So is curds... why are those on the first post?
Unfortunately, cheese curds are typically only available near cheese factories, so a startling number of people have no clue what they are. My family comes from Wisconsin, widely regarded in the U.S. as THE dairy state, and people who live in Wisconsin are often referred to as "Cheese Heads". So every time I visit, I make a point of buying several bags of the stuff direct from a factory.
I've lived most of my life in Indiana, which has almost no cheese factories. Very few people here have ever heard of cheese curds (until I introduce them). When I mention it, they'll immediately assume that I'm just eating rotten cheese and get all grossed out. That's why I mentioned it in the first post. It's definitely not a bizarre or disgusting food, but most people where I live will believe that it is.
This has been changing over the last few years, since Culvers restaurants began spreading further south. They serve fried cheese curds that, in my opinion, have absolutely nothing in common with the curds I've grown up eating. So in just the last few years, the common response has changed to "Oh those things at Culvers? Yeah, I love those!" and I can only tell them that they have no idea.
Cheese curds are one of only two foods that I actually get excited about eating. While they are delicious, it's more likely because they've only been available to me on special occassions my entire life -- almost exclusively when visiting relatives after a 6-8 hour road trip.
The other food I get excited about is anything really spicy. I also mentioned an Indian curry that made my nose bleed... I was in agony and I loved it. This is likely because my sense of taste is so weak. I've only begun figuring this out recently, as so many people I know are obsessed with food. They put all kinds of emotional energy into thinking about the things they're planning to eat, and then they can have in-depth conversations with each other about it later. After being confused by other people's attitudes about food for so long, I finally began noticing that I can't even tell the differences between most things that they can, and I am completely unaware of most of the details that they obsess over. I've always known I have a weak sense of smell, and when I began thinking about this, I realized it makes a lot of sense since the two senses are linked. It doesn't bother me though. I see my condition as having plenty of advantages.
Correlation =/= Causation
I have to say, I get tired of seeing this repeated on the internet.
Yes, it's technically true and should always be kept in mind. This doesn't mean correlation isn't a useful observation, that everyone who makes a note of it is claiming causation, or that it isn't a legitimate basis for decision making, especially when knowledge is incomplete and actual causation is unknown.
There's definitely more and more research showing that the "all germs are BAD! use antibacterial everything!" attitude of the last 50 years or so has gone too far. While there's a lot less tetanus and tapeworms and such now, there's also a much higher rate of allergies and auto-immune disorders. One theory is that our immune systems evolved to be fairly aggressive, and we've removed so many things for it to fight that it's picking fights where there should be none--causing massive histamine reactions over non-threats or causing lymphocytes to attack one's own healthy tissue.
While I don't know about the second half of this, I definitely believe that our immune systems need exercise like any other part of our body. Our body only works to maintain what seems necessary. If we don't use something, it atrophies.
I think this is especially the case with our immune systems, since we're supposed to be constantly coming into contact with very limited samples of whatever nasty stuff is in our environment. Our immune system should be getting frequent opportunities to study and bolster defenses against this stuff, so that when we actually come into contact with something dangerous, it's already prepared. If we never touch anything that isn't disinfected to oblivion, then our immune system will have no fucking clue what's going on when actually presented with a challenge. This really seems like common sense to me, but it's amazing how many people don't believe it.
This is supported by massive amounts of anecdote. I know a few people who grew up in/maintain sterile environments, and they're constantly sick. Some doctors have even gone so far as stating that eating your own snot is healthy, since particles and organisms from your environment collect in your nose in very small quantities and organisms grow weak or die there. So eating it is essentially a primitive form of vaccination, where you are injected with small amounts of weakened disease that don't pose a threat of making you sick, but give your body a chance to process them and form defenses.
BTW, I'm learning a lot from this thread. I honestly didn't expect there to be so many interesting foods that I'd never heard about before, and some of them do indeed rival casu marzu and hakarl as bizzare or disgusting, in my opinion... which is awesome
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Topic: Bizarre and/or Disgusting Foods (Read 20922 times)