Cow Tongue?!

I find different foods to be very interesting. Food is the one thing that all humans have in common. Everybody around the world eats food. What every one is eating is what makes food so interesting. I often find myself watching shows on the food channel about bizarre foods around the world. I try my hardest to have an open mind with food and to try everything at least once. However, that is not the mindset of everybody around the country. Its very apparent when you walk into a grocery store. The meat section has the standard parts of the cow, the pig, and the chicken. We don't find the head or the hooves of the pig, nor do we commonly see the tongue of a cow. All things that are normal in other cultures around the globe. However, i feel that its merely the thought of the food that is mentally blocking many people from accepting these foods. If we didn't have to think about what we were eating, we wouldn't mind as much. Take hot dogs for example, They are made with all the left over parts that didn't make it to the butcher's shelf. Since they are just called hot dogs, we don't have to think about what they are made with, so we eliminate the problem of knowing. Just like when I was younger and my dad brought home some burritos for dinner. He told me that he got me a steak burrito. Of course, i dug in, and about half way through it, he mentioned that really it was a lengua burrito. Lengua is spanish for tongue. At the time I couldn't finish the rest of it just because of the thought of eating a cow's tongue. I thought this was a perfect example of how tastes are culturally bound and shaped. In Mexico, cow tongue is a normal part of the cow to eat. Had I not had the mental block, I would have enjoyed the entire tongue burrito!

Zimmerman, Andrew. Bizarre Favorites. 2010. Bizarre Foods. Travel Channel. Web. 12 Apr. 2010.s