Does food choice tell us anything about how our brains work? Probably, and no doubt there are big time studies on the topic, but let’s go with some speculation to see whether or not we can learn anything about ourselves through the appeal of food.
There might be no better way to demonstrate our minds’ malleability or rigidity than by offering unfamiliar foods to an adult. “Hey, try this stuff. It’s good” doesn’t get an enthusiastic responses from most adults who rely on food appearance and familiarity for appeal. I would be very hard pressed to eat a Maeng Da, for example, though it is probably rich in protein. Northern Thais like to eat them live and cooked. Had I grown up in northern Thailand, you might see me with a “rice bug” in my mouth right now, its legs wiggling as I munch on the body. But before you say “yuk,” know that there are foods that you eat that others would shun. We are creatures of habit, and nothing says “habit” more than foods we consume without much thought.
A conversation:
Carnivore: “I’d like to joke and say, ‘This tastes just like chicken,’ but I can’t because it tastes like celery.”
Vegan: “You mean it’s tasteless if I know you.”
Carnivore: “Pretty much, but whoever at Revo got the idea to 3D-print salmon will probably make the company a profit on this stuff, what with all the vegans like you out there.”
Vegan: “What’s wrong with…”
Carnivore: “You mean besides taste?”
Vegan: “No, what’s wrong with artificial fish? It saves real fish. It’s gluten-free, and it contains vitamins, amino acids, and omega-3. Really, think about it. It doesn’t have any sugar or cholesterol. And it’s based on a fungus protein. Plus, it’s relatively cheap.”
Carnivore: “I’’m not eating it. I’ve already tried that FDA-approved lab-made chicken, which, by the way, of all things that should taste like chicken, doesn’t. I like my chicken ‘on the hoof.’ Well, on the chicken feet, anyway.”
Vegan: “But an overpopulated world will have to develop plant-based foods. Certainly, we don’t want a fiction-come-alive Soylent Green. Yuk. You carnivores are just one bite away from becoming cannibals.”
Carnivore: “With a clever ad campaign, this new stuff will win over all you vegans. You want products that look like real products. If you see the commercial for Revo Foods’ 3D salmon, you’ll note that this artificial stuff looks like a real salmon filet, at least, looks like a farm-raised salmon filet, no deep color of the wild-caught Alaskan salmon. And why does it have to look like salmon? It’s fungi and plants. Could just as easily mash the stuff up and serve it as a pâté, or smash it flat, add some smoke flavoring and serve it with cheese and bagels.”
Vegan: “Well, it appears to be natural, and it’s made of natural stuff, plants.”
Carnivore: “Natural? Here try this celery. It’s not really celery, just made to look like it. In fact, it’s bacon with the taste removed and color bleached out with some added stringy-stuff, kinda fiber—y.”
Vegan: “You joke, but I don’t have to eat all those hormones forced into animals you cruelly slaughter for food.”
Carnivore: “No, you just want to eat the plants that the animals eat, insecticides and strontium-90, and some 50,000 chemicals that are now in the environment that no one a couple of centuries ago even knew existed. And you want your plants to look just right. Appearance or presentation is everything in fine restaurants and grocery stores. I guess we want what we eat to have a certain look because we’re far removed from the basic survival and subsistence phase of our ancestors. So, now there are vegan burgers; trendy restaurants serve them. They’re made to taste similar to a beef or bison burger, but trust me they don’t, something about texture…”
Vegan: “There’s just no reason to eat an animal when you can eat a plant that, I’ll grant, is made to look like an animal protein. But that’s because we’re still in a transition period in civilization. For centuries our food came directly from the animals, and we got used to their appearance. We all know the expression, ‘That doesn’t look appetizing.’ Well, that tells you that we are drawn to food by more than hunger, smell, and taste. The eyes might be windows to the soul, but they are also windows to the palate and stomach.”
Carnivore: “My point in a way. Why do vegans want to eat something that looks like something they supposedly abhor because of its source? I don’t want to eat a steak that is celery made to look like a steak. And who’s to say that a plant-based diet doesn’t have its drawbacks and dangers? You think, ‘if it’s organically grown, it’s good for me.’ But you might be getting chemicals that Nature never intended for you to eat—sorry for the teleology. And what about all those ‘natural’ toxins in plants?”
Vegan: “Natural toxins?”
Carnivore: “Cyanogenic glycosides in almonds, for example. Furocoumarins in grapefruit and celery; lectins in beans that are in those artificial burgers; solanine in tomatoes; pyrrolizidine alkaloids in green teas…W.H.O. says, ‘Natural toxins not only pose a risk to both human and animal health, but also impact food security and nutrition by reducing people’s access to healthy food.’ ** So, you can point out all the bad things that can be found in my carnivore diet, but you can’t point out all the bad in your own supposedly ‘healthful’ diet.”
