Are You What You Eat?

Found this little guy next to several large tubs of turtles in Nam Dae Moon, Korea. Now, my first impulse was to think of the two pet turtles that I had when I was a kid. You know, "oh how cute, they keep pet turtles..." However, they were next the the vat of roasted silk worm larvae and dried octopus and, at some point, reality just had to set in. They were destined for a pot of soup on someone's dinner table. Now, I'm pretty open minded but I hate seeing the little guys/gals there staring at me. It makes it hard to get the pet-thing out of your head. It's even worse when they are puppies or kittens staring at you. Of course, you can't buy them all and even if you could, what are you going to do with them then?

So, are we right to judge other cultures by what they eat? Do they judge us by what we eat? Pigs are considered filthy and off limits by Muslim cultures. Cows are sacred in India. Shellfish is forbidden in the old testament. If we can eat cows, pigs and lobsters, other cultures have every right to eat turtles and puppies. It's not about who's right. Each culture has been surviving on their local foods for hundreds if not thousands of years. Of course, I can still choose not to eat some of those local foods when I'm there if that meal happens to look a little too much like a childhood memory.