HUM 221 223 -- culture and cuisine

Here's something to think about as we consider the cultural values that influence artistic expressions as different as blues, jazz, hip hop, powwow dancing, Native American poetry and storytelling. Culture also determines what we like to eat, as BBC News correspondent Richard Black notes in this account of why the Japanese consider whale a delicacy. Black reports:

... I was in a waterfront cafe in Shimonoseki, a long-time whaling port.

In front of me was whale meat, from an animal which it is simply unthinkable to eat in Britain - so unthinkable that I had to promise my daughters I would not touch a morsel of it during my time in Japan.

Yet once in Japan, nothing seemed more normal.

This leads him into some fascinating interviews, with a retired Japanese whaler, with an Australian who hunts kangaroos for sport ... well, read it, I can't do it justice in a summary.

Which in turn leads Black into some heavy-duty philosophizing about what we eat -- and don't eat -- and why:

Back in Tokyo, I sat one evening in a sushi restaurant dining with a young, modern urban Japanese lady who was tucking into some raw whale.

I asked whether she would ever eat dog. She looked shocked. No, no, she told me, it would be unthinkable - but her whale was delicious.

A few years before, in Vietnam, I had seen restaurants with cooked dogs hanging up outside, much as Chinese restaurants in Western cities display cooked ducks and slabs of roast pork.

So would Vietnamese people ever eat whale? Apparently not, I am told - it would be unthinkable.

So why the contradiction? Why is it OK to eat horses in France and Italy but not in Britain? Why do Finns proudly serve reindeer, and Icelanders puffin, while others recoil at the thought of eating them?

Does every society concoct its own list of what is acceptable and what is not?

Does every individual do the same? Is it just culture? And if it is, is there any hope of securing agreement between different camps on issues like whaling? Is it even right to try?

What do you think? Ever eaten grasshopper? Rattlesnake? Frog's legs? Ever think about what goes into a hot dog? How does our culture determine what we eat -- and don't eat -- and what we listen to and don't listen to?

Disclosure. I probably shouldn't admit this in public, but I've eaten whale. In Norway, which like Japan is a whaling nation. It tasted a lot like beef. (Which came as a surprise, but shouldn't have. Whales are mammals.) I've had reindeer sausage, too, in Alaska. Not bad. It tasted about like summer sausage.