Gee - I just can't seem to agree that the disgust is a natural state.  I
can remember friends and I eating dirt, tasting worms (and not minding
it) and other things without having much bad thought about it.  However,
when parents saw us doing such things they taught us to avoid them and
made disgusting sounds, etc.  Fortunately, I did not believe them and
maintained a healthy like for any and all foods, including dirt, grass,
insects, etc. And I resent, for all of the insects, the idea that a live
cockroach is more disgusting than a dead giraffe - harrumph!  LOL

-=mark=-

Ashley Moran wrote:
> 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
> .
>