ABSTRACT
In contrast to our meals, which are characterized by many ingredients and frequently varied dishes, meals in an agricultural society (except those of the upper social groups) are very simple and do not change from day to day. For us it therefore follows that such meals are insipid and monotonous. But are the taste stimuli and perpetual variety that we demand an anthropological constant or are these needs subject to historical and cultural change? Is variety in food the norm and the simple and unchanging a phenomenon requiring explanation? Or, on the contrary, is it our need for alternating tastes that calls for investigation?
