Food preferences are perhaps the most familiar aspect of ethnocentrism. Every culture has developed preferences for certain kinds of food and drink, and equally strong negative attitudes towards others. It's interesting to note that much of this ethnocentrism is in our heads and not in our tongues, for something can taste delicious until we are told what it is. We've all heard stories about people being fed a meal of snake or horse meat or something equally repugnant in American culture and commenting on how tasty it was—until they were told what they had just eaten, upon which they turned green and hurriedly asked to be excused from the table.

Certain food preferences seem natural to us. We usually don't recognize that they're natural only because we've grown up with them; they're quite likely to be unnatural to someone from a different culture. In Southeast Asia, for example, the majority of adults do not drink milk. To many Americans it's inconceivable that people in other parts of the world don't drink milk, since to us it's a "natural" food. In China, dog meat is a delicacy; but the thought of eating a dog is enough to make most Americans feel sick. Yet we can see how this is part of a cultural pattern. Americans keep dogs as pets and tend to think of dogs as almost human. Therefore, we wouldn't dream of eating dog meat. Horses, too, sometimes become pets, and horse meat is also rejected by most Americans, although not because of its taste. You may have eaten it without even knowing it, and you probably wouldn't recognize it if someone didn't tell you what you were eating. On the other hand, we generally don't feel affection for cows or pigs, and we eat their meat without any feeling of regret. In India a cow receives the kind of care that a horse or dog receives in our country, and the attitude of Indians towards eating beef is similar to our feeling about eating dog meat. On the other hand, in China dogs are not treated as kindly as they are in the United States. Since they are not pets, the attitude of Chinese people towards dogs is similar to our attitude towards cows.