Evil Tastes Good: Difference between revisions

* Shark fin soup is considered a Chinese status symbol, its high cost marking it as a special food at weddings and banquets. To source the fins, sharks are finned alive, then tossed back into the sea to die slowly--shark meat is not as economically valuable as the fins, so their fin-less bodies are left to sink to the ocean floor, unable to swim, where they will be defenselessly preyed upon or die slowly. Add to this that shark fins taste bland and that the soup would otherwise be plain-tasting if it didn't contain fish broth as well.

* Another Chinese food, is Bird's Nest Soup. (What is it with the Chinese and their diet?!) Which is [[Exactly What It Says on the Tin]]. A soup made out of a bird's nest. The bird being the swallow. Which makes its nest by using its spit in place of cement. (Am not making this up. Harvesting these spitwads/nests means that the birds have a hard time breeding, and are thus, dying out....because their spit is delicious.

* It is illegal in the United States, France, and most of the western world to capture, sell, or cook the endangered [[wikipedia:Ortolan Bunting|ortolan]] (the bird, not the ''[[Star Wars]]'' species). And in response, resourceful gourmets pay great sums to get the dish. [[Anthony Bourdain]], who wrote about an underground feast featuring ortolans, describes them as "one tasty f—ing bird.”

** Interestingly, a common ritual is for the ortolan-eater to cover his or her head with a napkin while eating the bird. This is sometimes explained as preventing the ortolan's odors from dissipating and reducing interference from the other senses. But one legend ascribes this practice to a priest who felt so guilty about what he was eating that he was trying to hide from God.