Vegan: “But I haven’t seen anyone die prematurely on a vegan diet…”
Carnivore: “Yet, you accept the potential health risks of those toxins that might be reducing the quality of your life. Your brain simply says, ‘Okay, there are two evils. I’m choosing one of them because I’ve been convinced that it’s better for me than the other one. But who did the convincing? On what grounds? If I recall, you used to be an omnivore. You used to love a medium rare steak.”
Vegan: “I realized that I don’t want to kill animals…”
Carnivore: “Noble thought. So, it’s probably an ethical matter. You’ve adopted an moral stand in a sort of religion, one that favors compassion for animals. I get that, especially in these times when social influence from various groups is pervasive, PETA billboards and all…”
Vegan: “Animals have personality, limited, I’ll grant, but identifiable. Betsy the cow raised by some 4H farm girl, has a way about her that differs from Bruno the bull raised by some 4H farm boy. You really should try more vegan recipes because plants don’t have personalities. You infuse your body with fats. Your diet is killing you.”
Carnivore: “And yours isn’t?”
Vegan: “Everyone knows that we should be eating more grains, nuts, seeds, fungi, fruits, and veggies.”
Carnivore: “You’ve been convinced by some very clever propaganda, and you’re about to enter an age of FDA-approved artificial food that someone down the line will discover isn’t the diet panacea you think it is. What we eat is really a product of enculturation, so soon, generations of kids will grow up eating this ‘Soylent Salmon’ and think that this is the way it should taste and look. They will accept food that ‘looks’ like food they have never eaten since eventually, you vegans will ban all animal consumption. And they’ll never realize that the look doesn’t have to be a mirror image of the real stuff. Is there any reason other than tricking the mind to have artificial salmon look like a real salmon filet?”
Vegan: “What should it look like?”
Carnivore: “I don’t know, maybe some colorless, orderless gray paste, as I said, some pâté. You could squeeze it from a tube right onto a cracker or directly into your mouth.”
Vegan: “That’s so unappetizing.”
Carnivore: “So, let me get this straight. We want our food to look like food that it isn’t. If it doesn’t appeal to our aesthetic, then it’s repulsive. And that’s why fine restaurants are so obsessed with ‘presentation.’ But then, we can train ourselves to eat almost anything, like a large rice bug in Thailand. Pop one in your mouth and chew even though its wiggling legs are dangling from your lips as you eat the body.”
Vegan: “Oh! Yuk. [shivers] Did you ever think that you eat a steak that doesn’t look like the animal? If they weren’t so big, you could have cow legs dangling from your mouth.”
Carnivore: “I know that I am far removed from my carnivore ancestors. I go to the grocery store with a preset image of what food should look like. I’ll grant that. Obviously, as a little kid, I learned to eat what my parents ate, and we weren’t farmers or butchers. Once a food becomes part of a society, each successive generation eats it. I think of the story that’s been circulating since the nineteenth century, the story, real or fake, exaggerated or exact, of Robert Gibbon Johnson. In 1820 the good Colonel Johnson, a horticulturist, announced that he would eat a tomato on the steps of his local Salem, New Jersey, courthouse. People gathered to see him die from the poisonous fruit. He didn’t. And people like you and me eat tomatoes today. What becomes acceptable stays acceptable unless there’s a propaganda campaign to change minds. Thus your vegan diet. You’ve been convinced that eating animals is bad for you. And though there is some evidence that your vegan diet contains some benefits, there is no evidence that my diet is any more harmful than eating tomatoes, which, by the way, are probably good for you and can be incorporated into many recipes. But I’m not eating fake salmon even if it looks like salmon.”
Vegan: “Someone had to take the first bite of something to find out if it was good to eat.”
Carnivore: “I wonder whether people who talk to their houseplants eat veggies. I can’t leave you without this anecdote. Years ago I read Roland Huntford’s biography of Fridtjof Wedel-Jarlsberg Nansen, Nobel laureate and explorer. In his exploration of the Arctic he and a partner encountered the harshest conditions for life, and they were running out of food. Fortunately, for them, they had relied for transportation on dogsleds and dogs. They formed an attachment to their dogs as all pet owners do, but in the face of starvation, they began to eat them one by one, the last being especially difficult to kill.”
Vegan: “That’s savage.”
Carnivore: “But it isn’t, is it? They were facing starvation, and the dog was edible. What choice did they have. If they had chosen not to eat the dog, they would have died, and the dog would also have died.”
