We Are What We Eat.

[MANICHAEAN]

We Are What We Eat.

Have you noticed the serpentine awakening in this Corona crisis, by those in power and others of the same ilk, to appeal to the lowest common denominator of reasoning and to blame the “foreigner / outsider” for all the ensuing problems?

Usually it's; Latinos, negroes, Jews, or Muslims. Eskimos never seem to get a mention.

At the moment the focus is on the Chinese. Somewhat along the lines of, “they eat bats and snakes don’t they, which started the Corona virus pandemic.”
Which got me thinking. If we are what we eat, what are we? I've been fortunate enough in the last 30 years to have worked and lived all around this habitat called Earth.

Thus, yes, the Chinese eat all the parts of many exotic animals. Elsewhere, and I trust this puts it in context: the Vietnamese eat dog and have been known to drink a live pulsating snake heart in a drink as a cocktail. Africans have a penchant for “bush meat,” (monkeys etc.) The French eat horse & snails, (with garlic no doubt). Filipinos eat “balot” which is a half-formed embryo chicken egg that is swallowed, a bit like an oyster. The English eat something called “spotted dick,” and the last Methodist missionaries who went to Papua New Guinea were eaten by the natives.

Draw your own conclusions. Bon Appetit to you all.

[kev67]

I'd rather eat spotted dick than a half-formed bird embryo, dog or pulsating snake's heart. I doubt if anyone opened a restaurant over here offering those delicacies they would make much money. I am not sure I have actually eaten spotted dick. I suppose I must have at school. I used to prefer bread and butter pudding, rice pudding and jam roly poly. I even quite liked semolina. In fact, I think I actually did like tapioca, which is the one people my age most often complain about. Just looked up the ingredients of spotted dick found out it is made of suet, which is animal fat, so definitely not vegetarian.

[Danik 2016]

Loved this text, Manichaean.

A very original manner of presenting diversity.

[cacian]

Interesting text MANICHEAN.

I guess there is always one race over more zealous/enthusiastic then another. There is no stopping what one can put their hands on.
The planet is threatened by the amount of what one a race can consume compared to others.

Also the title of your post made think of this:

does that mean
WE ARE WHAT WE WRITE?

I just thought I put it out there. :)

[tailor STATELY]

Interesting postulation. I'm of the mind that people, who are tribal in nature, will seek out differences in others and are prone to either exploit or destroy those differences. I don't think we'll be happy until we are all clones of one being.

I eat mostly chicken and eggs... I don't know which came first.

Ta ! (short for tarradiddle),
tailor

[Danik 2016]

In quarantine I have been eating mostly chicken with potatoes (not peeled).

One thing I have learned: if one wants a mild seasoning (without pepper, curry, etc.) but not totally mild, one can add a little cinnamon to the seasoning.

[tailor STATELY]

Cinnamon on chicken (or as I usually abbreviate it: chxn) sounds divine... will try it soonest :)

Ta ! (short for tarradiddle),
tailor

[jajdude]

"If we are what we eat, what are we?"

I'm just a lousy grocery store with just a fraction of what you're looking for.

[ssubterranean]

Back home in Indonesia, we also eat all sort of animals. One thing I noticed though, and I could be wrong as I have only seen it on screen, is that in China these live animals are sold in between other stuffs. Back home, the unusual animals that are consumed for whatever reason would not be allowed to be sold in public market and people would've prefer to have them ready to serve than prepare them themselves.

[Francis Meadows]

I never really understood the commotion that the French eating horse-meat sometimes causes in other parts of the world. It's by the way not only the French who eat horse. Any Belgian restaurant that wants to be considered a "meat"-restaurant, has it on its menu. Then again, Belgium is often considered as a small extension to France... So, that would put us back to France.

Still, I fail to see why eating horse is that much more shocking than eating bovine or porc. Could it be that man, unconsciously, accepts a certain hierarchy among animals, where the horse is then considered more noble than others? Come to think of it... That could explain some about how we experience diversity.

That being said, while travelling through Namibia, we had antelope, giraffe, etc. My kids would initially not touch it... There is Rudyard Kipling working for you. While they had no objection whatever to some minced cow at the local hamburger shop. Again, do we rank animals? Or is it just that we are conditioned to be sceptical about everything less common?

Francis