You know that meme where it’s got all these animals lined up left to right and the message is “where do you draw the line”? I’d think probably just before this animal is a good starting place
I kind of agree… I’ve been around these things, and they are incredibly stupid.
I guess I’d draw the line around them purely because in western culture these are pets… But I think practically speaking these are a lot better than actual pigs, which are very intelligent.
We have very strange eating habits when you really think about it.
It always amazed me that the anti-abortion people and the vegetarian people had basically no overlap. Supposedly “pro-life” with no exceptions… unless it’s this pig I want to eat. But that fetus with encephalopathy? That baby deserves every second of his tortuous, miserable life. All 38 hours of it.
I have a friend who is both anti-abortion and vegetarian. She's not the most logical person all the time, but she's really consistent on this one. I vigorously disagree with her anti-abortion stance, but I admire her consistency, if that makes sense.
Guinea pigs were bred as livestock by the Inca in South America. They used to be a dish reserved for nobility but now us plebs have access to Cuy in the supermarket. 😃
That they would be reserved for nobility seems like it must be wrong. These are tiny animals that wouldn’t take much effort to raise. A small family could easily eat one. Just grab a pair and start raising them.
It’s not like a cow where you need large amounts of grazing land and then when you kill it, you have huge amounts of meat to deal with.
This is why animals in English have three names. One for the animal, raised by the commoners with Germanic origin (cow). One for the meat, eaten by the wealthy with French origin due to the Norman conquest (beef). And one used in scientific contexts coming from Greek or Latin (bovine)
My guess would be the meat to prep work ratio. Smaller game seems like it would be more effort to skin and clean vs. larger ones like turkeys and deer. Just a guess however, anyone know for sure?
It’s surely not any different than a squirrel, ground hog, or wild rabbit. People eat those all the time. Even meat rabbits seem comparable in size to a guinea pig. You can also just put them in a stew.
Also, as I mentioned, larger animals are also more difficult because you can’t just kill one for dinner. If you kill a deer, you have to process it to preserve it or share it with a larger community. Ain’t no freezers.
Side anecdote: My grandfather, as a 9 year old, used to go squirrel hunting and bring them home for his mom to cook. Before you go thinking this is some redneck thing, it was long island, less than 50 miles from Manhattan. It would have been during the war though.
In hindsight my hypothesis seems pretty silly now yeah. Squirrel and rabbit aren’t really considered rich people food here in Pennsylvania, that’s for sure :P Rabbit is delicious. Still have yet to try squirrel as I don’t know any hunters (I’d gotten the rabbit from a farmer’s market)
Your gramps was a champ. The most useful thing I ever brought home around 9 years old was wild garlic.
Maybe not “reserved” but eaten less frequent? Let’s say a poor peasant during that time owned 10 guinea pigs and had the choice to either slaughter one of the little guys for one single meal, or sell some to the higher-ups and buy less expensive food that will last for a week or two, then it would make sense if the peasants ate less of them than nobility even if it wasn’t explicitly forbidden.
When you've got not fridge and the environment isn't always condusive to curing and preserving meat, it's very handy to raise an animal that's a smaller amount of meat (say one meal) than something like a goat, pig, chicken or cow.
They breed easily and rapidly, eat scraps and vegetation that humans normally don't. So folks keep a herd of Guinea pigs and just slaughter whatever they need for a meal.
It's very clever and much more environmentally friendly than clearing forest for larger animals.
Some places have their own “weird” delicacy that throws people off. Dogs in Yuan, maggot cheese in Sardinia, undeveloped ducks or stewed frogs in the Philippines, and so on. So, I’m not going to knock this at all.
Tbf, I’ve read about this as a teen a long time ago (GQ) and was fascinated by the irony of having the guinea pig in a cartoony sketch on the wrapper while seeing their corpse through the plastic.
This absolutely crossed my mind earlier today when I ate rice and shrimp that I had to peel for myself. Their long antennae things and little legs made me think of the time I heard someone say that they’re the cockroach of the sea. They may be, but I still ate the shit out of them and they were absolutely delicious.
Lobsters are the cockroaches. Shrimp are more like, crickets maybe in the pecking order of the food chain and shell density. But basically all the shellfish with exoskeletons are super similar to bugs. Crabs are clearly basically spiders.
For me, I’d have a hard time eating whole bugs because it’s all shell and little meat, and I imagine the texture to be off-putting. Also, I’ve kept crickets and they’re so stinky.
I mean, there’s vocal people everywhere. Without fail, when I see a picture or a video of a cow or pig being cute, there’s at least 10 people thinking they’re the height of comedy by saying “oh yummy, steak/bacon”.
Ah, well maybe certian parts of North America. I used to work with a guy who ate seagull eggs (from a small fishing outport in NFLD) and appartently they are not much different from chiken eggs. TIL.
Guinea Pig is on the BBC’s list of 50 foods to eat before you die. Or it was when I started eating my way through it years ago. I think it’s the only one I haven’t had.
I love visiting NYC, but you couldn’t pay me to live there. I have friends I stay with when I’m there, and they take 45-minute showers because that’s the only time they get any real privacy.
My rent was $2,100/month when I lived there a few years ago. Nice place, updated kitchen and bathroom, quiet, close to public transit, multiple grocery stores in walking distance. That’s steep for sure but nowhere near as insane as people make it out to be. Also I could’ve rented a place for like 1,600 but I shelled out for the nicer one. It’s really not that bad.
My friends have a big four-bedroom in Brooklyn, but of course, there are four people in it. They love it, but I just couldn’t do it. I love having my nice big condo to myself.
Oh for sure it is stupid expensive don’t get me wrong. But the way people talk you’d think it is $4k/month for a tiny dump, not 2100 for a pretty nice place that I decided to pay extra for. Also pay tends to be higher which takes the edge off a bit. Just saying it isn’t quite as bad as people make it out to be.
These days I’m paying 1200 for a dump in a medium sized city and often think I’d be much happier paying 2100 in NYC. So there’s that.
There are one bedrooms and studios for < $2k in brooklyn. They might not be fancy, but they exist.
That might be more than other places, but you have to factor in you don’t need a car here. So that’s $10k/year saved (though I think it’s about $2k/year if you max out your transit rides before they become free every week).
You’d have to pay me a shit load of money for me to consider living somewhere that isn’t walkable.
I’m fortunate to live in a part of Kansas City that’s eminently walkable, and when the streetcar expansion is finished in a year and a half, I’ll be a block away from it, but the regional transit here in this city has always been very good. We’ve had a high-speed bus line through the main corridor of the city for almost 20 years now.
The bigger plus is that public transit here is fare-free.
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