Vegan: “So, what’s your argument? That we are all just one Donner Pass away from becoming cannibals?”
Carnivore: “No, but that might not be a wild surmise. Essentially, the Nansen story is more about survival than about killing a dog. Nansen went on to become a Nobel Peace Prize winner. He was also an inventor; his Nansen bottle still used by oceanographers. He had also figured a way to build a ship that wouldn’t be crushed if it got trapped in Arctic ice; thus, the Fram survived. That’s all part of a life that wouldn’t have been extended to include his Nobel Prize work if he had he not eaten his dogs, cute and faithful as they might have been.
Vegan: “That’s still repulsive. I would never eat Fido. I would never eat a cat. I can’t envision ever eating turtle soup. Give me my veggies, fruits, nuts, and seeds. You haven’t said anything to convince me otherwise.”
Carnivore: “And maybe that’s why our choice of diet is so indicative of the way our brains work. I know that I can eat your diet if I so choose, but I don’t. You know that you can’t eat my diet and would never choose to eat it.”
Vegan: “Sorry, I don’t see it. I don’t get your point. What is there in what we just said that indicates anything other than just a difference in culture and taste? I belong to a culture of vegans. You belong to a culture of carnivores or omnivores. It’s a choice, isn’t it?”
Carnivore: “But your choice has an ethical or moral component that mine doesn’t have, save for my putting humans above all other organic entities. I, too, wouldn’t ordinarily eat Fido, Kitty, or some Ninja turtle…unless….But I certainly find machine-made food like artificial salmon equally repugnant. So, in some ways even though we differ, we are alike, but consider those toxins you so readily devour in your healthful diet.”
Vegan: “And consider the suffering caused you your diet.”
Carnivore: “Who might have expected a discussion about artificial salmon would end up being a matter of ethics, enculturation, and aesthetics? I’m headed for the steak house. Care to join me?”
Vegan: “No thanks. I’m headed to the produce section of the grocery store.”
*Klausner, Alexandra. 19 Sep. 2023. Does 3D-printed ‘salmon’ taste like the real thing? Supermarket shoppers in one country about to find out. New York Post online at Revo Accessed on September 21, 2023. The story had an accompanying company ad video showing how the product was made and how vibrant young people enjoyed eating it.
**https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/natural-toxins-in-food
***Nansen: The Explorer as Hero. 1997. Great Britain. Gerald Duckworth & Co. Ltd.
There might be no better way to demonstrate our minds’ malleability or rigidity than by offering unfamiliar foods to an adult. “Hey, try this stuff. It’s good” doesn’t get an enthusiastic responses from most adults who rely on food appearance and familiarity for appeal. I would be very hard pressed to eat a Maeng Da, for example, though it is probably rich in protein. Northern Thais like to eat them live and cooked. Had I grown up in northern Thailand, you might see me with a “rice bug” in my mouth right now, its legs wiggling as I munch on the body. But before you say “yuk,” know that there are foods that you eat that others would shun. We are creatures of habit, and nothing says “habit” more than foods we consume without much thought.
A conversation:
Carnivore: “I’d like to joke and say, ‘This tastes just like chicken,’ but I can’t because it tastes like celery.”
Vegan: “You mean it’s tasteless if I know you.”
Carnivore: “Pretty much, but whoever at Revo got the idea to 3D-print salmon will probably make the company a profit on this stuff, what with all the vegans like you out there.”
Vegan: “What’s wrong with…”
Carnivore: “You mean besides taste?”
Vegan: “No, what’s wrong with artificial fish? It saves real fish. It’s gluten-free, and it contains vitamins, amino acids, and omega-3. Really, think about it. It doesn’t have any sugar or cholesterol. And it’s based on a fungus protein. Plus, it’s relatively cheap.”
Carnivore: “I’’m not eating it. I’ve already tried that FDA-approved lab-made chicken, which, by the way, of all things that should taste like chicken, doesn’t. I like my chicken ‘on the hoof.’ Well, on the chicken feet, anyway.”
Vegan: “But an overpopulated world will have to develop plant-based foods. Certainly, we don’t want a fiction-come-alive Soylent Green. Yuk. You carnivores are just one bite away from becoming cannibals.”
Carnivore: “With a clever ad campaign, this new stuff will win over all you vegans. You want products that look like real products. If you see the commercial for Revo Foods’ 3D salmon, you’ll note that this artificial stuff looks like a real salmon filet, at least, looks like a farm-raised salmon filet, no deep color of the wild-caught Alaskan salmon. And why does it have to look like salmon? It’s fungi and plants. Could just as easily mash the stuff up and serve it as a pâté, or smash it flat, add some smoke flavoring and serve it with cheese and bagels.”
