This weekend I was at an Indonesian restaurant and ordered a spicy fish dish. It came in small stringy chunks looking like the fish was minced. I was with a friend and she merrily tried it. Here’s a paraphrase of what happened.
Me [after waking up from my obliviousness]: Wait a minute! These aren’t little bits of minced fish, they’re tiny little fish, each one of them! [Each fish was about 1.5cm long and 4mm wide]
Friend: Eeewww
Me [with excitement now]: And see how each slither has two black dots that look like sesame seeds? They’re the fish’s eyes! You really should try some more.
Friend: Eeeeewwww
At which point being the asshole that I am, I mocked her disgust by making the fish wriggle with my chopsticks, doing a little puppet-show etc. I really don’t understand food disgust. At least the inconsistent kind. If you don’t eat meat then you don’t eat it. But if you eat meat but say find ribs disgusting because they remind you of the “animal flesh” that this “meat” is (I know people who do this) then my sympathies end. It’s as inconsistent as meat-eaters against hunting. This inconsistency seems to only be present in urban, Western culture.
Now, I’ve rambled about moral disgust before and how it harms people. But here, us humans are likely to take the wrong turn because of this urban literal “food-disgust”. Some examples:
- The idea that drinking your own urine is disgusting (even once it’s been processed into drinking water) has slowed down a potential solution to to water shortages.
- Meat grown in a petri dish could soon become a reality. People who will not switch to a product that’s free of cruelty to animals, and will probably be orders of magnitude more efficient environmentally because of some sense of “ickyness” will be doing the planet, humans and animals a great deal of damage all for nothing.
- But the biggest one of all I think is the idea of mass-raising insects for food. Which many many cultures already do. But it could well be the solution to a lot of malnourishment (thanks UN Dispatch, if you can’t see the video below, use this link):
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I will bet a lot of money that if we get the world to a state where nobody is hungry in, say, 50 years (a huge IF), something like this will play a role. Not necessarily insects, but something cheap, nutritious, efficient and (by Western urban standards) disgusting. Sorry but there’s no way out of it: for everyone to eat, at least some of your diet will have to change — if only for there to be a lucrative enough market for research to be performed.
So, wilt thou let thy sense of disgust stand in the way of the lives of others? Or will you shut that sense up — using some Higher Faculty — and just pass the damn [yummy] lemongrass cockroach stirfry?
10 comments ↓
I have certain disgust issues with texture, not with content. I’ll happily eat pretty much anything if the texture doesn’t put me off. Therefore, I won’t eat chicken feet – not because the coonept disgusts me, but because I can’t handle the feel of those slimy little claws in my mouth.
On the other hand, I could never eat dog and have to avert my eyes often from the front of restaurants in China, because of an emotional connection with dogs.
I’m all for the mass raising of insects for nutrition. As long as they don’t end up coming to us heavily processed. Lemon grass cockroach stir fry sounds good!
I think since you don’t object to the concept of chicken feet, the texture could well grow — usually the broader food objections are more entrenched.
As for dogs, what would your diet be like if you had a pet pig (which is as pet-like) as a dog? Actually I wanna get a pet pig.
I don’t really agree about the processing in principle: the problem is that most processing these days is adding filler that has little nutritional value. But for feeding the masses, it would have to be the opposite. There is already a project with a heavily-processed peanut-based paste that has far more nutrients than anything in the diet of malnourished populations.
Agreed on the pigs – I’ll never get to know a pig because I like bacon too much!
By processed I meant filled out with preservatives and filler.
To feed us all at some point we will have to go vegetarian, meat takes too much energy, water and feed to produce efficiently. Insects are an order of magnitude better, but still not quite as efficient – but certainly more nutritious.
However, this will never happen. If the US cannot agree to provide health care to their own people how can you expect them to give up meat to feed the poor in other countries? If we cannot agree to cut carbon emmissions to stop the spread of desert conditions and climate change in our best growing regions then there will never be a global accord to enable 12-14 billion people to live on this rock.
On that point, for all your pointing out of the illogical positions humans put themselves in you have made a critical error here yourself:
The only damage humans could do to the planet (by planet I mean nature, not the ball of rock hurtling through space) would be to launch an all out nuclear strike on all habitable land masses. Even then life would come back from the depths of the ocean and eventually repopulate the earth.
What we are doing is damaging the current conditions that we happen to find rather comfortable. Animals would adapt to any climate change we cause, nature would recover but we may suffer.
The idea that stopping human-caused global warming is saving the planet is beyond stupid, beyond ignorant, it is self-centred and short-sighted and shows a lack of knowledge of the ‘nature’ they want to save.
Stopping human caused global warming is slowing the destruction of the conditions we find comfortable, therefore still worth doing.
Also, if everyone was vegetarian, where would all the land come from to raise enough crops? It’s not as simple as that.
The idea of the planet is a common expression in the imperfect human language, even agreeing with everything said I don’t see a better expression available.
Also if you want to substitute “current ecosystems” for “planet” then preventing global warming IS saving it since after a few degrees there will be a mass extinction of species and ecosystems. The fact that others will replace them doesn’t change the destructive nature of global warming.
In terms of “feeding us all” we already produce more than enough food to go around.
Alan — sorry but it really is that simple since if everyone is vegetarian we will have to grow far less crops than we currently do — so the land would be existing crop land minus millions of square kilometres that can become condominiums, golf courses and shopping malls. Or forests…
Well, don’t we (some of us) already eat frog legs and snails? Many eat raw shellfish (bad practice actually). The step from this to eating insects is small. We must, however, learn how and what to cook. We don’t go out eating any kind of green we find at the side of the road. Likewise, I presume we can’t eat any insect that flies into our home. I have no clue what’s edible and what’s not. So we need people like the guy in the video who are willing to experiment and teach the rest of us. Several years ago I thought that seaweed was not edible. I now enjoy it in certain forms.
(By the way, I do not like bacon.)
Bearing in mind NOTHING we do will be even remotely close to the damage sustained in the event that wiped the dinosaurs out then I’m pretty sure life will recover and fill all the niches it currently does.
As for the Malthusian nightmare scenario what traditionally happens is that food production actually increases exponentially (albeit there is a finite amount at some point) – if the West gave the pest-resistant strains of crops and better fertilizer to the third world farmers, especially Afica, then they’d be able to feed themselves. Also, as countries increase their wealth they tend to reduce the size of their families. I hope that India, China etc. will increase their wealth and decrease their birth rates before famine becomes a population stabiliser.
On a slightly more off-beat note: why not eat dead humans? Make sure there are no pathogens or other issues then we can also decrease the amount of land wastefully used as burial grounds. If we all go vegetarian to maximise the population of humans (to the extinction of domesticated animals!) then the only meat going will be us.
I think the problem with eating people (if the “little” hurdle of social norms is overcome) is that it would be really hard to find flesh that’s not harmful in some way or another. It’s kind of the ultimate exchange of bodily fluids — but more so.
Especially given that most of these people will have died of old age. Given that dying of old age is a euphemism for dying of diseases (usually infectious ones) that your body has succumbed to, I don’t see it becoming too popular.
not if you reach the population limit then decree that everyone over 30 has to be taken to the butchers.
Population is stable, we simply adjust that age to increase or decrease based on the birth rate.
Yes, I did see Logan’s Run recently.
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