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I was reading the excellent Economics blog, Marginal Revolution and browsing through Lee Coppock’s travel tales through Liberia. I was shocked to read the following statement:
“When I was in Liberia last year, just after the siege of Monrovia, I never heard or saw dogs. At that time, the residents had been so poor and desperate that most of the dogs had been eaten.”
This observation was based on the economic plight of an impoverished country where food was scarce. We generally take the three necessities – food, clothing, and shelter – for life granted and would simply consume less or of inferior quality goods in times of distress. But would we drastically alter our food habits to eat food that otherwise would be considered gross? Of course, there is no health hazard involved (or maybe there is) because certain eastern societies do eat creatures that you would never dream of eating. Once, my uncle was in Korea for a week on an assignment and on the first day, he ventured out to eat at one of the roadside stalls. He came back to the hotel, horribly sick and later he found out that he had eaten dog-meat. He survived on fruits for the rest of the week. But imagine if he had nothing that we usually consider edible available, would he have given dog-meat another shot? Hunger can make us do crazy things and act totally irrationally. It almost brings forth an animal instinct from within us. I heard of a tale when four explorers were found dead in underground caves after almost a month of being declared lost. They had eaten off their fingers before they died of starvation. Stories like these may gross you out and you are likely to claim that you would never do that and would chose death than indulge in such acts of depravity. But when we actually face death by starvation, we would eat anything. Thankfully, I haven’t been in such a position yet and hopefully never will be. Until then we can afford to turn up our noses at tales of extreme grossness that make good fodder (no pun intended) for Discovery’s TV show Taboo.
by Patrix | on Tuesday, July 19th, 2005 at 1:00 am | 
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July 19th, 2005 at 4:05 am reply
I would eat I guess.
July 19th, 2005 at 8:51 am reply
Smiley, I hope you will wait a while before you do :)