Long TextExercise 59 of 81

When the anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss observed that food must be good to think with before it can be good to eat, he articulated a principle whose ramifications have taken decades to unfold. The statement, deceptively simple in its formulation, contains an insight that cuts to the very heart of what it means to…

• What did Lévi-Strauss's observation about food fundamentally reveal?
• What does the example of fermented soybean paste demonstrate?