Odd points about food

My roomate likes to rib me about some of my food choices like he calls almond milk DILK (dog milk). He's not the most open minded about food (what meat eater says no to a free bison steak? That stuffs like 44 bucks a lb) - it's all in good fun though.

Anyways, I recently started firing back and I've been pulling some interesting points about food out of nowhere.

For instance, when he said the idea of almond milk is weird I pointed out that it's much weirder to drink juice from the nipples of an animal that's not your species than it is to soak some nuts in water (I do drink cows milk too but it is weird when you actually think about it).

When he refused an ostrim stick because it has elk in it i pointed out that humans have been hunting and eating wild game like elk and duck for much longer than they have been eating domesticated cattle or chickens (I eat both those too, that's not the point)

This got me thinking, there's got to be a lot of these points out there about foods that some people might find odd. Anyone else have any?
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Replies

  • MikePTY
    MikePTY Posts: 3,814 Member
    BZAH10 wrote: »
    MikePTY wrote: »
    In general I find it odd that we haven't seemed to crack food/nutrition with technological advancement. We put a man on the moon. We build buildings that tower hundreds of stories in the sky. We travel in giant tubes with wings that travel 600 miles an hour in the sky to get from one side of the world to the other in less than a day. We are all talking with each other from around the world through instantaneous data transfer. You would think by now we could have designed some sort of soylent tab that we take once a day and is perfectly balanced for our personalized calorie and nutritional needs. Instead we still haven't really come up with much more than "basically eat the same foods that humans have been eating throughout history."

    I tend to think this has more to do with the fact that as humans we eat because we enjoy the taste of a wide variety of foods and our taste buds are a very important sense, not to mention the fact that eating together is a common way to socialize and that food and eating rituals are integrated deeply in different cultures.

    I suppose if we'd evolved over the years to not have taste buds (glad that hasn't happened!) or food became separated from socializing then what you propose above probably would have happened.

    Taste is certainly a part of it. But why can't my soylent tab also taste amazing?
  • Crafty_camper123
    Crafty_camper123 Posts: 1,440 Member
    edited December 2018
    Whoverever decided "Yep, Imma Eat that". On these delicious little things gets a big thank you from me.
    morels.jpg

    I have often wondered about the first man that ate many things we find common. I feel like starvation must have been a good motivator for a lot of the foods we eat today. Like, who decided that artichokes were worth all the trouble they are to eat them? SUPER glad someone figured it out cuz *yum*. But i'm sure it took a very hungy individual to decide to try and pick one, and then figure out how to eat it. I'm sure a lot watched what other animals ate as a guideline. But how many starving individuals from hunter gatherer times decided to try something to eat, and didn't make it?

    Cave Man: "Bob ate that. Didn't make it. No Eat that." "Jim ate this. Jim lives. Me eat this." (Because cavemen were totally named Bob & Jim )

    On the liver thing? As much as I despise it (blech), it's only wierd in todays culture and society. When people had to harvest thier own animals, almost every part was used in one way shape or form. And your organ meats contained vital nutrients they wouldn't be able to get other places. Now, especially in your westernized countries, there is an excess of food available. So things such as organ meats are optional for nutrition, and can be seen as unusual.

    Edit: Original pic was obnoxiously large...
  • lemurcat2
    lemurcat2 Posts: 7,885 Member
    I adore blue cheese (I adore most cheese), but kind of weird.

    (Actually, more seriously, cheese makes sense, it preserves dairy longer.)
  • happytree923
    happytree923 Posts: 463 Member
    Not sure if this is quite on-theme but just so everyone knows, eating lots of onion will eventually make you smell like onion all the time. I used to eat a whole cooked sweet onion for breakfast every day as a teenager and had to stop when my skin started smelling like it.
  • New_Heavens_Earth
    New_Heavens_Earth Posts: 610 Member
    I get ribbed on putting dill pickles in grilled cheese sandwiches by the same person who decided peanut butter, bologna, and jelly is a delicacy everyone must know about, despite people dry heaving at the thought of it.

    Why is eating raw seafood still a thing despite the warnings about under cooked meat and recalled lettuce?
  • Eternally_Hers
    Eternally_Hers Posts: 26 Member
    I think it's odd that we eat meat at all. We think we are so smart that we condemn other cultures for eating animals like dogs. As if their lives are more important than a cow, which is revered in other cultures? Obvious points, but points nonetheless.
    Btw...I eat meat (or should I say, "animals")

    I think it's to do with the emotional connection we get with having animals as pets. I have had a rabbit, chinchilla, dogs and cats. I couldn't ever imagine those types of animals being eaten without being sick to my stomach. I haven't had any emotional connections with cows or chickens so it makes it easier for me to eat.

