A small selection of flowers wild and cultivated
Stream
Some other stuff ...
On This Day
Webring
What I’ve watched
I keep a little log.
A small selection of flowers wild and cultivated
Documentally, whom I have followed in various places for a while, alerted me to a museum that completely passed me by when I was in Berlin a few weeks ago: the Digusting Food Museum. I doubt I would have sprung for the €16 it apparently required, though I might next time if only to answer a question that Christian did not ask.
Does it reflect, in any way at all, how there are probably no foods that are universally disgusting to all humanity?
Christian reports that the museum points out that “culture shapes what we consider edible,” which “makes the whole experience more about perspective than nastiness”. And yet, all the examples he shares are finely tuned to northern European (possibly Anglo-Saxon) culture. Sure, the people who find Marmite disgusting may lump Vegemite in there, and I’m willing to bet that people only find black pudding disgusting if they know its main ingredient. As for durian, yes, it smells strange. So do many of the cheeses that durian loathers might relish.
My point is not to detract from Christian’s visit. Rather it is to ask whether anyone comes out of the museum a little more enlightened about universal human emotions. All societies find disgusting some of the foods other people eat, but nothing disgusts everyone.
p.s. Getting over your disgust can save your life, as explored in two episodes of Eat This Podcast; New Light on Neanderthal Diets and It’s putrid, it’s paleo, and it’s good for you.
Webmentions
Webmentions allow conversations across the web, based on a web standard. They are a powerful building block for the decentralized social web.
If you write something on your own site that links to this post, you can send me a Webmention by putting your post's URL in here:
Comments
I very much regret that Russian spammers have made my comment system unusable. If you want to email me a comment, it is easy enough to find the address and I will be happy to do the needful behind the scenes. Webmentions remain available (for now).