Eating is as intimate as it gets. The ingesting of
organic material through the middle of your face down into your deep physical
core to become temporarily one with the consumed mass―it's even more
penetrating than intercourse.
Food is so personal that we judge others on their meal
choices. Order something gross on a first date, and it could be your
last. The fifth grader with the strangest brownbag lunch gets picked on
most in the cafeteria. Americans find Southeast Asians offensive for eating dog
(even though we eat large dogs called cows, which makes us seem
ignorant to Hindus).
Shrimp greatly upset me because of their
pinkish-orange, fingernail-like shells and poop veins. So, when I lived in
Shanghai, it probably took a month off my life to catch a glimpse of my Chinese
officemate aggressively stuffing entire prawns into her mouth until
the ends of their shockingly long antennae disappeared into her satisfied
expression. In the process of devouring them, she became
prawn-like―and I'm sure she’d feel the same about the scrapple I chowed down as
a Pennsylvania native.
Seeing an animal feed can bring on the same revulsion. The
sickest thing about opening a trashcan swarming with bugs isn't necessarily the
insects themselves, but that they think it's delicious in there. In
the moment, that itself justifies the swatting; if you are what you eat, then
those flies are rot-filled maggots unwelcome in our space!
One person’s haggis is another's honey. Taste is pure
subjectivity. Whatever a "mangoon" is, it's out there somewhere, it's
awful, and it's hot, sexy dinner for some ravenous mouth that can't get enough.
