ABSTRACT
Meat, in its many forms, represents what is probably the most universally valued of foods across the broad spectrum of human cultures. For an omnivorous species like ourselves, it can be construed as a food of particularly high nutritional value, especially as a source of protein. However, this whole book is, of course, based upon the premise that human food consumption is not only a question of satisfying nutritional needs. Certainly, it could be argued that there is much more to meat eating than the ingestion of a conveniently packaged range of important nutrients. For example, meat is arguably one of the most ambivalent of food items in terms of the three paradoxes discussed in Chapter 7. In gustatory terms, in health terms and in moral terms, meat carries particularly potent connotations, both positive and negative.