    I also volunteer at a humane society just outside of my city so I have a lot of emotional connections with different cats and dogs.
  • MikePTY
    MikePTY Posts: 3,814 Member
    I get ribbed on putting dill pickles in grilled cheese sandwiches by the same person who decided peanut butter, bologna, and jelly is a delicacy everyone must know about, despite people dry heaving at the thought of it.

    Why is eating raw seafood still a thing despite the warnings about under cooked meat and recalled lettuce?

    As long as it is cleaned and handled correctly, most raw seafood such as that used for sushi carries a very low risk. The fish are flash frozen after being caught to stop bacteria growth and kill parasites. So really the bigger risk is from the person preparing it contaminating the fish with outside bacteria, not bacteria from the fish itself.
  • apullum
    apullum Posts: 4,838 Member
    I think just the act of eating and the social/cultural norms around it are odd when you really stop to consider it. We put dead things, which were originally either animals or plants, in our mouths. We often *enjoy* doing that and even have elaborate, celebratory social rituals surrounding it. Our bodies then break those things down to extract the nutrients that we can use, and we excrete the unusable parts in a process that most cultures find somewhat to highly taboo.
  • coderdan82
    coderdan82 Posts: 133 Member
    You ever wonder why they make lemonade out of concentrate but they make dish soap out of real lemons?
  • estherdragonbat
    estherdragonbat Posts: 5,283 Member
    There's real lemon in concentrate too
  • Danp
    Danp Posts: 1,561 Member
    I love seafood but it's odd to think that prawns (shrimp), crabs, lobsters, crayfish, yabbies, etc, which I regard as the most delicious of seafood's are kinda just aquatic equivalent bugs, beetle and spiders.
  • yukfoo
    yukfoo Posts: 871 Member
    chicken sashimi...yikes!!!!
  • sardelsa
    sardelsa Posts: 9,812 Member
    ccrdragon wrote: »
    pinuplove wrote: »
    Who first looked at the inside of a passion fruit and said, "Oh yeah, that looks delicious!"? :tongue:

    d5p1ea1al2pw.jpg

    (I know, I know, we watched what other animals ate and didn't die from, but still, passion fruit looks disgusting.)

    I feel the same way about oysters - snot on a half shell is a delicacy?!?!?!

    I absolutely love cooked oysters but raw oysters are a scam to get people to pay lots of money for something disgusting. All the eating procedures for raw oysters make you taste it as little as possible. I can put my own lemon and hot sauce on my own seaweed-flavored booger and save lots of money swallowing it as fast as possible at home.

    Raw oysters are amazing! If they are fresh you don't need any sauces, the wonderful natural flavours and saltiness is all you need :)
  • hrafnkat
    hrafnkat Posts: 10 Member
    Odd foods:

    Kæstur hákarl... an Icelandic delicacy that's basically fermented shark meat. Smells like a cross between cat pee (due to the ammonia content) and fish. It's made from a type of shark that is poisonous when fresh, but becomes "edible" after having rotted for several months. Somebody really had to be starving and desperate to figure that one out.

    Also Balut, which is a Philippino/SE Asian food consisting of an embryonic duck that is boiled and eaten straight from the shell - bones, feathers and all. Now that one must have started as a bet.

    Agree with whoever said durian as well - it smells like a rather nasty public restroom. Sure, let's eat that!
  • lemurcat2
    lemurcat2 Posts: 7,885 Member
    sardelsa wrote: »
    ccrdragon wrote: »
    pinuplove wrote: »
    Who first looked at the inside of a passion fruit and said, "Oh yeah, that looks delicious!"? :tongue:

    d5p1ea1al2pw.jpg

    (I know, I know, we watched what other animals ate and didn't die from, but still, passion fruit looks disgusting.)

    I feel the same way about oysters - snot on a half shell is a delicacy?!?!?!

    I absolutely love cooked oysters but raw oysters are a scam to get people to pay lots of money for something disgusting. All the eating procedures for raw oysters make you taste it as little as possible. I can put my own lemon and hot sauce on my own seaweed-flavored booger and save lots of money swallowing it as fast as possible at home.

    Raw oysters are amazing! If they are fresh you don't need any sauces, the wonderful natural flavours and saltiness is all you need :)

    Agreed.
  • Keto_Vampire
    Keto_Vampire Posts: 1,670 Member
    Fruit = plant ovaries....mmmm ovaries (lol).