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Thursday, February 15, 2001
As an 18-year-old who had never strayed far from the farm, one of the first sociological words I learned as a college freshman was ethnocentrism. Calling someone ethnocentric was an insult indeed.
As I remember the definition, being ethnocentric was judging another person's culture by the standards of your own. The dictionary definition is more blunt: the attitude that one's own ethnic group, nation or culture is superior. However you slice and dice it, in college or middle age, it's being small-minded, an indication of an uneducated rube.
In today's lexicon, many comments are no longer "politically correct." When it comes to race, religion, cultural traditions, even sexual mores, it is cool not to judge -- or misjudge -- others because "We weren't brought up that way."
Unless it's food. Food may be the last bastion of ethnocentrism. All over America, even in culturally rich Pittsburgh, people are heard to say, "Ewww, I'd never eat that!"
And nobody calls them culinary bigots.
Learning about food is always an education -- sometimes one we don't want to embrace. On my first (OK, only) visit to France, my husband, Ace, another couple and I were staying in the Loire Valley. Our small hotel was a modest affair, the kind of place where the toilette was down the hall. If you didn't step lively on your emergency trip in the middle of the night, the light -- its switch was on a timer -- would go out before you got there.
There was a fabulous restaurant just downstairs, where we enjoyed one of the best meals we had in France -- inexpensive, too.
The hotel was in the middle of this river town, where we had traveled to see a chateau. (We were visiting castles, not wineries, odd since the male half of our traveling companion couple is a wine connoisseur.) Our room looked out onto an alley.
"Ace, look at that great sign," I said excitedly.
Outlined in neon, the sign was an artistic portrayal of a horse's head. I've always loved horses. I started riding when I was 2 and have always imagined myself as the Belle Starr of the suburbs.
It took Ace until morning to screw up the courage to tell me the store in the alley wasn't a riding haberdashery or a saddlery, but a market for horse meat.
Eat horse? Never! Ethnocentrism had reared its ugly head and emerged from my own mouth.
We had another near miss with horseflesh that hit ever closer to home. In our own pasture, to be precise. We owned a wonderful old Quarter Horse gelding who was living out the good life on our Oregon acreage. Dusty K. King, handed down by my sister when she wanted to switch from aging buckskin to youthful Palomino, was smart. A paragon of her good training, Dusty once won a pleasure class after the judge jumped on and got a blue-ribbon ride. He had a civilized trot and a rocking horse canter.
He came when we called -- as long as it was dinnertime. One day he didn't, and I spotted him standing out by the fence. I whistled and he whinnied, but he didn't budge. I found his leg caught in the barbed wire fence. Our silly young filly might have torn herself apart to run to the oat bucket, but Dusty waited patiently for me to extricate him.
One day, a passer-by noticed Dusty grazing and stopped to ask our neighbor if he might be for sale. "I need a horse for my mother-in-law," the man claimed. He also inquired about her bay gelding.
"I don't think he's for sale," our neighbor said, "and neither is mine."
The man never inquired about Dusty's training. Suspicious.
Later, our newspaper learned the guy was buying up horses to be shipped to France. They would be slaughtered on the boat en route. I cringed in horror. Not Dusty! I reluctantly admitted to my neighbor it was no wonder our horses caught his evil eye -- they were certainly roly-poly horseflesh-on-hooves.
Our newsroom was also jarred by a newspaper story in a nearby port town. It was a glowing report from the Humane Society about the generosity of the Asian sailors who had "adopted" so many dogs. Turned out . . . well, you can imagine.
We've all come in contact with food that seems suspect, if not downright inedible. I enjoyed escargot before I learned it was snails. Would restaurants sell as much caviar if the menu listed fish eggs? We all draw a line on our dinner plates. Scrapple, maybe, but not squirrel brains. Alligator, yes; snake, no.
Last year viewers watched in horror when "Survivor" castaways caught, cooked and ate a rat. Even seemingly less revolting fare brings on comments of "I guess you'd have to grow up eating (fill in the blank) 1) lutefisk 2) goetta 3) haggis 4) chitterlings 5) head cheese."
Even greens, ramps and Irish soda bread make some people's "I'd never eat that!" lists. Among many poor people, "everything but the squeal" is no joke. Yesterday's survival food is today's holiday tradition.
Would I eat horse meat? Can I understand an Icelander who watches his children trot off on an Icelandic pony in the afternoon and then chows down on "saddle of colt" at dinner? Can I -- can anyone? -- ever transcend ethnocentrism and bring some understanding to the table where unfamiliar food is served?
Can we stop being rude about other people's food? We can try.
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