Why do people not like certain foods?

[Relique du Madde]

More food for thought:

Food Color Made From Bugs
JELL-O Made from Bones and Hides

Not new news. If you take pills, the capsules are made of gelatin (same ingredients as jello). Most if not all processed foods contains bugs (and the government regulates the amount of insects that can accidentally be processed in the food item). Bread, beer, yogurt, yine, cheese all contain living/non-living bacteria within it, same with the plants in your salad. Like it or not, everything you eat may have living organisms on it.

 

[Aeolius]

Like it or not, everything you eat may have living organisms on it.

Doesn't bother me... though it does make me want to watch the cockroach segment of "Creepshow" again.

One of these days, I would like to try haggis.

 

[cignus_pfaccari]

Imagine how much food we would have for the hungry, in this country, if only people were not squeamish about eating rendered meat from euthanized shelter animals.

Probably not as much as you'd think. After a while, you'd pretty much run out.


For me, as far as I can tell, the main reason I'm suspicious of strange and new foods is that it's a learned behavior from growing up with a wheat allergy.

Wheat is in a surprising amount of things that you won't know about, and many that you do and don't think about, so I learned that it was good only to eat certain known foods.

I've branched out some since, but not very far. I pretty much refuse to knowingly eat fungus that isn't involved with blue cheese* or any animal that does not have at any point in its life a spine. Those things might slip if it came to that or starvation, but I'd probably last a while.

Brad

* - Wings get boring with just ranch all the time. And I'm allowed inconsistencies, like my vegetarian friend who eats pepperoni pizza.

 

[Baron Opal]

And I'm allowed inconsistencies, like my vegetarian friend who eats pepperoni pizza.

Ha! I had a friend of mine who is a vegitarian tell me, quite seriously, that pepperoni is a vegeable.

My son has a lot of food allergies, so we cook and prepare practically all his food. It has been very illuminating how many things have wheat and corn in them that you wouldn't expect. The only places we go out to eat are asian places since they are the only places we can trust.

I would have to be exceptionally hungry before I could eat an insect. I don't know if I could eat a spider, like I have seen on a Mexican travelog. And, yet, I love other crustaceans like crab and lobster.

 

[Pbartender]

I don't know if I could eat a spider, like I have seen on a Mexican travelog. And, yet, I love other crustaceans like crab and lobster.

Psst... Spiders aren't crustaceans. They're chelicerates.

 

[kibbitz]

I've ordered off of a real Chinese menu a couple of times. I have thus learned that when they say "Crispy-fried Soft-shell Crab," they mean the crab will be fried so much it will be like jerky.

Really? My experience of Crispy-fried softshell crab is a crispy shell that you can eat if you want to, with proper crab meat inside... I cannot imagine how it got to be like jerky...

I have also learned that sea-cucumber- a marine echinoderm (related to sea-stars and urchins) that looks like a turd has a texture like mush and gristle. And since I know what they look like in life, that texture combined with my knowledge to give me a powerful revulsion. However, since its flavor is very mild- it tastes like whatever its in, really- I was able to finish my soup.

It's been ages, but my memory of this is more like hard and gelatinous...

I know someone who has eaten monkey-brains. Were it offered to me, I think I'd pass.

However, as Anthony Bourdain once said something to the effect of "If you have someone offering you the best of their cuisine, its time to man up and eat it."

Still can't eat durians though. Amusing since I ate it when I was much younger, but I still didn't like it then. Oh, and corn My parents love to steam corn on the cob, when they find good corn. Me, I can't stand the smell of it, and actually... I think I can't stand the taste of cream of corn soup either...

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Really? My experience of Crispy-fried softshell crab is a crispy shell that you can eat if you want to, with proper crab meat inside... I cannot imagine how it got to be like jerky...

Perhaps its a regional variant, like the way Tx BBQ differs from that out East or North. China is pretty big, after all.

It's been ages, but my memory of this is more like hard and gelatinous...

It was in an Udon dish, IOW, soup that had been cooked for a while.

Oh, and corn My parents love to steam corn on the cob, when they find good corn. Me, I can't stand the smell of it, and actually... I think I can't stand the taste of cream of corn soup either...

Corn is my favorite veggie...but I'm slightly allergic to it. I don't eat it as often as I like, but I still eat it. But only when I'm close to home, IYKWIMAITTYD.

 

[kibbitz]

Perhaps its a regional variant, like the way Tx BBQ differs from that out East or North. China is pretty big, after all.

Did you eat it in China? My parents did complain that the food was quite inedible to them while they were there...

It was in an Udon dish, IOW, soup that had been cooked for a while.

Ah, we had something like a stirfry in sauce, I think. That and some sort of stew.

Corn is my favorite veggie...but I'm slightly allergic to it. I don't eat it as often as I like, but I still eat it. But only when I'm close to home, IYKWIMAITTYD.

Mmm, sounds like me with milk. I like milk, but on top of being relatively expensive here, it looks like I'm mildly lactose intolerant.

 

[Blackrat]

Ha! I had a friend of mine who is a vegitarian tell me, quite seriously, that pepperoni is a vegeable.

Well hey, milk is vegetable product too. Cows produce it by eating grass, so it is vegetable product!

 

[kibbitz]

Well hey, milk is vegetable product too. Cows produce it by eating grass, so it is vegetable product!

This just reminds me of my friend in secondary school... there was this discussion which led to her telling me that eating meat is bad, oh the poor animals, etc. So I asked her whether she was vegetarian, and she said "No, I eat chicken too.". Poor chickens... no love for them... or perhaps too much of another kind of love