On Jul 07, 2004, at 5:28 pm, Michael Weis wrote:
> If bugs are such a normal part of certain peoples' diets, what
> happened to
> cause us to be so
> grossed out by them? Is it based purely on
> cultural/sociological/religious
> factors, or is there
> something evolutionary going on?

It has always been my understanding that disgust for animal products is
a natural state, which is unlearnt by us children as we are brought up
to eat certain (safe) parts of certain (safe) animals.  The remaining
parts are seen as disgusting to prevent you eating them later on.  If
this is true, it suggests that either the animals we evolved around
contain more acutely poisonous parts than the plants (many plants are
poisonous but they are not disgusting), or that animal parts spread
disease more easily (rotting fruit is as disgusting as rotting meat,
while a live cockroach is more disgusting than a dead giraffe, even to
someone who has never seen someone eat giraffe).  They are both my
theories (I'm sure someone has the answer if I could be bothered to
google it) but the latter seems more likely.

If the latter is true, I can't help but wonder what stopped us eating a
lot of poisonous plants when starvation pushed us to try new foods.

Ashley