I’ve noticed that Oriental cuisine frequently features foods that most other modern day cultures would tend to find repulsive – foods such as pork brains, chicken feet, fish eyeballs, ‘stinky’ tofu, fermented vegetables, durians, animal penises, etc.
What is the reason that East Asian cultures seem to be much more open-minded about their food choices than other cultures, with a wider variety of foods that are considered acceptable for human consumption?
Thanks.
I don’t think the East Asian diet is any more diverse than, say, West African, Southern European, or Australian Aboriginal. Perhaps the question should be more “why is Western Anglo culture so conservative and picky in what it considers to be edible?”.
What about cow’s brains, pickled pig’s feet, menudo (with tripe of course)?
Aaaand I see Askance beat me to it.
Or goat eyeball tacos? (Yes, I’ve had some at Maxwell Street Market here in Chicago.)
Blood sausage? (Kiszka, blutwurst, veres hurka, etc.?)
Duck blood soup? (Polish czarnina).
And THE most disgusting foodstuff I’ve ever eaten, courtesy of the Swedes: surströmming. (“sour herring,” more like rotted herring). I’ve eaten a lot of weird stuff in my life, but this is absolutely the most vile and unpalatable food I’ve eaten. I love fish, I love fermented foods, I love extreme tastes, but this is simply too much.
You just see Asian things as extra exotic.
Asians more open-minded about food? Yeah, right.
Asians eat more within their cuisine but they seem to be the worst with dealing with other cuisines. Chinese tour groups are the only ones I’ve ever seen which have “guarenteed visiting 100% Chinese restaurants while overseas”
‘Cause it’s friggin’ nasty?
What about the lamb fries? How can you forget that scene from Funny Farm?
When you’re poor, you don’t waste anything.
I gotta ask: do they come whole, or chopped up?
That’s about it. Our Anglo ancestors were eating some pretty weird stuff (to us) too 100 or 50 years ago–calves’ foot jelly, head cheese, tripe, all sorts of things that I wouldn’t touch because I’m used to plenty of food and I’m not thinking that I might run out this winter.
Whereas Asians are still poor and therefore still need to eat all that crap. Makes perfect sense…
:rolleyes:
The butcher shop down the road from me still carried all the items mentioned until the owner retired. (His kids had each opened their own shops in other towns prior to his retirement, but as far as I know, they are still selling the same stuff.)
People who only eat shrink-wrapped meat or stuff heated in cardboard boxes probably eat a lot less of the “exotic” stuff, but it is still out there for those who want it.
Despite your use of roll-eyes, here are the GDP figures. Only Japan comes close to the US and UK, and that is a relatively recent phenomenon. My grandmother used to cook every part of a chicken that could be eaten, including cracking the bones for the marrow. Though there may be other infludences at play, I am more affluent than she and I only eat thighs, breasts, and wings.
Perhaps I should have elaborated then.
[ul]
[li]It’s ridiculous to suggest that Asians eat all parts of the animal while Americans only eat choice cuts and throw away the rest. What do you think chicken nuggets and sausages are made of?[/li][li]Asians often go to extraordinary lengths to obtain those “exotic” foods. Shark fins, for example, are often cut off from live shark; the finless shark is then “released” (thrown away).[/li][/ul]
Whole.
I thought they were going to come chopped up and, for perhaps the first time in my life, actually hesitated in eating something. I was with my SO and stopped by this taco stand because I saw lamb tacos. I’ve had goat before in Mexican cuisine, but never lamb, so I wanted to check it out. As I’m sitting there chomping away, I notice a sign for tacos de ojos, or “eye tacos.” I got so excited! I’ve been looking for these damn tacos for awhile now, and here they were. The Mexican guy at the counter, sensing my excitement, comes to me and says “yes, tacos de ojos, very good!” and beging making me one. He plucks the eyeball out of a sheep’s head and makes a point of showing it to me, as well as the second one. He then put some lamb meat around the eyeballs and served them to me as a taco.
I was not expecting whole eyeballs, so I felt slightly squeamish at first. I’m not used to eating food that’s looking up at you eating it. I bit into the taco and, well, the eyeballs didn’t really taste like much. They had a slight organ-y taste, and a soft, somewhat gelatinous/fatty texture. I can’t say it was a taste sensation I’ll be going out of my way for again, but it wasn’t really disgusting taste-wise.
Heck, the Polish shop down the street and the Mexican grocery still have all that stuff. Tripe is awesome! Head cheese is still a daily staple around my folk’s house. And I even had some blood sausage today, and I can afford to eat pretty much anything I want.
You’ve got a couple of different catagories in there: Parts of animals which most Western people aren’t used to, such as the eyeballs, , etc., and then foods with particular odors or tastes, such as durians and ‘stinky tofu’ (which I can’t eat).
Looking at the later first, for smells or tastes; it’s all in what you are used to. Japanese (for the most part) can’t stand root beer because it tasts like medicine to them. Likewise, most people here find the smell of bleu cheese to be as repulsive as I find nato.
For the former, there is the familiarity factor, as various posters have pointed out.
Japanese and Chinese cook fish whole, but because we’re not used to eating the eyes, we pass on that. (Or at least I do.)
Some of the foods are exotic even in the local cultures. You don’t run into penises that often (until I’m shopping in the wrong supermarket again. 
)
However, I wonder if cooking habits also has something to do with it. If people don’t know how to cook this parts, then less people buy them, so they’re in less meat shops, etc. Eventually the easier to cook parts take over.
I’m not suggesting that US folks don’t eat less-familiar bits of animals, but that many don’t have to and apparently don’t want to. KFC does not offer chicken gizzards or duck’s feet in the US, though we eat other parts of chickens and ducks. My local comfort-food restaurant does not offer ox-tail soup, tripe, brains, jellied calves’ foot, or head cheese, though I probably could find those at least some of those to prepare at home if I went to a butcher or to a larger city.
???
Seriously? Is that a weird food in America?