Has the eating of strange foods gone too far?
Sure, Andrew Zimmern might be brave, but does he really know what he’s putting in his mouth? While the Bizarre Foods guru (or his producer) usually provides a bit of background on what he’s eating, you have to wonder, is it considered a normal food in whatever “exotic locale” the show is currently being filmed in?
Phil Lees of The Last Appetite points out that you can’t always believe what people tell you.
A journalist named Sean Thomas found himself in Cambodia. He penned an “eating weird food” article for a U.K. newspaper. Aside from the fact that his article is rife with the gross over-generalizations typical of a parachute journalist, Lees, an old hand in Cambodia, points out that Thomas ate some things that were not meant to be eaten. The poor guy chowed down on a dried frog and compared it to a eating a dead mermaid. The problem: in Cambodia dried frogs are not meant to be eaten as a snack. According to Lees, “Dried frog is for medicinal purposes and occasionally, a rice wine additive. Complaining about the way it tastes is a little like eating a few spoonfuls of straight cloves, then writing them off as useless as a foodstuff.” One has to wonder if this is just an isolated incident or if more of the “I’m eating strange food” shticks are also ill-informed.