In Defense of Offal

You may have thought I was joking in my last post about digging in to a steaming bowl of spinal cord. While I do admit to using the line for the sake of humor, the truth is, I would be more than happy to chow down on such a rare dish if I were confidant that it was well prepared. 

You may or may not know that traditionally, the Chinese diet includes all edible or nutrient carrying parts of an animal. This would include all organs, facial parts, tendons, and genitalia. Of course, the majority of North Americans out there, as well as a growing number of younger Chinese, find this concept 'weird' or 'gross'. This 'civilized' segment of the world, is nauseated at the idea of eating an animal's ear, nose, spleen, or tendon. To them, the only reasonable part of an animal to consume is a thin slice of muscle, cut into some sort of nice rectangular shape, or reduced further into little cubes or strips. They must have their meat dressed to appear like anything but what it is: a piece of dead animal.

Of course, anyone who eats bologna or hot dogs--which is pretty much everyone in the aforementioned group--consumes the majority of these animal parts as well, but they are either unaware of this fact or prefer not to know. Perhaps they imagine that Oscar Mayer harvests its famous product from the wiener tree, or that McNuggets are simply formed from some extra tender cut of chicken breast. To me, it is a very simple matter of accepting what these processed foods are made of, realizing they taste good, putting two and two together and saying, hey, these animal parts must taste pretty good too. I see it is as part of the process of maturing as a human being, of opening oneself up to new experiences--much like traveling to unfamiliar places, or reading books about unfamiliar topics. When I was five years old I thought green pepper was disgusting, but I tried it again and eventually I grew to like it. The same goes for alcohol, strong cheeses, fatty meats, and yes, organs. It's all good.

There are those who refuse to accept as valid, what is foreign to their experience. The diets of such people, are guided by what their families prepared when they were children, just as their values and ideas about the world are primarily guided by what they heard at the dinner table. I try not to be judgmental about how others live their lives, and I have been guilty in the past of the sins I now accuse others of. As long as you're not Jeffrey Daumer, I don't really care what you eat. But when I hear words like 'gross', 'weird' or 'disgusting' directed at the diets of other cultures (as I often do, living here in Taiwan), I can't help but get my back up. It is a subtle way of claiming that these cultures are somehow less civilized than one's own. 

I see the opposite as true. If one is to eat meat, and actually considered this choice philosophically, it seems the honorable and reasonable thing to do is to eat all parts of the animal. Furthermore, one should be able to kill an animal and cut it up. Rather than seeing this as a disgusting chore, it should be seen as respecting what the animal was when it was alive. If one cannot do any of the above, isn't there a certain amount of hypocrisy at work?

So as promised, here it is, the recipe for spinal cord soup. Copied from healthy-chinese-recipe.com:

Spinal Cord with Lotus Seed Soup
 [with obvious grammatical errors corrected]

Ingredients:
500g pig spine (mainly eat the spinal cord)
250g lotus seed
1 tsp salt
Procedure:
1. Clean pig's spine (be careful don't let the spinal cord come out).
2. Marinate lotus seeds in warm water for 30mins.
3. Add the above 2 materials in a casserole dish, add 1000g water.
4. Cook 2 hours at low heat.
5. Add salt to taste, serve
Serving Method: Drink soup, eat lotus and spinal cord (some will come out after cooking) and drink the soup. A cup of soup with spinal cord inside and 30g lotus seeds per serving. Serve as side dish at lunch. 2 times a week. 4-8 times will see the effect.
Benefical Function: Nourish blood and tonic kidney. Suitable for spermatorrhea, paleness, weak limbs and fatigue, waist and knees soreness and sore muscles.



 This recipe comes from a Chinese health site , and was listed primarily as a remedy for Spermatorrhea. If you are unfamiliar with the term, as I myself was five minutes ago, it means involuntary ejaculation; also known as cumming-in-your-pants. Happily, this is not a problem of mine, but if it is for you, treat yourself to a nice big bowl of spine soup. You might even like it.

The Great Debate on Yankee Brains and Spinal Cords

Whoops, I guess we haven't mentioned anything to do with Taiwan in about 30 posts. How about this from an article in the October 28th edition of the Taipei Times:

Source: Taipei Times

Under the terms of the new accord, US bone-in beef, ground beef, intestines, brains, spinal cords and processed beef from cattle younger than 30 months that have not been contaminated with “specific risk materials” will be allowed to enter Taiwan starting on Nov. 10.

At present, Taiwan allows imports of US boneless beef from cattle younger than 30 months that do not contain “specific risk materials.”

