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Susan Jung

The strangest meal I never ate was at university in California. There I met an entomologist who believed bugs were an environmentally friendly and politically correct food of the future - minimal waste, no noxious emissions to deplete the ozone layer, and an easy-to-raise source of protein that used few natural resources.

 He offered a 'bug snack' consisting of such delicacies as chocolate-covered chirpies (crickets), garlic fried mealyworms, apple-sauce surprise cake (it contained earthworms), snails in mushroom caps, bee larvae in honey and, most disgusting of all, maggot pate.

 While many of us have no qualms about eating snails, we would probably think twice about nibbling on the rest.

 But why is it considered normal to eat one kind of creature but not others? It was not as if the entomologist picked up the bugs from just anywhere; he raised them in sanitary labs.

 While the vegetarians debated about whether bugs were considered meat, the omnivores circled warily around the table, looking but not biting. Most of the bugs ended up in the bin.

 What is everyday food to some people is considered weird and disgusting to others.

 Animal lovers are horrified when they hear that in parts of China and Korea dogs are appraised more on their taste rather than for their qualities as pets (black puppies with large feet are considered best).

 Octopus, sliced up while still alive and eaten while moving, is considered a delicacy in Japan and Korea.

 The fact that the suckers on the tentacles stick to the roof of your mouth adds to the enjoyment.

 There are those who think it is repulsive to serve fish with the head and bones intact and others who think that cows and pigs consist only of steaks and chops, with nothing in between.

 Australian chef Gary Cooper who guested at the Australian Food Promotion is unusual in that he claims there is nothing he would not eat.

 'I'm really open-minded about food; I'm willing to try anything,' he said. 'It's part of being a chef; you should be educating your palate to see what kinds of food are out there.

 'You might taste something new and exciting that you can incorporate into your own cooking. I've eaten indigenous Australian cuisine, what the Aborigines ate, like raw witchetty grubs and other things that they ate for survival. The grubs taste like peanut butter. I've never been served anything that was too strange for me to try.'  This attitude is unusual. Most people have food prejudices that make them reject - untasted - dishes that others willingly eat.

 One friend eats every kind of innard (including what one menu described as 'sheep's special male organ') but refuses to try the ears, noses and lips of pigs. Her reason? 'I don't eat faces.'  Some people who eagerly gobble raw fish gag at the thought of eating raw beef. Others eat shark, but refuse the fin. Even though swallows' saliva (bird's nest) is considered a delicacy in Hong Kong and China, many people would not taste it.

 We sometimes unknowingly eat a food that we would normally reject. Although many refuse to try Chinese steamed blood with chives, they are happy to slurp down the popular hot and sour soup, which usually contains blood.

 Some willingly eat black pudding, made of pig's blood, intestines (in the form of casings) and other unidentified parts of the animal. Since the blood and other innards are not obvious in black pudding and soups, it is acceptable, but steamed blood looks like, well, steamed blood.

 The Chinese have a well-earned reputation for eating almost every part of every animal. This began as a necessity, but many of those foods are now delicacies, and even the most expensive Chinese restaurants in Hong Kong list such items as blood, tripe, intestines and kidneys.

 Anita Lau is a food critic and editor of TV Times. Although she has eaten many unusual foods in her five years as a critic, she admits there are a few things she would find it difficult to try.

 'I won't eat monkeys' brains. It's not that I have an aversion to brains, because I have eaten the brains of sheep. But the monkey is still alive when they are eating its brain, which is terrible. I won't eat anything that is endangered, like bears, or which causes excessive cruelty to the animal, which is why I also will not eat veal. I used to avoid rabbit because they're so cute, but I've got over that.

 'Since I'm a food critic I am exposed to many unusual foods, and I'll try almost anything once. I've never eaten witchetty grubs, but I would if they were cooked. I don't think I could eat one raw, with it moving around in my mouth.'  She said she tried mopani worms at the South African food promotion at the Royal Garden Hotel. 'They're boiled for a long time to clean them and remove the dirt. After that they're stuffed with minced beef and seasoning, then grilled. They're big - about six centimetres long and one centimetre in diameter.

 'In South Africa people eat dried mopani worms as a snack, to go with drinks, like we eat peanuts. I tasted a dried one and thought it was terrible; it just tasted like dirt. So the grilled one tasted much better in comparison. The texture is like fried soft-shell crabs, only a bit tougher.'  Although Lau makes an effort to taste everything, especially if it has been cooked by a friend, she admits that on one occasion she had to risk hurting someone's feelings.

 'Only once have I ever been served something that I refused to taste. I was in Chicago and my boyfriend at the time made some chitlings. It's a typical African-American dish - pig's intestines cooked in fat and served with hot sauce. When he was cooking it the smell was so bad I almost gagged and I had to leave the room.

 'He was upset, because I had made him try sushi which he had never eaten before. He thought that since he ate sushi I should try chitlings.' 



Bugged by weird cuisine