Comment on Vayda's review of good to eat: Riddles of food and culture

Good to Eat (Harris, 1985, 1987c) attempts to show that an integrated set of theories of human food preferences and avoidances can be constructed using a parsimonious set of cultural materialist principles. Since foodways are among the least understood of sociocultural phenomena, it is as a rare compliment that Vayda has found some of explanations "quite plausible," even if they have not been supported with "clear cut evidence" and even if basic theoretical principles and methods according to him are all wrong. Explanations in the social sciences, including Vayda's, seldom achieve a degree of truth greater than plausibility. At any rate, Good to Eat is nothing more than an atttempt to present plausible theories.