The famous French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss has worked with the so-called culinary triangle that describes how a foodstuff can be changed from its natural state (raw) either by being prepared (cooked) to make it edible, or by microbiological activity turned into something rotten and inedible. According to his way of looking at it, the difference between the raw and the cooked states is the difference between nature and culture, but the border between the raw and the cooked is blurred. Different cultures, and even the same cultures at different points in time, are not in agreement about where the border lies. This leads to differences of opinion about what is edible and what is not.
