Throughout human history there have been many
stringent taboos concerning watching other people eat
or eating in the presence of others. There have been
attempts to explain these taboos in terms of
inappropriate social relationships either between those
who are involved and those who are not simultaneously
involved in the satisfaction of a bodily need, or
between those already satiated and those who appear
to be shamelessly gorging. Undoubtedly such elements
exist in the taboos, but there is an additional element
with a much more fundamental importance. In
prehistoric times, when food was so precious and the
on-lookers so hungry, not to offer half of the little food
one had was unthinkable, since every glance was a plea
for life.