Food Taboo

Name
Course
Professor
Date
Food Taboo as a Means of Conservation
Many societies have food taboos. Some dietary regulations and rules governed different phases of human life and associated with specific events like lactation, childbirth, pregnancy and menstrual periods. Different societies practice food taboo for various reasons (Benno, 2009). One food taboo may be unacceptable for one community but acceptable for another. Other than for religious reasons, many cultures practice food taboo as a means of conservation. The natural resources from the ecosystem are essential for humans. The society harnesses food, raw materials, habitat, water, and other natural resources that ensure the survival of people. Due to the knowledge of how dependent human is on the environment, many communities have instilled food taboos. Food taboos are therefore used as means of protection of individual plants from exploitation (Angsongna, Armah, and Boamah, 2016). Many societies have included the use of informal institutions to govern the use of specific species. These institutions are aimed at conserving natural resources (Jones, Andiamoravololona, and Hockley, 2008).
Though there are many reasons for practicing food taboo, in the modern society, the main reason is for conservation. This is because many religious and cultural beliefs have lost their significance in the community (Christopher and Jean, 2015). In history, there are many religious and cultural reasons that societies have include food taboos in their tradition.

These traditions though have changed with time, with many people going against these taboos. Many societies though have included the need for conservation in their social needs. This has been achieved through installation of food taboos (McDonald, 1977).
Objective and Hypothesis
The objective of this research will be to identify the reason for food taboos in specific societies. There are many reasons why different organizations practice food taboo including religion, cultural beliefs and for conservation. This necessitates the need to identify the main reason for food taboo in the modern world.
H0 – Conservation is the main reason in the modern world for the installation of the use of food taboo.
H1 – Conservation is not the main reason in the modern world for the installation of the use of food taboo.
Methodology
A questionnaire survey will be issued to different communities to gather information about their food taboo habits and the reasons behind following the food taboo beliefs. These questionnaires will be distributed in various communities to ensure that biasness is avoided and that the whole population is well represented in the survey. One individual will correctly fill the questionnaire in a family, mostly the parent or the eldest child, as they know the feeding behaviors of the family. It will contain questions on the uses and social habits that are being followed by the community and the reason for the influence.
The data collected will be analyzed using different statistical methods with the aim of proving or disapproving the hypothesis on the study. Some of the techniques that will be used include measuring the central tendency of the data collected. This will be achieved by measuring mean, mode and median. T-test and ANOVA tests will also be carried out between different groups to identify the difference between their means. Through these tests, it will be able to test the hypothesis and determine if it is right or wrong. The correct statistical methods should be used to ensure that the data is well analyzed and hence be able to get the right results.

Bibliographic References
BIBLIOGRAPHY l 1033 Angsongna, A, et al. “A Systematic Review of Resource Habitat taboos and Human Health Outcomes in the Context of Global Environmental Change.” Global Bioethics (2016).
Benno, Victor. “Food taboos: their origins and purposes.” Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedical (2009).
Christopher, G and C Jean. “The human health and conservation relevance of food taboos in northeastern Madagascar.” Ecology and Society (2015): 502-512.
Jones, j, M Andiamoravololona and N Hockley. “The importance of taboos and social norms to conservation in Madagascar.” Conservation Biology (2008).
McDonald, David. “Food Taboos: A Primitive Environmental Protection Agency (South America).” Anthropos Institute (1977): 734-748.