Vegan: “Well, it appears to be natural, and it’s made of natural stuff, plants.”
Carnivore: “Natural? Here try this celery. It’s not really celery, just made to look like it. In fact, it’s bacon with the taste removed and color bleached out with some added stringy-stuff, kinda fiber—y.”
Vegan: “You joke, but I don’t have to eat all those hormones forced into animals you cruelly slaughter for food.”
Carnivore: “No, you just want to eat the plants that the animals eat, insecticides and strontium-90, and some 50,000 chemicals that are now in the environment that no one a couple of centuries ago even knew existed. And you want your plants to look just right. Appearance or presentation is everything in fine restaurants and grocery stores. I guess we want what we eat to have a certain look because we’re far removed from the basic survival and subsistence phase of our ancestors. So, now there are vegan burgers; trendy restaurants serve them. They’re made to taste similar to a beef or bison burger, but trust me they don’t, something about texture…”
Vegan: “There’s just no reason to eat an animal when you can eat a plant that, I’ll grant, is made to look like an animal protein. But that’s because we’re still in a transition period in civilization. For centuries our food came directly from the animals, and we got used to their appearance. We all know the expression, ‘That doesn’t look appetizing.’ Well, that tells you that we are drawn to food by more than hunger, smell, and taste. The eyes might be windows to the soul, but they are also windows to the palate and stomach.”
Carnivore: “My point in a way. Why do vegans want to eat something that looks like something they supposedly abhor because of its source? I don’t want to eat a steak that is celery made to look like a steak. And who’s to say that a plant-based diet doesn’t have its drawbacks and dangers? You think, ‘if it’s organically grown, it’s good for me.’ But you might be getting chemicals that Nature never intended for you to eat—sorry for the teleology. And what about all those ‘natural’ toxins in plants?”
Vegan: “Natural toxins?”
Carnivore: “Cyanogenic glycosides in almonds, for example. Furocoumarins in grapefruit and celery; lectins in beans that are in those artificial burgers; solanine in tomatoes; pyrrolizidine alkaloids in green teas…W.H.O. says, ‘Natural toxins not only pose a risk to both human and animal health, but also impact food security and nutrition by reducing people’s access to healthy food.’ ** So, you can point out all the bad things that can be found in my carnivore diet, but you can’t point out all the bad in your own supposedly ‘healthful’ diet.”
Vegan: “But I haven’t seen anyone die prematurely on a vegan diet…”
Carnivore: “Yet, you accept the potential health risks of those toxins that might be reducing the quality of your life. Your brain simply says, ‘Okay, there are two evils. I’m choosing one of them because I’ve been convinced that it’s better for me than the other one. But who did the convincing? On what grounds? If I recall, you used to be an omnivore. You used to love a medium rare steak.”
Vegan: “I realized that I don’t want to kill animals…”
Carnivore: “Noble thought. So, it’s probably an ethical matter. You’ve adopted an moral stand in a sort of religion, one that favors compassion for animals. I get that, especially in these times when social influence from various groups is pervasive, PETA billboards and all…”
Vegan: “Animals have personality, limited, I’ll grant, but identifiable. Betsy the cow raised by some 4H farm girl, has a way about her that differs from Bruno the bull raised by some 4H farm boy. You really should try more vegan recipes because plants don’t have personalities. You infuse your body with fats. Your diet is killing you.”
Carnivore: “And yours isn’t?”
Vegan: “Everyone knows that we should be eating more grains, nuts, seeds, fungi, fruits, and veggies.”
Carnivore: “You’ve been convinced by some very clever propaganda, and you’re about to enter an age of FDA-approved artificial food that someone down the line will discover isn’t the diet panacea you think it is. What we eat is really a product of enculturation, so soon, generations of kids will grow up eating this ‘Soylent Salmon’ and think that this is the way it should taste and look. They will accept food that ‘looks’ like food they have never eaten since eventually, you vegans will ban all animal consumption. And they’ll never realize that the look doesn’t have to be a mirror image of the real stuff. Is there any reason other than tricking the mind to have artificial salmon look like a real salmon filet?”
Vegan: “What should it look like?”
Carnivore: “I don’t know, maybe some colorless, orderless gray paste, as I said, some pâté. You could squeeze it from a tube right onto a cracker or directly into your mouth.”
Vegan: “That’s so unappetizing.”
Carnivore: “So, let me get this straight. We want our food to look like food that it isn’t. If it doesn’t appeal to our aesthetic, then it’s repulsive. And that’s why fine restaurants are so obsessed with ‘presentation.’ But then, we can train ourselves to eat almost anything, like a large rice bug in Thailand. Pop one in your mouth and chew even though its wiggling legs are dangling from your lips as you eat the body.”
