I just couldn't

[migracja]

On a long bike tour in Poland, a man from a cottage invited me for a chat.

It was dinner, so he offered me something to eat. The conversation took the inevitable turn to vegetarianism. He said: "I just couldn't!", because not eating some totally edible things is a huge sacrifice.

It's interesting when you notice that people brought up in Poland already avoid some perfectly edible things. Few are up for brains or pig ears (a Lithuanian delicacy) or crickets, which can be gotten from a bag like chips. You'll struggle to find people who would eat meat or milk coming from humans. No, biting your nails or being a baby don't count. So what's the deal? Why are some things icky while some other, similar things, are indispensable?

Recently I had a dream about eating a schnitzel. I wasn't happy about it, but otherwise it'd get thrown away. But I never dreamt about drinking human milk, or enjoying octopodes or worms. I reckon dreams reach deeper than our conscious preferences, so this all isn't just a matter of choice. On the other hand, depending on the culture, people find different meals objectionable – some don't accept ants, others horses. There must be a cultural element to it, it's not entirely a biological matter!

So if we brought up someone in a meat-free culture, they would find meat disgusting.

What would such a culture look like? What would the disgust be based on? Would it be based on a feeling of moral inappropriateness, similar to that which we Europeans feel when thinking of eating humans? Or would it be based on not being used to it, similar to what people feel after finishing with meat, or those who never ever bothered to try crustaceans?

And could you leave one culture and enter another? Some vegetarians used to eat meat. There are people who learned to like onions. Preferences can be changed, regardless of what we were brought up with. So why not? Yes, you can learn to be disgusted by meat.

I bet you could, too. And you could also learn to munch on human bones. After all, to a large extent, you're a product of a culture.