A Brief Essay on Food

Every delicacy in every culture was borne of hardship, propagated through peer pressure and codified through interchange with other cultures. And, just as every culture has an intoxicant that is revered such that all other intoxicants are reviled, every culture has a fermented food that is revered while all other fermented foods are "exotic" or "disgusting."

Rachel Herz wrote an interesting book called "That's Disgusting" that delves into this phenomenon more than you are likely to want to spend time on so lemme point you to the New York Times article that distills her work down to bite-sized. And, as this is my essay, here are the spoilers:

1) There are no foods, other than toxic ones, that are reviled by all peoples on the planet

2) That which is "disgusting" is cultural and used as a touchstone to separate your people from other people. Those who eat kimchee smell like those who eat kimchee; those who eat limburger smell like those who eat limburger.

3) Cultural affinity has, since the dawn of history, been about assimilating someone else's customs. That invariably starts with food, as we eat multiple times a day. The quickest way to be less of a barbarian is to eat "civilized" food in the eyes of the civilized.

4) Cultural identity has, since the dawn of history, been about eschewing someone else's customs. We are Vasque because we cook our sausage like this not like that. As with Tom Swift, the side of the egg you crack matters.

Figuring out what's good to eat isn't that tough. Point to the medicine women. There are very few things in the world that will straight up KILL you, rather than make you sick (particularly if you eat tiny amounts of them). So when you find something new and unusual, you get your apprentice to eat a tiny bit of it. Then you wait a day, check stool, and eat a little more. Wait a day, check stool, eat a little more. Continue until you've found the lethal dose or psychotropic effects or until you've determined that this handy root is great in soup. This simple procedure is actually in army field manuals and has been for pushing 100 years.

As far as cheese, allow me to link to one of my favorite articles in the late, lamented Gourmet Magazine, in which three of the top chefs in China visit Thomas Keller's French Laundry and hate on it. This article, and those like it, are why I view Bizarre Foods as a missed opportunity; the language of food is the language of international understanding yet Bizarre Foods is all about laughing and pointing at foreigners through the eyes of the funny fat man who will eat anything.

It isn't the first _________ to have gone down that matters. It's the first party assembled to celebrate ______.

TL; DR - Lobster fests, not lobsters