Vegan: “Oh! Yuk. [shivers] Did you ever think that you eat a steak that doesn’t look like the animal? If they weren’t so big, you could have cow legs dangling from your mouth.”
Carnivore: “I know that I am far removed from my carnivore ancestors. I go to the grocery store with a preset image of what food should look like. I’ll grant that. Obviously, as a little kid, I learned to eat what my parents ate, and we weren’t farmers or butchers. Once a food becomes part of a society, each successive generation eats it. I think of the story that’s been circulating since the nineteenth century, the story, real or fake, exaggerated or exact, of Robert Gibbon Johnson. In 1820 the good Colonel Johnson, a horticulturist, announced that he would eat a tomato on the steps of his local Salem, New Jersey, courthouse. People gathered to see him die from the poisonous fruit. He didn’t. And people like you and me eat tomatoes today. What becomes acceptable stays acceptable unless there’s a propaganda campaign to change minds. Thus your vegan diet. You’ve been convinced that eating animals is bad for you. And though there is some evidence that your vegan diet contains some benefits, there is no evidence that my diet is any more harmful than eating tomatoes, which, by the way, are probably good for you and can be incorporated into many recipes. But I’m not eating fake salmon even if it looks like salmon.”
Vegan: “Someone had to take the first bite of something to find out if it was good to eat.”
Carnivore: “I wonder whether people who talk to their houseplants eat veggies. I can’t leave you without this anecdote. Years ago I read Roland Huntford’s biography of Fridtjof Wedel-Jarlsberg Nansen, Nobel laureate and explorer. In his exploration of the Arctic he and a partner encountered the harshest conditions for life, and they were running out of food. Fortunately, for them, they had relied for transportation on dogsleds and dogs. They formed an attachment to their dogs as all pet owners do, but in the face of starvation, they began to eat them one by one, the last being especially difficult to kill.”
Vegan: “That’s savage.”
Carnivore: “But it isn’t, is it? They were facing starvation, and the dog was edible. What choice did they have. If they had chosen not to eat the dog, they would have died, and the dog would also have died.”
Vegan: “So, what’s your argument? That we are all just one Donner Pass away from becoming cannibals?”
Carnivore: “No, but that might not be a wild surmise. Essentially, the Nansen story is more about survival than about killing a dog. Nansen went on to become a Nobel Peace Prize winner. He was also an inventor; his Nansen bottle still used by oceanographers. He had also figured a way to build a ship that wouldn’t be crushed if it got trapped in Arctic ice; thus, the Fram survived. That’s all part of a life that wouldn’t have been extended to include his Nobel Prize work if he had he not eaten his dogs, cute and faithful as they might have been.
Vegan: “That’s still repulsive. I would never eat Fido. I would never eat a cat. I can’t envision ever eating turtle soup. Give me my veggies, fruits, nuts, and seeds. You haven’t said anything to convince me otherwise.”
Carnivore: “And maybe that’s why our choice of diet is so indicative of the way our brains work. I know that I can eat your diet if I so choose, but I don’t. You know that you can’t eat my diet and would never choose to eat it.”
Vegan: “Sorry, I don’t see it. I don’t get your point. What is there in what we just said that indicates anything other than just a difference in culture and taste? I belong to a culture of vegans. You belong to a culture of carnivores or omnivores. It’s a choice, isn’t it?”
Carnivore: “But your choice has an ethical or moral component that mine doesn’t have, save for my putting humans above all other organic entities. I, too, wouldn’t ordinarily eat Fido, Kitty, or some Ninja turtle…unless….But I certainly find machine-made food like artificial salmon equally repugnant. So, in some ways even though we differ, we are alike, but consider those toxins you so readily devour in your healthful diet.”
Vegan: “And consider the suffering caused you your diet.”
Carnivore: “Who might have expected a discussion about artificial salmon would end up being a matter of ethics, enculturation, and aesthetics? I’m headed for the steak house. Care to join me?”
Vegan: “No thanks. I’m headed to the produce section of the grocery store.”
*Klausner, Alexandra. 19 Sep. 2023. Does 3D-printed ‘salmon’ taste like the real thing? Supermarket shoppers in one country about to find out. New York Post online at Revo Accessed on September 21, 2023. The story had an accompanying company ad video showing how the product was made and how vibrant young people enjoyed eating it.
**https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/natural-toxins-in-food
***Nansen: The Explorer as Hero. 1997. Great Britain. Gerald Duckworth & Co. Ltd.
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