the foods that people from another culture eat are disgusting or nauseating. When the famous boxer Muhammad Ali visited Africa, for example, one member of his group became quite sick when he saw someone pick up a butterfly and eat it. Many people would find it disgusting to eat rats, but there are forty-two different cultures whose people regard rats as appropriate food. [2] Some people in Africa think African termites make a delicious meal. Many other people would probably be sick if they had to eat termites, but one hundred grams of termites contain more than twice as many calories and almost twice as much protein as one hundred grams of cooked hamburger. [3] However, food likes and dislikes do not always seem related to nutrition. For example, broccoli is first on a list of the most nutritious common vegetables, but it is twenty-first on a list of vegetables that Americans like most to eat. Tomatoes are sixteenth on the list of most nutritious vegetables, but they are first on the list of vegetables that Americans like most to eat. [4] But dislike is not the only reason why some cultures will not eat a certain food. In some cultures, certain foods are taboo. Taboo is a word from the language of the Fiji Islands that is used to describe something that is forbidden. Some foods are taboo in certain religions, but there are also other food taboos that are not connected to a religion. We do not usually think about why certain things are taboo in our culture. We may not even know why they are taboo. Anthropologists try to discover the hidden reasons for taboos. For example, the sacred cows of India are well known. Cows can go wherever they want to in the streets of India, and they can eat anything they want from the supplies of the foodsellers on the street. As a r