[Taiwan (AIT) Director William Stanton] said yesterday that 1,034 people out of 23 million Taiwanese lost their lives in scooter accidents last year.

“So when you look at the risk, statistically, [in contrast to] no cases of mad cow disease [reported in the US], well, one might conclude that one should stop driving motor scooters because of the risk [of the accidents],” he said.'

Of course I'm excited to be able to once again tuck into a nice steaming bowl of Yankee spinal cord (recipe to follow). But in truth, I take no stand on the matter of whether to allow these products into Taiwan or not. I tend not to consider my risk of contracting Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease when I eat a hamburger. Clearly, the vast majority of those protesting the import of these products have some economic stake in keeping them out, and as such, should be taken with a grain of salt. I also have no doubt that Taiwanese beef, in one way or another, poses equal or greater risks to my health than its American counterpart. What I find interesting in the article though, is the rhetorical idiocy of the Director of the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT), William Stanton. Check out his air-tight logic that people die on scooters, and Taiwan doesn't ban them, so what business do they have banning American brains and spinal cords.

Ya right, cow brains and scooters ... pretty much the same thing. Guess we'd better let them in. Of course he could have extended his arguments to cars and roads in general, which are also the cause of multiple deaths in the country. How about fatty foods, surely they raise the mortality rate as well. If we allow those, we'd better send in the brains. As far as that goes, since the government of Taiwan allows scooters to wreak carnage on the population, I guess there's really no argument for banning any product based on safety concerns. Let's bring back lead paint, asbestos, and all those toys from the seventies with the temptingly swallowable little pieces.

Keep in mind that AIT is the de facto U.S. embassy in Taiwan. And this nonsensical logic comes from the de facto American Ambassador. I'm curious as to what exactly are the qualifications for this position.  Stanton was the deputy chief of mission at the US embassy in South Korea, and before that worked for the U.S. State Department in Beijing. He has only held the position of Director of AIT since March 2009. Check out this post about Stanton from The View from Taiwan and the associated article from the Taipei Times. Apparently, not only is he less than Platoesque in his logic, he has also been accused of being 'excessively pro-China' in his views. According to the unnamed sources from The Taipei Times, Stanton, during his time in Beijing, exhibited a pattern of impeding or blocking negative reports on China from being sent back to Washington.

So the questions arise, 'Who is William Stanton and why is he here?'

Cocaine Consumption by Country

In the last post, my jest concerning the cocaine consumption of Brazilians prompted me to actually check the facts. According to the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime (UNODC) my flippant remark was in fact deeply erroneous. Brazilians rank far lower on the cocaine consumption scale than nearly all of the countries in South and Central America. A mere 0.4 percent of the population of Brazil between the ages of 15 and 65 use cocaine. Who do we actually find topping the charts? Those damn Yanks win again with 2.8 percent of the population. The Spaniards finish a close second with 2.7 percent. Canada once again under-achieves with a lukewarm 2.4 percent. I've had our cartographers here at the Donkey prepare the following line graph based on the data provided by UNODC.

Gastromaps: Alcohol

 It is not often we relate the subject of food with innovative cartography. But thanks to the people (or person) over at Strange Maps, I've been able to compile a nice collection of bizarre geographic representations of data laid out in gastronomical proportions. In this first installment of Gastromaps, we will limit ourselves to cartographic representations related to alcohol.

Our first map details the average number of liters of red wine drunk per capita in the countries of the world in 2006.

Luxemburg wins the race with a respectable 5.91 liters while Brazil comes in last at 0.l7 liters. The Brazilians shouldn't feel too bad about this poor showing though. They will be cheered to know that they came first in per capita cocaine consumption. Various line graphs are available to illustrate this point.

Next we have a map drawn up by none other than the late great Freddy Heineken (1923-2002), of the Heineken brewing empire. Heineken believed the European Union would function more smoothly were it to be divided into a series of smaller states based along the lines of ethnic homogeneity. His logic was that a larger number of smaller states (populations 5-10 million) would be more conducive to reaching balanced consensus than a small club of uber-powerful states. Obviously this proposal is merely academic and could never be implemented, but kudos to the beer billionaire for directing his energies to such lofty and abstract pursuits. I'm sure he would have been a formidable opponent on the Risk board.

Finally, you've got to love this advertisement for Absolut Vodka, depicting a redrawn map of the United States and Mexico. The map loosely depicts the borders which existed prior to the Mexican-American War (1846-1848) in which the Mexicans were forced to cede nearly half of their territory. The Mexican ad campaign was eventually picked up by the American media prompting calls for a boycott of the Swedish liquor. Had to have bumped up sales south of the border though.