Author Dana Goodyear has spent a lot of time dining with foodies who champion bugs as a meal. And horses. And brains. Whales. Leaves. Weeds. Ash. Hay. Even plain dirt.
Goodyear, a staff writer for The New Yorker, set out to document the outer bounds of the extreme food culture that has taken hold among American foodies. Their quest for ever more exotic, challenging ingredients, she says, is raising fundamental questions about the nature of food itself and the assumptions that underlie what we view as acceptable to eat.
"It means eating the insects and not the creatures that eat the creatures that eat the insects," she explains. "His idea is that the big predators" — the sharks and whales —"all taste the same, and that you really get the full cornucopia that nature has to offer when you go down to the smaller creatures that are at the bottom of the heap" — such as the sea squirts and sea cucumbers now found on high-end menus.
"What does it mean," muses Goodyear, "that the richest people in the world are starting to eat like the survivors of a catastrophe?"
"Now, more than ever, the illusions of division threaten our very existence. We all know the truth: more connects us than separates us. But in times of crisis the wise build bridges, while the foolish build barriers. We must find a way to look after one another as if we were one single tribe.” -King T'Challa, Black Panther
The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it. ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is. ~Winston Churchill
I've eaten things that are not on my normal menu but mostly because that was the only food available at the time. Scrambled eggs with pig brains and jalapenos? Actually really good, at least until someone points out the pig brains in the dish.
I can explain it to you but I can't understand it for you.
"Any man who thinks he can be happy and prosperous by letting the Government take care of him; better take a closer look at the American Indian." - Henry Ford
Corruptissima re publica plurimae leges; When the Republic is at its most corrupt the laws are most numerous. - Publius Cornelius Tacitus
