Anthropologist: It has been claimed that religious prohibitions against eating certain types of food are evidence against the belief that all cultural phenomena have a purely economic explanation  After all, the reasoning goes, only a moral or spiritual motive could persuade people to forgo readily available sources of nutrients  But the species whose consumption is prohibited are usually essential elements of ecosystems containing other species that are used as food  The preservation of the prohibited species thus tends to help preserve the other species
Ttherefore, such prohibitions do indeed have an economic motivation
takes for granted that people could have a reason for adopting a certain policy and nevertheless not realize what that reason is