We live in a world filled with people who have a total inability to see eye to eye on just about anything: from political issues, to whether socks and sandals are an affront to all that is good, to what invisible deity we prostrate ourselves before, we love a good squabble. However, there can be great value in taking a moment to reflect on the things we do share. While human culture and history are littered with strife and conflict, there are a few things we can all pretty much agree are A+. In that category, sex, sleeping in, and food all come to mind. In that spirit, let’s take a dive into some of the more obscure and outlandish facts about what we chow down upon. That’s right, our food; sometimes grotesque, sometimes mystifying, occasionally deliciously bizarre... and bizarrely delicious.
That’s right, folks, the Fig Newtons your mom called a "cookie," and you called, "God, these again?" are the only cookie filled with dead wasp meats. When a female fig wasp hears the clarion call of her biological clock, she enters an unripe fruit and lays her eggs, pollinating it as she goes, and eventually dies trapped within the fleshy enclosure. Her wingless male children are born inside the fruit first. They fertilize the still unborn females, dig escape tunnels for them, and perish. The new generation of female wasps are then born pregnant inside the fig. They exit through the tunnels excavated by their brother-husbands and go off to start the magical and repulsive cycle again. Truly, nature at its most incestuous.
While many of us love a good chicken tikka masala, the spices used in Indian foods can seem obscure in the extreme, asafoetida (ass-uh-fetid-uh) being the prime example. Some religious sects prohibit the consumption of onions and garlic (pardon me, but fuck that noise), as they are said to inflame passions or some such nonsense. An alternative that’s now widely used in many Indian dishes is what’s colloquially known as the Devil’s dung. It’s a resin (sort of a sap-type deal) that’s extracted from the root of an herb, dried, and powdered. The smell of uncooked asafoetida is so bad that the only time I’ve ever bought it, the specialty spice shop I visited kept it double bagged, in a tightly sealed jar, in the back room, on the furthest shelf up. The fragrance it produces is redolent of sulfur, sickly farts, and death. When cooked in a pan with a bit of butter, the smell blooms into one of oniony, garlicky goodness. Why one wouldn’t just use actual onions and garlic is perhaps a mystery that I will never comprehend, likewise to how in the hell someone was desperate enough to try and use this as a spice in the first place.
If you’ve ever seen a nature program where a mammal uses it’s stank to claim territory, or have had the unfortunately odorous experience of dealing with a cat who shows their love by pissing on your laundry, you’ll be unsurprised that beavers do something similar. Beavers of both genders secrete a chemical via their castor sacs (next door to their anal glands) that’s used to tell other beavers, "Bugger off, this spot is mine." The interesting difference here is that beaver butt juice (known as castoreum) was once widely used in an array of human products, including perfumes, vanilla extracts, and a popular Swedish schnapps called "Báverhojt" (literally translated as "Beaver shout," which is one way to put it, I suppose). While not as popular as it once was (mainly due to the inconvenience of, uh, milking a beaver’s anal secretions), it still makes its way into foods and fragrances today. So, who knows if you’ve ever had a pudding laced with beaver ass sauce? Nobody, that’s who.
While we’ve all heard the "fact" (a total myth, which may come as a relief to many of you) that humans swallow an average of 8 spiders a year in our sleep, we don’t often consider the other bugs we may or may not know we’re chowing down on. Despite the rising popularity of cricket chips (a bland and mealy disappointment, in my experience), most people would prefer not to voluntarily consume bugs. Bad news for you then, because if you’ve ever eaten anything that uses Natural Red 4 dye, you’ve been ingesting powdered insects. This grisly preparation of pulverized Hemiptera is used to make the carmine colorant used in sausages, alcoholic drinks, cheddar cheese, cookies, and more. The next time you’re enjoying a suspiciously red jam, stop and appreciate the creative spirit of the food scientists that crafted your insect-laden treat.
Despite hyperbolic parables expounding on how avocado toast is a sinister representation of everything wrong with kids these days, most of us will scarf down good guacamole with gusto. How the avocado has managed not to go extinct is a bit of a mystery, however. Everyone knows that plants make seeds, and seeds need some way to spread. If a seed falls too close to a parent, it will be overshadowed and outcompeted for light and nutrients. To facilitate the spread of seeds, animals are often seduced into being unwitting dispersers of them via the alimentary canal. Sometimes when seeds are excreted, the poo pile they’re left in even helps fertilize the seedling. So, what exactly has a mighty enough gut to handle a seed as big as an avocado pit without a painful and extended trip to the loo? The answer is almost certainly Megatherium or giant ground sloths. They were (most paleobiologists agree) the primary consumer (and excreter) of avocados until they went extinct some 13,000 years ago. Between the time that the last Pleistocene Megatherium pooped its final avocado seed and the time modern humans discovered we liked them damn things too (and began cultivating them), it’s a distinct wonder how this peculiar plant managed to not get dead. Regardless of how or why let us bonk burritos and just be happy they didn’t.
While this is merely a glimpse down some of the storied halls of culinary curios, it’s a good opportunity to stop and reflect on the insect content of your food or the unsung importance of sloth poop and beaver butts.
Esmeralda Rupp-Spangle can make a mean curry and promises to use only a little Devil’s dung in it. She can be found on Facebook as Esmeralda Marina and Instagram as @EsmeraldaSilentCitadel. Please, keep your filthy human germs to yourself.
