[Sca-cooks] Why *X* and not *Y*?

[Audrey Bergeron-Morin]

> It strikes me as curious that we  (used as a general pronoun) get  certain 
> mind-sets that  *X* is OK to eat (ie,, beef) while *Y* is NOT  OK to eat 
> (ie dog) in this culture anyway.

In many cultures. Why cows in some cultures (India, for example). For others 
it's pigs. In America, lots of people don't want to eat horse, probably 
because it's considered such a beautiful animal.

(I wonder what would have happened if Brigitte Bardot had tried defending, I 
don't know, lobsters... Please don't be cruel to the cute baby lobsters...)

> And I mean that as an  emotional reaction, not religious or dietary.

I met someone who used to raise boars. He had a reception hall and would 
serve buffets of boar meat raised on his property. It worked great. But he 
also had school groups and the kids would run around the enclosure and get 
the boars excited, and he was worried about what would happen if one of them 
got loose. So he switched to deer. It was great with the kids - but his 
problem was that nobody would eat it! Especially after seeing the animals...

I do have a problem with animals being raised as pets then being eaten. If 
you buy a rabbit for food, don't let you kids play with it as a pet. But 
when animals are raised as food, frankly, it shouldn't matter if they're 
cute or not.

I'm still surprised most people don't mind eating lamb....

> commonly in supermarkets, but not deer?

Because it's expensive? There's some in supermarkets here, but it's frozen. 
Or you can order it fresh from some specialty stores.

> Or baby lamb, but not mutton?

Because mutton tastes very strong to our delicate palates. I already have a 
problem with muttony taste in lamb, I'd have real trouble with mutton!

One of my biggest dissapointments when we went to China was not being able 
to sample exotic foods. We were travelling with a group, so all we had to 
eat was chicken, beef, pork and white fish. Here in Montreal the Insectarium 
was doing regular insect tastings, as food. It was very interesting. And it 
tastes good too. But a lot of people threw most of it straight in the 
garbage can, unless the insects were reduced to a powder and integrated into 
something else.