Are You What You Eat?

(Written for the pimps of the BPO industry, once more)

So you’ve eaten sushi, Italian, Goan, American and think you’re more or less a gourmet? If you think you’ve eaten it all, think again.

Casu marzu (thanks Bill), a delicacy from Sardinia, Italy, is a cheese that can be harmful if consumed without proper protective gear. The cheese is made from sheep’s milk that is allowed to ferment further with the help of the larvae of the cheese fly, Piophila casei. The larvae cause the cheese to become semi-liquid and patrons like to consume the cheese at this stage – with or without the maggots. Since these maggots tend to leap into the air up to 15cm when disturbed, people are advised to wear protective eye gear when consuming it. The Italian government, for its part, has banned the sale and consumption of this cheese. Apparently, if ingested, the maggot can traverse the intestine unharmed by the stomach’s acids, and cause a range of intestinal disorders, including causing stomach lesions. Why then, you may ask, would anyone in their right minds want to eat a food this harmful?

Well, then you should rightly ask, why is rat meat being sold as freely as chicken is elsewhere, in Bihar? While the Italian government hastens to stop its people from harming themselves by eating decomposing cheese, the Bihar government seems intent on convincing people of the merits of rat meat. The social welfare minister sees this as a way to boost income for the poor and tries to convince people, a little desperately one might think, of the wholesomeness of rat meat in the diet: “Rats have almost no bones and are quite rich in nutrition. People at large don't know this cuisine fact but gradually they are catching up,” says the principal secretary of the state’s welfare department as he adds, “we can save about half of our food grain stocks by catching and eating rats.” If you can’t beat ‘em, eat ‘em?

All of this isn’t much if you consider that there are entire sects of people in India who believe that a glass of fresh bovine urine first thing in the morning is just what the doctor ordered. The bovine urine is in certain cases substituted with one’s own, as in urine therapy. Compared to this, the highly inedible yak’s cheese of the Northeast seems enticing.

If you eat at a roadside joint, it’s true that you may not be a hundred percent certain that the chicken you’re eating isn’t a cleverly disguised crow, instead. And not to put anyone off, but there have been ‘disturbing reports’ of strange guests in the food at our own cafeteria! I guess this is what makes us braver than even the contestants on AXN; they do it for the cash prize, we do it as a daily battle for survival!