Mystery of Disgust

Why do we love eating lobster but recoll at the thought of boiled roach? Erik D'Amato examines the surprising reasons we find certain things gross.

By Erik D'Amato, published on January 01, 1998 - last reviewed on September 29, 2009

University of Florida anthropologist Marvin Harris, Ph.D., author of several books on eating, notes that food aversion is generally based on habit, and habit on need. "Insects are not on our menu because they are a poor source of proteins and other nutrients--you really have to eat a lot of them--and because we have so many alternative food sources." By taking a given food off the menu for a while, he notes, it becomes alien and suspect: "When you don't eat things, you end up regarding them with disgust."

How do we, as individuals, become narrow in our eating habits? By age seven or eight, children learn--or are taught--what foods to consider disgusting and in what combinations palatable or even scrumptious foods become disgusting--say, when mashed potatoes are coated with chocolate sprinkles. And clearly our experiences condition us to avoid certain foods; just ask anyone who has taken a swig from a beer bottle at a party and found it fouled with a soggy cigarette butt. A bad experienced like this can ruin our enjoyment of a potential food of beverage for a lifetime. But even beyond such incidents, there is a logic to our narrow eating habits, according to Alexandra Logue, dean of the School of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Baruch College and author of The Psychology of Eating and Drinking, "Liking things that are familiar also means liking things that you've eaten and that haven't made you sick."

However, says Haidt, this does not explain why, in a culture of abundance, we choose to be so picky. "I don't think you can understand human or cultural food choices--especially about meat--by thinking about rationality and practical matters. A lot of it follows a symbolic logic." For example, Haidt notes that Kosher rules make sense if you know an animal's habits. "Any animal that eats garbage or hangs around corpses or feces is likely to be considered disgusting."

Moreover, we tend to avoid foods that call to mind our own beastly pedigree. So there go the heads, eyes, lips, testicles, and so forth--everything that reminds us of us. And the animals that we do eat tend to be shrouded by layers of disguise and deception: cooked even when safety and tastes doesn't require it, called names that obscure their origins--"veal," "venison," and "pork" instead of cow, deer, and pig--and hidden while alive from those about to chow down.

Think of it: freshly-picked strawberries are great, but who wants to fry an egg laid in front of you or broil a steak hacked from a cow you've just seen slaughtered?

Far from being merely silly, however, our weak stomachs and obsessions can deprive us of the diversity of foodstuffs our bodies need. We tend to fear new foods, even those that can contribute to good health, notes George Armelagos, a professor of anthropology at Emory University and the co-author of Consuming Passions. Yet virtually every culture eats something that other cultures would find intolerable. The best approach for the culinary cautious, according to Elisabeth Rozin and others, is to integrate these potentially strange foods into the diet by preparing them in a familiar way. The Chinese, Armelagos says, have been especially successful at this by adding each new ingredient into their stir-frys. "We, he adds, "do it with past."

But if disgust sometimes hinders the search for variety, says Armelagos, it can also drive it. "Try eating the same simple, bland dish--plain white rice or mashed potatoes--for a week. By the end it will seem as repulsive as almost anything you can imagine."

In fact, for all our famed rigidity, American are beginning to loosen up. Two decades ago, who would have thought that yogurt and sushi--one, a gloppy concoction of milk and live bacteria, the other raw fish wrapped in seaweed--would become dietary staples for millions of Americans? Indeed, the American melting pot is accelerating this trend: a recent visit to a supermarket in New York's Chinatown found scores of non-Chinese shoppers cautiously scanning products that at some earlier time might have caused them to call the police--giant clams with "feet" the size of cucumbers, ox penises, duck tongues, squid juice, chicken uteruses, and, beckoning from the front window with welcoming smiles, flattened and cured whole pig faces.

Before you shout "Never!," think about how grow some of our own delicacies would seem if we have not been conditioned to exalt them. Take honey. We enjoy it so much that we call loved ones by its name. But what is it? A gooey substance secreted by insects. And as for the much-worshiped lobster, just three words: giant sea roach.

So if you find yourself at the banquet when the mystery dish arrives, go ahead and dig in--the only thing you have to fear is fear itself. Hell, you might even like it. After all, someone there thinks it's the best part.

--E.D.

Photo Credits

Page 8: G. Jacobs, Stennis Space Center/Geosphere Project/Science Photo Library

Page 9: Chip Simons (top), Paramount/ Neal Peters Collection (bottom), AP Photo/Mark Lennihan (left)

Page 10: Allen Wallace/Photonica

Page 12: Carl Vanderschuit/FPG International

Page 14: Chip Simons

Page 16: Superstock (top), Telegraph Colour Library/FPG International

Page 18: Paul Barton/The Stock Market

Page 20: Stephen P. Parker/Photo Researchers, Inc. (top), Steven Needham/Envision (left), Custom Medical Stock Photo Inc. (bottom)

Page 22: Charles D. Winters/Photo Researchers, Inc. (top), Chris Everard/ Tony Stone Images

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