This study focuses on the food taboos of the Amazonian Kagwahiv culture of Brazil. Contact with whites led to the abandonment of many rituals and beliefs. The

tenacity of the food avoidance practices is understood in terms of the deep personal needs of those who hold them. Kracke views the taboos as a multiply determined code which has moral, social status, interpersonal, and parent-child functions. They offer a ritual means for the working out of conflicts arising from destructive as well as sexual wishes. As such, this cultural belief system integrates the demands of the fantasy life of the individual with the requirements of social existence in the group. Individuals use rituals to formulate and restructure their own conflicts.