Leviticus 11 contains a zoo's worth of animals. The hyrax and the monitor lizard. The katydid is there, as is the gecko. And it ends: "You must distinguish between the unclean and the clean, between living creatures that may be eaten and those that may not be eaten."
Dietary restrictions are woven into religious texts, the Old Testament and the New, the Koran, the Vedas and the Upanishads. Some are mercifully practical, as in the law of necessity in Islamic jurisprudence: "That which is necessary makes the forbidden permissible."
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