You Ate What?

After reading the article “Waiter, There’s a Cloven Hoof on My Plate” I was reminded of some foods that I have tried that I wish I was reminded of. I have tried balut from the same friend that I mentioned in my last post. The taste itself actually did not taste much different from a typical hard-boiled egg. However, I am very picky when it comes to texture (most food that I do not like to eat is because of it’s texture) and I just felt like I was on fear factor or something when I was trying to eat that egg. It is definitely not soft, how I think that eggs should be. I definitely think that it is psychological because I would probably think nothing of it if I had not had previous experience with eggs. Since I have expectations of what an egg should taste like and that did not fit my expectations, I hard a difficult time eating it.

So I think that there are definitely foods like this that many, if not most Americans would not eat from other cultures vice versa. As mentioned in the video A World of Food last week, the girl from India mentioned that she thought it was disgusting to eat cows because they were sacred for religious reasons. Americans think that it is disgusting that some cultures eat dogs because we keep dogs as pets. Like I said, I think that it is all psychological, depending a lot on experiences in childhood. I always thought that if I had a child I would want to feed them a variety of foods early on so that they would not become picky eaters. I also would not want them to have too much candy or sugary foods because I think that adds to kids’ pickiness with food. I doubt that would happen though since they would get it from their friends.

As I have been saying, I think that it is very psychological. I took a psychology class on conditioning and we learned a little about food aversions. A food aversion is just when you have a bad experience with a food and to the point where you will likely not eat it again or become nauseous if you had to eat it again. Sometimes, it can also generalize to different foods. For example, if you get food poisoning from your favorite restaurant you might not be able to eat anything else from that restaurant or if it was a hamburger that you ate, you might not like hamburgers anymore. If anyone ever took intro psych, you probably learned about the Garcia food aversion studies where the rats developed a food aversion to sweet water after it was poisoned. This happened to me when I ate the grossest food I ever tried, chitlins. I was about 13 years old and I tried them at a friend’s family barbecue. I took one bite and I couldn’t even swallow them, I just spit them in a garbage can. Not only would I never eat them again, but because I associate vinegar with them since I tried them with it, I developed a food aversion to vinegar also. I don’t like to eat anything with vinegar, even food that I liked before that such as salt & vinegar potato chips.

I posted a link to the website for the show Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern. There are some video clips from his past episodes eating some pretty weird foods.

Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern. Travel Channel. Web. April 9, 2010. http://www.travelchannel.com/TV_Shows/Bizarre_Foods/ch.Video.index