Why doesn't hunger make me want to munch wild animals?

[The_Weird_One]

@Malacandra

Bet you have no problem eating the solid residue of spoiled milk, though. As for rotting meat, what’s well-aged steak but beef that’s been intercepted on the downslope from freshness to putrefaction? Rotting meat’s easier to chew up.

Back in his bachelor days,* Dad preferred to let his chicken just start to go bad before he cooked it, because it was more tender that way. I suspect that my stepmom, a nurse, has subsequently stopped this practice.
*by which I mean the several years between my parents’ divorce and my father’s remarriage

[Ludovic]

Chicken? CHICKEN? I can barely stand the smell of uncooked chicken it when it hasn’t begun to go bad. That is seriously a lot grosser than maggots, right there. Of course, before maggots I’d go looking for some tasty ants I could eat raw (and have, to see what they taste like,) but I’d imagine after awhile they’d start to irritate my stomach.

[Hillary_Clinton_s_Gynecologist]

@FrantzJ

So, human instincts were forged over the course of millions of years of evolution. For almost all of human history, the way that we have gotten food has been to go out into the wild, find some, and eat it. We might cook it first (see: fire), but the point is that in the year 35,000 B.C., if you were hungry, you couldn’t go to The Olive Garden and order Spaghetti Putanesca with a nice Bruschetta as an appetizer.

So, if I’m really hungry, and I’m in the woods, say, why don’t I look at raccoons and think “must…eat!” Why do I look at a picture of a cow and think “cow” rather than think “God, that looks tasty!”

Do you see what I’m getting at? Why don’t we get excited looking at edible things in the wild the way a bear goes crazy if he sees a salmon swim by?

Joey

If you believe Man is related to the Apes, consider this. Apes are mostly vegetarians. Some theories suggest that early man or hominids were mostly vegetarians. Human Beings are one of the few meat eating animals that need to cook it meat. Otherwise we are prone to become sick.

Hunger urges augmented by sight and smell. Wild animals don’t look appealing to you, and they certainly don’t smell like a Pizza.

[Monty]

@Zoe

A friend of mine attended the Air Force Academy and had to survive on his own in the wilderness for a period of time. Those grasshoppers looked and tasted pretty good.

Place in Yamato, Kanagawa, Japan serves roasted grasshoppers as an appetizer. To me the grasshoppers tasted like BBQ potato chips. The place was kind of fun, too, when I went there back in the early 1990s. You walk in and shout “chicken” or “fish” (in Japanese, of course), sit down, the waitress would bring you beer and grasshoppers and when the stew was ready, you’d get that.

[Sevastopol]

@Monty

Place in Yamato, Kanagawa, Japan serves roasted grasshoppers as an appetizer. To me the grasshoppers tasted like BBQ potato chips. The place was kind of fun, too, when I went there back in the early 1990s. You walk in and shout “chicken” or “fish” (in Japanese, of course), sit down, the waitress would bring you beer and grasshoppers and when the stew was ready, you’d get that.

Bit like the scene in Moby Dick: “clam or cod” Chowder

[chowder]

@Sevastopol

Bit like the scene in Moby Dick: “clam or cod” Chowder

You called?