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Comment by aspyct | Hacker News Reader

It's the first time I see a picture of edible meat and feel repulsed by it.

Interesting.

Bit of background about me: I really like horses. They're friends to me. I see why people eat them, but that just sounds wrong, just writing it.

I... I guess I understand why vegetarians don't like meat, now.

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I’m not here to judge anyone for eating meat, despite being vegetarian, but I agree with the other comments here, if you eat cows or pigs or sheep or chickens then why not cockatoos or horses or dogs (or feral cats, which are consumed in some parts of Australia)?

I don’t eat any of these creatures, but nevertheless, I just don’t get why certain animals seem to be culturally off limits for those who do eat meat. Is it just because cows, pigs and sheep are not animals you get to pat very often?

Yeah, I think that's why.

I imagine it can feel strange to eat what you form an emotional bond with.

Yup, pretty much, yeah...

I mean cows are made of meat and horses are made of .... bone I guess?

It's mainly perceptual. I don't begrudge people wanting to eat random animals, but I'm not going to go out of my way to get or try it.

I think it's because some animals are raised for their meat, and some not, and they're different animals in different parts of the world. Similarly, some animals are hunted or foraged for food and others aren't.

I think that kind of ...crystallises? into eating taboos. So for example, where I'm from, in Greece, it's traditional (particularly in the islands of Crete and Corfu) for people to go out and gather snails after the rain to cook them and eat them. Famously, the French also eat snails. But offer snails to an Englishman? Yeeeew! Snails!

And let's not forget that entire millions of people don't eat specific kinds of meat because it's forbidden by their religions: faithful jewish and muslim folks don't eat pig meat, Hindus don't eat cow meat (unless the cow must be put down because it broke a leg, if I understand correctly) and so on.

And then there's matters of personal preference. In Greece, organ meats are considered a delicacy, but I have at least two friends who will not touch them and will probably puke if they smell them cooking.

When I was a kid we'd walk down to the shore during low tide and throw big rocks on the beach below the tide line. When water squirted up out of the sand, we'd dig there to find a type of small clam that sprays water. Then we'd literally steam and eat them. You are supposed to soak them in water to let them filter out the sand for a day, but generally we just dealt with a little grit for the immediate satisfaction.

Not the case for me at least. In Belgium we can still find horsemeat, I think, though it's hard.

In fact, one of our national draft breeds, the "Ardennais", has been saved because we were eating them after WWII.

No, it's really me absolutely unable to eat friends.

What do Greeks do with liver and hearts?

We only eat the ugly animals. Obligatory Denis LEary:

"And what are you? ... I'm an otter ... And what do you do? ... I swim around and do cute little human things with my hands. ... You're free to go. And what are you? ... I'm a cow. ... No you're not! You're a baseball mitt! Get in the back of the truck!!!"

I used to eat meat (I don’t anymore but the reasons are irrelevant), and have eaten dog (once) and a bunch of other “atypical for the US” animals (usually just once or twice). But even then, when I was thinking that most of the cultural limits around eating particular animals were arbitrary, I still worried that I wasn’t just eating some dog, maybe I was eating someone’s dog. In practice, the probability was extremely low (and it was still possible even for cows, though even less likely) but the seeming category overlap in the case of dogs added psychological friction.

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