11 Things You Didn’t Realize Were Taboo Elsewhere in the World

If you’re eating in India, don’t offer anyone the rest of your fries. Leftover food, known as uchchhishta, is impure, and it's disrespectful to give it to someone else.

They believe that these and other strongly flavored foods induce impurity, aggression and lustful thoughts.

Known as the “cushitic fish taboo,” some Cushite groups such as the Somali have a long-standing taboo against fish of any kind.

Though it’s a pretty orthodox stance to take these days, the Navajo people also traditionally considered fish taboo, and it still is completely taboo to eat during certain ceremonies.

Jainism is a religion centered around doing as little harm as possible to other living organisms. That extends to eating root vegetables, since harvesting them kills the plant.

The feet are considered unclean — which is hard to argue with — so moving things with them is unclean.

The Malagasy, the people of Madagascar, have a huge list of taboos that are known as fady. One of them is the prohibition of funerals (and farming) on Tuesdays.

As part of the mourning process, which can last months if they were a particularly important figure, Aboriginal people consider it taboo to say the name of the person who recently died.

The Dyirbal people forbid a man from talking directly to, facing or even making eye contact with his mother-in-law.

Because pale yellow and white flowers represent funerals to the Japanese, bringing them to someone in the hospital is a real dick move.

When gathering pandanus nuts, the people of New Guinea use a specific style of speaking known as “pandanus talk” to avoid spirits ruining the harvest.